Well worth the wait
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Recognition from Mercedes-Benz with a dealer award was long overdue for Sparshatts of Kent
Words / Images: Steve Banner It was a long time coming but worth the wait. Earlier this year Sparshatts of Kent won the Mercedes-Benz CV Dealer of the Year prize, 26 years after it last scooped the accolade in 1986.
Not surprisingly, dealer principal Andrew Sparshatt is delighted with the award. It is a tribute, he believes, to the hard work of the 166 people employed by one of the oldest-established Mercedes van and truck dealerships in the country.
“Mercedes is very KPI [key performance indicator] orientated and we were continually among the top three dealers in the network for most of the year,” Sparshatt says. “We did really well in a variety of areas, including sales, service, parts and customer satisfaction.” Then already a well-known name in the CV business, Sparshatts acquired the Mercedes franchise in 1974, when the manufacturer was nowhere near the force on this side of the Channel that it is now.
Roger Sparshatt and current chairman David Jones took the plunge, and the company has steadily expanded its involvement with the manufacturer ever since. Beginning with a site at Sittingbourne, the £54m-a-year-turnover business has subsequently acquired branches at Ashford, Dartford and Tunbridge Wells – the latter will soon relocate to Tonbridge – and sells 600 to 700 new vehicles annually, split more or less equally between vans and trucks.
Van sales volumes should rise in a few months’ time when the new Citan LCV, a close cousin to Renault’s Kangoo, goes on sale. This will take the manufacturer into a sector of the market it has not occupied before, but Sparshatt believes the dealership is in a particularly good position to take advantage of the opportunities that will present themselves.
Reorganisation is key
“Over the past two years, we’ve reorganised our van team and we’ve now got a dedicated van sales manager, Michael Duggan, who joined us from SG Smith in 2010,” he says.
Sparshatts sells LCVs from Dartford and Sittingbourne, but provides van aftersales backup from all four of its locations. Sparshatt believes that its ability to deliver aftermarket support at all hours of the day and night will have a positive effect on prospective Citan buyers.
At the other end of the weight scale, the latest Actros is already winning friends, he reports. “We’ve already sold a few, and a lot of it has been conquest business,” he says.
“Everybody has a moan about the price, dare I say, but their attitude changes once they’ve driven it. Operators who have taken new Actros are getting the fuel figures they were hoping for,” he says. “Everyone likes the look of it too.” The new Actros tractor units Sparshatts has sold so far are all Euro-5, and he is aware that many hauliers remain concerned about the impact Euro-6 will have on fuel consumption. Does he fear that truck registrations will stop dead when Euro-6 becomes mandatory in January 2014?
“There will be a bit of a dip but, to be honest, I don’t think the impact on sales will be as big as people are predicting,” he replies. “There are some operators looking to purchase Euro-6 vehicles now, in part because they pride themselves on their green credentials.” Sparshatts sells around 200 second-hand vans and trucks annually. “We’ll have a go at selling anything apart from cars,” he says. “We don’t like to trade CVs out because, if it can be traded, then that means somebody else is going to make money out of it.
“We’ve got quite a big customer base of east European plumbers who are willing to pay £1,000 for a van; and if the buyer is happy with it, then he might come back one or two years later and buy a £2,000 van, and so on.
“There shouldn’t be any snobbery about it. Everybody has got to start somewhere and I doubt Alan Sugar’s first car was a Rolls-Royce.
“We benefited from the need for operators who go in and out of the London Low Emission Zone to buy Euro-4 models as a consequence of the change in regulations that came into force in January. But in recent months the used truck market has slowed up a bit,” he continues. One difficulty, he suggests, is a shortage of owner-drivers who used to buy second-hand vehicles, but who are unfortunately no longer in business.
No space for an ATF just yet
Turning to aftersales, space constraints and the location of some of the company’s branches are making the setting up of an authorised testing facility a challenge.
“That will probably change as we progressively alter our sites over the next five years,” he says.
“We will certainly go for it when we finally move our Dartford depot – we’ve got an option on a piece of land in south London.” In the meantime, Sparshatt would like the testing regime for heavy trucks to be brought into line with that for cars and light CVs, with nominated testers employed by the dealership allowed to carry out the work subject to suitable safeguards, rather than Vosa inspectors.
“I don’t see any reason why this shouldn’t be the case, especially if you are a main dealer,” he observes.
“If we cannot be trusted to say whether or not a truck is fit to be on the road, then we definitely shouldn’t be carrying out six-week statutory inspections.” The fact that Sparshatts is achieving a 94% first-time MoT test pass rate would suggest that it certainly can be trusted. While much of the focus is on the new Citan, Actros and Antos, the Fuso Canter is not being neglected, says Sparshatt.
“When we first took over what was then the Mitsubishi Canter from Volvo, we were one of a small number of Mercedes dealers to employ a Canter specialist,” he recalls.
“We quickly found that one of the best ways to sell it was to put a body on it and offer it to somebody who wanted a dropside or a tipper he could put to work immediately. Since then we’ve done exceptionally well with Canter. We sold a heck of a lot last year and 50 during the first half of this year,” he continues.
“We’ve embraced it as a product: and I think it’s fair to say that it’s embraced us.” n