A Dilemma for early dealership openings.

[Harleyduo]

I know I have been chomping at the bits for the local dealership to open in Michigan and like others can't quite stand the wait.

However, I tried to take a look at it from a different perspective today and imagine arguments for NOT opening at this point. It didn't take me long to realize that if the dealerships were open, there would need to be people there and those people would expect to be paid for their time and services, just as any of us would expect to be paid for working.

Therein lies the problem. The business could not be expecting any income, yet, since there is no product to deliver. At the same we all want the product to have the lowest prices possible and the car cannot have a exorbitant amount of profit included and stay competitive.

I'm sure none of us would expect anybody to work a month or more with no pay, so I guess we all have to settle for the compromise of waiting until there is product to be sold to produce profits with just enough lead time to make it all happen. I see this as the problem of starting a brand new company that is controlled by the arrival of product that can be sold to drive the business. Now if we could just get Daimler to start releasing a few vehicles 'early' so this whole process could get rolling we'd all be smiling.

It seems to be like the chicken and the egg conundrum. We can't seem to have one without first having the other. Meanwhile, January 2008 gets closer with every passing day.

[spdickey]

Originally Posted by Harleyduo

IHowever, I tried to take a look at it from a different perspective today and imagine arguments for NOT opening at this point. It didn't take me long to realize that if the dealerships were open, there would need to be people there and those people would expect to be paid for their time and services, just as any of us would expect to be paid for working.

Why open now, pay a bunch of people, to answer questions with "I don't know" coming in every day? They can do that just fine on the website. Now if they had a car to show off like at the smart House that's something different.

I'm lucky that the smart House in Venice, CA is even closer to where I live than my dealer will be. So I get my fix of test drives and car fondling Tueday through Sunday for the past couple of months. But I can imagine those living in the snow that don't get that luxury, sorry.

[E-SMART]

as evidenced by some job postings on craigslist (one dealer in Pacific-NW) and other dealers are "mega-dealers" (like the one I'm likely to use -- Knauz in Lake Bluff, IL) who probably will just shift some people over or may possibly get a few new hires. I think a lot will have to do with how many cars the dealer will be allocated as to when he sets up sales & service; if he is just getting a very small number of cars he'll likely postpone it until supplies for walk-in traffic customers are made available.