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Car Buying Tips

Why Your Motorcycle Department Is Losing Money (And What To Do About It)

Why does every dealer group with a motorcycle department lose money on it? That's not a rhetorical question. It's the question that separates the dealers makin...

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Car Buying Tips

Why Most Franchise Dealerships Should Stop Trying to Sell Used RVs

Why Most Franchise Dealerships Should Stop Trying to Sell Used RVs The RV market exploded around 2008. Not because people suddenly loved camping, but because t...

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The Facility Design Problem Nobody Wants to Admit

In 1900, a hurricane hit Galveston, Texas with such force that it killed over 6,000 people and reshaped the entire Gulf Coast approach to disaster planning. Wha...

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Why Your $400K Facility Upgrade Is Probably Going to Fail (And What to Do Instead)

Sixty-three percent of dealerships plan a facility upgrade in the next 18 months. That's a lot of general managers staring at architect renderings and wondering...

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The Solar Panel Trap: Why Your Dealership Facility Might Not Be Ready Yet

The Solar Panel Trap: Why Your Dealership Facility Might Not Be Ready Yet Most dealership groups are getting sold on rooftop solar panels as a no-brainer facil...

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Better Signage Won't Fix a Bad Layout: A Contrarian Take on Dealership Wayfinding

Eighty-seven percent of dealerships say their facility signage and wayfinding are "adequate or better." Meanwhile, mystery shops consistently show customers spe...

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Stop Over-Correcting on ADA Compliance: A Contrarian Dealership Perspective

You've got a 40-year-old service bay, a showroom that's seen three remodels, and a parking lot that slopes like the Cascade foothills. Now you're staring at an ...

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The Parking Lot Capacity Trap: Why Limiting Spaces Actually Improves Operations

Most dealership operators approach parking lot capacity the same way they approach inventory turns: add more, maximize efficiency, stack cars tight, and call it...

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Service Bay Throughput Isn't a Capacity Problem—It's a Facility Design Problem

Your service bay throughput problem isn't actually a service bay problem. You've been solving it wrong, and most dealerships in the Pacific Northwest are making...

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Stop Wasting Money on Fancy Coffee Machines: What Customer Lounge Amenities Actually Work

You walk into your service lounge on a Tuesday morning and see the espresso machine—the $8,000 espresso machine you installed last year because every dealership...

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LED Retrofits Aren't Always Worth It (And Your Accountant Probably Knows That)

LED Retrofits Aren't Always Worth It (And Your Accountant Probably Knows That) Here's the unpopular opinion: most dealerships shouldn't retrofit their entire f...

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Why Your Showroom Redesign Might Be a Waste of Half a Million Dollars

How many times have you walked into a newly redesigned showroom and thought, "Well, that's nice, but are we selling more cars?" That's the question most dealer ...

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