20 Years. One Vision: The Story of Used Cars NI
To mark 20 years of Used Cars NI, we sat down with co-founder Cecil Hetherington to look back at where it all began. From spotting a gap in the market before most people had even heard of online car sales, to overnight van runs and a magazine that changed how Northern Ireland's dealers thought about the internet, Cecil's story is one of quiet determination, a few memorable stories, and a genuine love for the people and the industry he set out to serve.
Before Used Cars NI launched, how did car buyers and dealers in Northern Ireland find each other?
We've become so used to market information at our fingertips that it seems strange to remember a time when we had to work harder for it! Car sales magazines, newspaper motoring ads and dealer websites existed, but really there was no way of getting a single overview of the market as a whole for trade and private sales. Car shopping habits were different then too, in that fewer people travelled more than half an hour from home to buy a car from a dealer they had not dealt with before or a private seller that they had never met. It was much more common to build up the information needed to purchase a car in an offline way. In my case it was spending the most of a morning driving around the various dealers on the Boucher Road and checking out multiple sales yards. My dad in Fermanagh was more old school. He would deal with the same salesman he had known for decades, accepting his advice on when to change and what to change to. It became clear to us that the possibility of putting the vast majority of stock in one place would create something new and special.
Who were your main competitors at the time, and what made you confident Used Cars NI could stand out from them?
Autotrader were the biggest and dominant market player, both with a weekly magazine and a website. What we noticed was that they had not prioritised their website as quickly as we thought they should have, and they were operating a high-cost model which rationed the information and did not give a good overview of the entire market. When we first looked in around 2006, I remember 6400 cars online, which we estimated was less than a third of the market.
How many people were involved in those very early days?
We were a very small business developing and managing websites for local businesses and other organisations in Northern Ireland. At the beginning Used Cars NI was just me, my business partner Anthony Kieran, and our designer and project manager Dave Ward. Dave designed the very first version of the Used Cars NI website and logo.
Cast your mind back to January 2010. What gave you the idea to launch a physical Used Cars NI magazine?
We had gained a lot of traction online and with brand awareness via TV and radio advertising. Since our biggest competitor was Autotrader, the 'book' as dealers called it gave them an edge over us with older dealers and buyers in that it positioned them very much as the incumbent and market leader. Conventional wisdom was that a small company just would not have the cash resources to launch a print magazine, and that there would be no point anyway as it was a declining market that would eventually die. We always try to question what 'everybody knows', in case the unconventional is something that actually makes more sense. It turned out that we were able to develop the technology quite quickly to produce and print a fortnightly magazine for very little additional overhead, and we could cope with the cash-flow hit. We didn't mind that the market was declining, time limited and unprofitable for newcomers. Breaking even suited us fine, as the main point was to project our brand into a very mainstream place and reach a class of buyer who wouldn't have taken us seriously otherwise. The strategy worked, and pretty soon we had a steady stream of calls from places like Tyrone with dealers of a certain age asking us, "How do a' get me c-yars in tha' book?"
The first issue boasted over 10,000 Northern Ireland cars and 240+ pages. How did you pull that together, and what do you remember about launch day?
The programmers were able to produce a feed directly from the website into a huge PDF, and we had a staff of two in the office who produced and proofed the final copy. I have to admit it wasn't without its dramas and cock ups! The deadline was so tight we weren't able to get a courier to bring the copies from the printer in England in time, so Anthony and I hired a box van at the last moment and took the overnight boat from Dublin to Holyhead. We got it to the shops in time in a wacky races sort of way, only to realise that in the rush we had listed every van and truck as petrol manual instead of diesel automatic. Oops! I can report though that we very soon got into a nice routine of actually getting the magazine out on time and correct. Andrew Goodman and Lee Richmond did a night shift every fortnight to make sure all went smoothly, and I'd try and be there too at about 4am, mainly to bring them a kebab from a dodgy Bradbury Place chippy. Good times.
Was there a moment when you knew Used Cars NI had really taken off?
We ran our first TV campaign very early on, I think in 2007, certainly before we could really afford the spend. We already had forward momentum, but as soon as the campaign started the number of people per day jumped overnight from less than 2000 to more than 5000. We were on a business trip in Brussels and I remember checking this in an internet cafe and knowing in my gut that it was a proper breakthrough and not a short-term peak.
Did you get much direct feedback from buyers or dealers in those early days?
We were constantly talking to dealers. It was vital to try and understand what made them tick. For dealers it was simply a matter that these 'Cars NI or whatever they call themselves' people were unproven. Plenty of new entrants try to get the attention of dealers, most of whom never get that far. It made sense for them to wait and see if we made a difference. One thing that helped us was that we had the technology to automate the first steps in the process. Instead of setting up tricky feeds that needed dealers to make decisions, give permissions and pay third party feed companies, we were able to transfer data from the dealers' websites directly to readvertise on our platform for free. A dealer could ask us to stop, of course, and then we would, but most were happy enough since there was no downside for them. I remember the first time we came to the attention of Charles Hurst. I phoned them to check that they were OK with getting free leads since we saw a few going through to them. The guy on the other end of the phone was a bit shocked at first that their cars were on our site, but then he asked me how we had done it since they had just spent weeks with another company trying to set up a feed and not really succeeding. Hurst have been advertising with us ever since.
What's the biggest lesson that era taught you about the Northern Ireland car market and its people?
I grew up in an era of sharp sectarian and political division, where there always seemed to be an 'us' and a 'them'. My work with Used Cars NI brought me to every city and town and village, getting to know the men and women in the board rooms, the showrooms, the portacabins and the workshops. I loved it, and it was an education that 'us and them' is a stupid concept that collapses when there is a shared endeavour. Life and business at their best are about working with everyone for the common good.
How has your typical customer changed over 20 years. Who was buying and selling through Used Cars NI in the early days versus today?
To be honest it has stayed the same more than it has changed. Used Cars NI certainly helped solidify a group in the centre of the market, of established but independent dealers in every county, typically stocking from around 20 to 60 cars and providing a full range of services that buyers value. But really we are here to serve every car seller, from someone offloading an old banger privately to a multi-franchise operation with over a thousand cars.
How has the business had to evolve to keep up?
That's a big question! How long have you got? Briefly I'd first say that it's vital to have some core commitments that won't change before you start evolving. We make the user experience on the site and a deep level of respect and affection for both car sellers and buyers fundamental to what we do. If that sounds a bit trite then fair enough, but we actually mean it. We don't compromise when it comes to user experience and providing genuine value to dealers and private sellers. With that bedrock in place, we've gradually realised over the years that providing more cars than anyone else is great, but it's also important to constantly improve the quality and quantity of information we provide to the market and to add extra services that people find useful. The product development function within the company is the engine room of that, but everyone in Used Cars NI plays their part.
Is there a particular customer success story or dealer relationship that, for you, really sums up what Used Cars NI means to people in Northern Ireland?
I wouldn't like to name anyone in particular, as really the essence of Used Cars NI is its collective benefit to everyone who likes cars and wants the industry to be healthy, but it's true that we've made friends and had a lot of fun along the way. What we often hear and love to hear are things like; 'our business has grown up and matured with yours', 'we've been with you from the very start', and 'your site is far nicer to use than Autotrader'.
Twenty years on, what are you most proud of when you look at where Used Cars NI is today?
Oh, right. I don't want to sound too full of myself. But let me just tell you the two things that came to mind when you asked that question. The first is that we very rarely lose Used Cars NI employees to other companies, and if they do leave it's nearly always for a very natural reason that makes sense. We just try our best to get to know our staff and work out what will help them thrive, and then we take the same approach with customers and website users. Loyalty is a two-way street, but for leaders the most important and most easily forgotten part of that is showing loyalty, not receiving it. The second thing that comes to mind is the commitment to the quality and simplicity of the product over time, when the temptation is often to dilute it for short-term gain. I think we have shown in our small way that you can refuse to compromise on user experience or the interests of customers and also deliver exceptional year on year profitable growth for 20 years in a row.
What does the next chapter for Used Cars NI look like?
Used Cars NI is now part of the Distilled Media Group, and in them we are delighted to have found colleagues who share our long-term way of thinking and commitment to customers and staff. My goal for Used Cars NI is simply for it to retain its unique identity and go from strength to strength as the partner of choice for every participant in the motoring market in Northern Ireland, while also making the most of the support and help we can receive from our new owners.