by cubaautosales.8238 » Sun Apr 30, 2017 1:42 pm
While I'm not happy for you to hear that your season wasn't great, I am however relieved to hear that I'm not the only one. We're a small rural bhph lot and still fairly new we've been in business for 4 years. The first 3 years we did an amazing 60-70% of our entire annual sales during tax season. This year, we had an active period that was literally only days. For about a 2 week period in February we sold a handfull of cars (a lot for a small player like us.) We normally get started some times the end of Dec - first of Jan as tax advances start coming around. We usually have a lull in March then April-May are active again. This year I don't know what happened!?! But when 60-70% of your annual sales come from a tax season that doesn't come, I'm afraid we're looking at dark days ahead ( probably because we won't be able to pay the light bills!)
One contribution to our problem I fear is competition in a nearby bigger city. Everywhere you go the big guys are tearing down old buildings and constructing new enormous size dealerships. One smaller bhph lot there that's been around a long time bought out their ajoining lot and constructed a new building so they've essentially doubled in size, a lot of people around town riding with their inventory that I'm seeing. Plus we have a Car-Mart that built here about 3 years ago. Why customers would shop there is beyond me. It also doesn't help that we have a new Kia dealership advertizing brand new cars for stupid prices like $5995 or buy one get one free. Their partner lot, a Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep dealer across the street advertise ONE DIME DOWN all the time. It's a wonder why little guys like us can't make it.
I seriously think there were some issues with tax refunds this year though, we still should have seen our fair share of traffic. In our local area I still don't see a whole lot of "new-to-them" cars riding around, the rims and stereos, etc. that we normally associate with it being tax season.