Purchasing Is Significantly More Targeted

Record profits following supply bottlenecks, price decreases, or residual values of electric vehicles—remarketing has made it from a niche topic to the front page in the area of fleet management. No fleet manager can avoid the sales issue these days. We asked our remarketing expert Martin Peters (Remarketing Director at Holman GmbH) about his feelings on the current market situation and what advice he has for customers now.

Supply chains have recovered, the “traffic jam” of recent years has cleared and there are more new cars on the market again. How does this affect Holman’s remarketing business?

The changed situation in the used-car market is leading to higher inventory, and we can once again offer our dealers a significantly larger selection of attractive vehicles via our online portal. Currently, there are about 1,300 vehicles offered in the “Buy It Now” selection every day, and stock changes hourly. At the same time, used vehicle prices are falling because the high cost pressure caused by the supply bottlenecks is easing. The “normalization” of new-vehicle deliveries is bringing vehicles with attractive terms and mileage conditions to the market. Domestic demand, on the other hand, has fallen—partly because of high interest rates. Let’s take a look at the export market, which is very volatile and is heavily influenced by changing conditions, such as tax subsidies and taxes in various countries, as well as by the war in Ukraine.

What are the biggest challenges in remarketing at the moment?

Due to the high number of vehicles returning to the market, appropriate infrastructure, including storage facilities, assessments, and logistics capacities, is required. This infrastructure is currently not available due to the market shakeout during the COVID pandemic. This leads to significant capacity bottlenecks and the resulting price increases for affiliated service providers—and overall, to increased administrative costs in the remarketing department. We are currently receiving large numbers of electric vehicles for the marketing process. These vehicles present all parties involved with completely new challenges in the inventory-control, storage and preparation processes.

In the used-car market, we are seeing many hybrid vehicles that, because of tax advantages, were used as company cars. Due to supply and demand, these vehicles are increasingly just being marketed outside Germany. High interest rates are changing the purchasing behavior of retailers. This means that purchasing is significantly more targeted, with fewer “in stock” acquisitions.

What goals has Holman set in the area of remarketing for the next few years? Might there also be innovations that customers can look forward to?

Of course, we want to be the market leader in retired fleet vehicles and handle every sale in a highly professional, audit-proof, transparent, and process-reliable manner for our consigning clients. With our special expertise in commercial vehicles and electric vehicles, we want to further expand these segments. At the same time, we will offer our Holman leasing customers the best individual solution for the sale of the FlexLease contracts that have been retired. Our goal is to further advance the automation and digitization of our pre-sales processes and to strengthen our “Buy-It-Now” online purchasing service on our proprietary portal. And our most important innovation: Beginning in July 2024, each week, we will offer our registered dealers a large number of vehicles from “non-performing bank contracts” via a new auction model we call “Holman Bid4Cars.” And in an additional phase, we will offer retired company vehicles.

We will focus on the following segments:

• Holman Remarketing Excellence (customized remarketing services for fleet customers with purchase fleets and Holman BuyDirect activities)
• Holman Remarketing Services (white label and clients with consignments of 500-plus vehicles annually)
• Holman Bid4Cars (B2B vehicle auctions)

We hope these innovations featuring targeted services and offers in the respective verticals will inspire our consigning clients and purchasing commercial partners.