NISSAN GB boss Jim Wright has stressed the importance of getting the right dealership structure in place as the company continues to go from strength to strength in the UK.
Wright said it was important that Nissan dealers across the UK were able to handle the growing level of interest in the company’s vehicles such as crossover pair Qashqai and Juke, the all-electric LEAF and the popular Micra and Note.
Wright told Nissan Insider that the company sold 65,000 cars three years ago, but that had risen to 107,000 by 2011 – and could grow to a whopping 140,000 units shifted each year in the near future. He told us: ‘If you’re going to grow to that kind of size, then your sales channel needs to change.’
And while he acknowledged that the business of making and selling cars wasn’t rocket science, Wright did say that careful attention had to be paid to the dealer network to make sure the right structure was in place to cope with the anticipated level of demand.
Wright told Nissan Insider: ‘Of course, we need to have the right dealer for the right town but we also need to make sure that our absolute capacity is right … that it’s the right facility, it has the right number of car parking spaces and that it has the right amount of storage and workshop space too.
‘It’s not just about having nice cars, it’s about making sure dealers have the capacity. Over the next couple of years, that’s the job we need to do.’
Always optimised
Asked if Nissan was planning to add more dealerships, Wright replied: ‘Not more necessarily but we’re looking to make sure that our network is always optimised.
‘Our business isn’t rocket science, we need the right product and the right network. That’s essentially what it’s all about. The rest of the stuff that we do just supports that.’