Features

Jul. 13, 2009 – ‘The ultimate dealer experience’

POWAY, Calif. — An educational area large enough to accommodate dozens. Conference rooms. VIP areas. An Internet lounge.
All of these may sound like the features of the newest nearby hotel or convention center but in reality are signs of a growing industry business: the wholesale market. All of those dealer creature comforts are part of the latest new facility opened by National Powersport Auctions (NPA), which held a grand opening June 5 for its San Diego-area facility.
“We designed this facility with the ultimate dealer experience in mind,” said Justyn Amstutz, NPA’s executive vice president of sales and marketing.
The new San Diego facility includes 125,000 square feet of warehouse space, which on June 5 housed more than 1,600 used vehicles from a variety of industry segments, from Harleys to side-by-sides to MP3s.
For NPA, the facility represents the second new facility it has opened in the past two years. In 2008, the privately held company opened a new site in Cincinnati. The San Diego facility replaces a much smaller site that could barely hold the 1,600 units that were on display at the new facility in early June. That new facility, which can hold up to 3,500 units, will serve as the company’s headquarters as its main accounting, computer programming, sales and marketing efforts will be housed there.
NPA, which also has facilities in Dallas and Atlanta, already has said it plans to increase its national presence in the future with a facility in Portland, Ore. “Our timetable has probably slowed a little bit because of the macroeconomic economic conditions, but we’re very much focused on Portland,” Amstutz said. “We have an ideal location picked out.
“The demographics make sense. The regional consignment model makes sense. The cost savings from a transportation-logistics perspective continues to make sense. But instead of diving in as aggressively as we did a year ago, we’re being most cautious about the type of facility.”
Amstutz expects a Portland site to be operational perhaps by the second quarter of 2010.
In the meantime, the company will continue to grow its business, both through traditional and nontraditional means. “We’re always looking at how to more comfortably accommodate a dealer, how we can provide additional services to drive more revenue to the bottom line for a dealer, how we can generate a better experience to the dealer and our institutional clients as well,” Amstutz said.
-Neil Pascale

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