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Motorists driving into London along the M4 cannot miss the cluster of flagship dealer showrooms alongside the motorway on the Great West Road, including for the past year Kia.
Looking to fill a major open point, Kia consulted a business with long experience of the challenging west London market. Norton Way Group had been a Honda dealer since 1972 at its Letchworth, Hertfordshire base and in 2001 opened the largest standalone Honda car and motorcycle dealership in the UK in Chiswick.
Norton Way worked with Kia on the design of the new dealership, and then, despite having no history with the brand, successfully tendered to operate the site, opening as GWR Kia in October 2016.
In charge is David Grainger (pictured), who joined Norton Way in 1979 and headed a management buy-out 10 years later. As managing director he is supported by sons Neal and Harry as accounts and business development managers. Norton Way is rated at 24th in the Motor Trader Top 200.
How has Norton Way grown into a major group?
In 2007 we sold the shares of Norton Way to Maranbeni Corporation but retained the freeholds of our sites, becoming Maranbeni’s landlord and running the business for them. At that point my sons had come into the business and since 2008 we have been much more profitable and successful – much of this due to the three-strong management team. Five years ago we added a Nissan franchise to our Honda and Mazda site in Letchworth and we’ve continued to aim to be in the top 10% with all our businesses – you can’t win all the time, it’s not always possible.
You have no history with Kia – how did you come to operate the brand’s flagship dealership?
We were first approached five years before we opened. We believe Kia studied our Chiswick operation before discussing a west London opportunity with us. We were by then established as a west London operation with Honda. Setting-up costs in London are astronomical. Our three-acre Chiswick site cost £3m an acre in 2001 plus another million to build. Today at Chiswick we are paying a sensible rate and getting a sensible return.
We were happy to represent Kia either in west London or another open point, but we could not afford to take on a business that would not produce a return. We rejected some west London opportunities and then we were shown this one, already planned as a motor dealership on five floors. We worked with Kia on this site, which is a third of the size of Chiswick but four storeys higher.
Kia needed our retail perspective – the original planning permission did not offer enough space for the number of cars needed, and we worked with their architects to create the space to display sufficient vehicles to produce a return. This location is important to Kia, but we are connected to the world electronically, and we would expect to run our business that way rather than on the basis of passing walk-in customers.
With a suitable package they went to build. We had
learnt a lot as had they. It was an exciting project to work on from scratch. Kia wanted to offer the operator role to key groups in their network and to win the franchise we had to present to them.
Kia’s foundation principle of “family life” is very much how we operate as a business. We run on a very flat structure, all our staff are taught to treat customers like family. Kia was really attentive, listened and understood, and eventually decided to move forward with us. We are a year down the road now. We have had to learn Kia’s language but it has not been tough – we have been very comfortable with them.
How important is this business to the Norton Way group?
Every brand is important to us and we love to grow with our brands. We aim to make this the best dealership in the area and we have rivals; Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, the largest Audi building anywhere, all within 200 yards of this site. We can definitely challenge brands around us – we offer five-star customer service and we get feedback that customers do not always receive that elsewhere.
How do you get that message across to your potential customers?
We record and listen back to all our phone calls and send reports to the sales managers. But word of mouth is also really important to us. Our aftersales manager was heading home one evening and found a Kia with a flat tyre in the filling station up the road. He ensured the customer’s wheel was changed, looked after them and sent them away happy.
We have two simple rules, the customer is always right, and when they are wrong rule one applies. We educate new starters in our ways and philosophy but also tell them to ask questions about us, our business, our strategies.
New staff will either buy into our way or not. If someone leaves after a short time we analyse where we might have gone wrong in choosing them – we don’t want to disrupt people’s lives. Success always comes back to our relationship with our customers. To achieve that our staff are our most important asset. Happy staff means happy customers.
How did you recruit the team for the centre?
We brought across eight managers whom we’ve grown from an early stage of their careers – they were Norton Way trained and a key asset. During the six-month fitting out process we hung a large recruiting sign on the exterior, visible from the M4. More than 400 people contacted us, which we reduced that to around 40 to follow up further.
When do you expect to see a ROI?
Kia has a 25-year lease on the site but for us it’s important we achieve a return on any investment immediately. We saw a profit on the investment we made in our first year. This business will sell between 800 and 1,000 new retail and 600 used cars this year. At full capacity our used target will be 1,200 units – we are starting with a blank database. In our first year we were a top 10 dealer in the country for new car volume.
Will this become the biggest-selling UK Kia site?
We aim to be in the top 10% – perhaps we will be the biggest but it’s too arrogant to say that. We want to be the best operator in town for customer service. If we can do that we will achieve a strong market share.
How is it being a new outlet in what is currently a volatile market?
Kia has a small UK market share. The Volkswagen and Audi dealers down the road possibly have more to worry about. We can only grow and the way Kia is working with us is fantastic – you can see why the brand is top of the NFDA Dealer Attitude Survey. We are very proud to have been given the opportunity to represent Kia in West London but we realise we have a lot to prove.
