Holman Bid4Cars: The New Dimension of Vehicle Auctions

Selling a vehicle is often time-consuming, demanding and requires both experience and tact. Thay’s why it makes sense to place the sales process in the hands of experienced remarketing experts. Since July of this year, we have expanded our remarketing offering to include Holman Bid4Cars – an innovative B2B platform for vehicle auctions, specifically for dealers. Our remarketing expert Martin Peters (Remarketing Director at Holman GmbH) shares his experiences with the platform in an exciting interview and gives a view of its future development. 

Can you briefly explain to us what exactly is behind Holman Bid4Cars? What does the platform offer, who is it intended for and what benefits can users expect? 

Holman Bid4Cars opens a new dimension of vehicle auctioning, in which a vehicle is offered simultaneously to different auction service providers. A significant added value for the consigning clients, is that as the range of the auction increases, the higher the sales revenue that can be achieved.

The entire auction process is automated: all connected auction portals show the vehicle at the same time with identical information. At the end of the auction, the “Hot Bid” phase ensures the highest market price and gives participating dealers the opportunity to secure the vehicle through repeated bidding.

The platform offers the submitting clients a transparent process that enables them to achieve market B2B pricing in no time. At the same time, Holman Bid4Cars is particularly attractive for B2B buyers, who are offered changing auctions weekly.

Now, after a few months, what conclusion have you drawn so far? What experiences and insights have you gained? Were there any unexpected challenges that had to be overcome?

The challenges arise from the complexity created by the simultaneous and largely automated process. Different IT systems and technologies from different auction partners must communicate with each other and complex interfaces have to be operated. That’s why we started with a limited number of vehicles in the first auction rounds. We now auction between 70 and 100 vehicles every week.

How has the platform been received by our customers? What feedback have we received from dealers who have already used Holman Bid4Cars? Was there any particularly positive or constructive feedback? 

The tool is very well received by our dealers, as we use the latest technology to continuously and reliably offer a wide selection of vehicles in all runtime and mileage combinations. There is also an exciting mix: from motorcycles to motorhomes, from simple vehicles to sports cars.

Of course, there was a few feedback at the beginning about minor technical problems, but these were always resolved immediately. While many of our dealers registered with Holman are used to purchasing vehicles at attractive B2B fixed prices and are therefore less auction-savvy, we are also attracting new dealers who are particularly enthusiastic about this auction format.

What goals have we set for Holman Bid4Cars in the coming year? What can our customers expect from the platform in the near future? Are there any new features or expansions planned? 

The first phase was to establish an automated and simultaneous auction tool on the market that reliably offers a large number of interesting used vehicles. We implemented this project together with a well-known car bank and independent B2B auction portals in order to achieve the highest market prices for the consigning bank’s vehicles with minimal process times.

In the future, we plan to further increase the number of vehicles offered weekly and to attract new dealers who will take part in the auction and purchase additional vehicles from us at fixed prices. This means that all clients who use Holman remarketing services benefit from Holman Bid4Cars.

In 2025, we plan to make Holman Bid4Cars available to other interested clients who already use Holman remarketing services. We are currently working on the necessary interface technology for this purpose. We are convinced that a simultaneous auction with various powerful auction portals will create very high demand!

If you are interested, please contact us for further information or personal advice.