LEAVENS VOLKSWAGEN’S NEW FACILITY IS A TESTAMENT TO HARD WORK AND CUSTOMER DEDICATION
One day, while his parents were on holiday in Europe, a young Ed Leavens decided to trade in the family station wagon for an Austin-Healey sports car. He then thought it would be a good idea to take it circuit racing. It paid off. Leavens started winning races, embarking on a path which would see the family develop a really strong passion, not only for motorsports but also for selling and servicing cars. In 1958, Leavens opened his own dealership in London, Ont. and today, 55 years later, his son Chris continues to carry that passion, operating Volkswagen and Porsche stores in the area.
Leavens, who moved his VW operation into a brand new facility last December, is understandably proud of the impressive 35,000 square foot facility and of his staff and customers that have helped make it a reality.
’57 Volkswagen Type 1 is a homage to the store
and brand’s past
As we sit in his office on the second level, he shares with me stories about driving around in a wooden car with a real gasoline engine his father built when he was but a small boy and that after having got a job to help pay for fuel so he could ride trail motorcycles in his teen years, knew that his destiny lay in the car business.
A member of the very first group to graduate from Georgian College’s automotive marketing program in Barrie, Ont. (1985-88), Leavens’ first stint in the working world began out East, when he took a position selling cars at a Ford dealership in Nova Scotia. “I’d never sold a car before in my life,” he says, “so I don’t know what would have happened if wasn’t able to do it.”
Luckily, Leavens proved he was good at it and was able to move a lot of metal. He later became a business/sales manager and wound up working at Anderson Pontiac Buick GMC in Woodstock, Ont. “That was a really good position,” he says “and I learned a great deal from my time at Anderson.”
So young Chris was in the prime of life, making good money and driving a flashy red GMC pickup when one day, in 1992, the call came. “It was my dad,” he says. “He basically gave me an ultimatum. He said that I could come back to Leavens and take over the dealership from him or he would sell up.”
Store is among the first in North America to feature showroom LED lighting
RETURNING HOME
Although it meant a pay cut, the younger Leavens could see where the future was and off he went, back home to London. It proved to be a shrewd move, for at that time, Volkswagen was in the midst of significantly upgrading and expanding its product portfolio, led by the third generation Jetta and Golf. Leavens took the plunge and as he says “I never looked back.”
Chris Leavens
In the last two decades Leavens Volkswagen has grown to become one of the most popular dealerships, not only in London and the surrounding area but beyond. In fact, sales manager Dave Graham, who’s been with Leavens since 2000, says the store has customers from as far away as Sudbury, Ottawa, Niagara Falls and even Michigan that come, either get their car serviced or purchase their next one. “We’ve had quite a lot of customers who have moved away, but have sons or daughters in school here or still have family ties in the area, so when they come back they choose to have their vehicles serviced here or look to buy their next car from us.” Graham himself is a bit of a long distance driver, he lives 50 km away but can’t imagine working anywhere else. “It’s a great place to be,” he says.
Evidently the dealership’s customers agree with him, because for the last five years in a row, Leavens Volkswagen has been the recipient of the coveted Wolfsburg Crest Club, meaning it has excelled in sales, service and customer satisfaction. “It’s really nice to have that recognition,” says Chris Leavens “and it means a lot to our store and our team.” Yet, despite the prestige and clout that Wolfsburg Crest Club membership brings, Leavens says the award is a by-product of the store’s mantra, namely choosing to deliver the best customer service possible, each and every day the doors are open.
And it was as a result of performing good service and attracting a growing list of customers, that had a big impact on the move to a brand new facility. “We knew it had to happen soon,” says Leavens. “We were reaching capacity at our old, 12,800 square foot location on 1st Street and there simply wasn’t anywhere else to go but to a new site.”
Leavens got together with a number of other dealers in the London area and together they hatched plans for a new auto mall. Initially the idea was to relocate to the north end of town but the city wasn’t prepared to re-zone land for auto retail use. “Because we’ve always been in the East, they felt that was where we should be.” Not that Leavens is really complaining now. The new location, situated just off the Veterans Memorial Parkway, is a stone’s throw from the 401 Expressway and on a major thoroughfare that connects both the south and north of London.
“There’s a good number of businesses moving in and a lot of people work in this area, so we’ve come out pretty well,” he says.
Massive lot enables all inventory to be stored on-site
MORE CAPACITY
When planning the new facility, a major consideration was additional service capacity. “We did as much as we could to expand our service business at the old location,” says Leavens (one approach was to convert an old building and use three feet hoists to perform vehicle inspections and tire changes) but by 2010 he knew the dealership had to move.
The new facility contains 14 service bays and for the first time, customers get to experience a fully-enclosed drive through. Although there’s no question the store adheres to Volkswagen’s latest White Frame Modular Concept image standards, the resourceful Leavens has chosen to incorporate some interesting ideas.
One of them, concerns placing the service advisor counters right in the showroom. This not only provides a comfortable working environment for them but also gives customers a chance to have a good look at shiny new Volkswagens right by the waiting area while bringing theirs in for service. It’s a shrewd move in an age where many stores are looking to further integrate department operations, whether it’s helping salespeople stay in contact with customers in for service work, offering incentives to purchase new vehicles and/or cherry pick the best used vehicles from those service customers.
Showroom located service lounge promotes customer/department interaction
In fact, Leavens says that the store’s used car business has seen significant growth — good news in an era of shrinking margins on new vehicle sales. A good strategy has been using special incentives and financing rates to entice buyers through Certified Pre-Owned programs.
“There is a cost to reconditioning used vehicles to VW’s CPO requirements” says Leavens, “but if you can show the customer that the extra $1000 can provide 0.9 per cent financing and a two-year, 40,000 km warranty, that’s something they aren’t likely to get with an independent seller. If I had it my way, every customer would get an extended warranty, because when you fix it, the repairs are free of charge and you tend to be satisfied. I see a lot of value in that.”
Another big push for Leavens has been in the way the dealership is lit, with LEDs used not only for exterior lighting but also within the showroom as well — something that isn’t commonplace in many stores, at least yet. “I have LED lighting on some things around the house as well as my snowmobile,” says Leavens “and it is efficient.” He says LEDs burn about one third the rate of regular bulbs which means both energy and cost savings are significant. It also means the store doesn’t need to have service crews and trucks showing up regularly to change bulbs — also an added and inconvenient expense. It’s something he’s also planning to implement at Porsche of London.
Dave Graham
IN A NEW LIGHT
While the outside lighting presented few challenges, adopting LEDs for the showroom did, quite simply because there aren’t a lot of solutions available, at least yet. “Working with our construction firm, Bremor Engineering and also our design consultants, Weis & Associates, we were able to find a solution that fit within VW’s guidelines but one that still provided us with the lighting requirements we needed,” remarks Leavens.
On the service side, Leavens says that today, 13 out of the 14 service bays are in regular use, while two additional hoists have been ordered for “standby duty.” He says the additional lifts were a move to save time and boost technician productivity. Unlike before, when a service job gets tied up or delayed and a car has to be put back together and taken off, this way, the vehicle remains as it is until the job can be re-started. In the meantime, the technician can move his tool tray down to one of the spare hoists and start work on another vehicle.
Chantelle Leavens
As part of a growth strategy for the service business, Leavens also says the additional shop capacity will give the dealership the chance to go after customers with older Volkswagens, including classics. “I think there is still a big misconception, that taking your car to the dealer is more expensive than the aftermarket. An independent shop may charge say, $80 instead of $100 per hour, but often that shop will end up charging the customer more because the technician isn’t familiar with the vehicle and takes more time to do the work.”
Leavens says that it’s important to continue to educate customers about the benefits of going to their friendly franchised dealer for all their automotive needs. “We feel that we should provide the best service anywhere. If you invest the money and spend extra to get the best frontline staff and they look after your customers, there shouldn’t be a reason for them to go anywhere else.”
And it would appear, given the legacy of this family business in the London area and the fact that natural growth has played a big part in opening the new store, many of Leavens’ customers would no doubt agree with him.
MEETING CUSTOMERS’ NEEDSIt seems a simple (and obvious statement) but it often requires a thorough plan in order to execute successfully. At Leavens Volkswagen, considerations when designing and building the new store took into account time and convenience for customers and also the way in which dealership staff interact with them. Chantelle Leavens, Chris’s wife, who also serves as business manager and helped with the design and building process, says that in the service department, it was a requisite that both customers and service advisors meet each other at eye level and also that both be standing. “It’s more pleasurable when somebody greets you standing up,” she says. Additionally, by having both the advisor and customer stand, it shortens the process for the customer while also enabling the store to work through more R/Os. “These were some things that deviated a little from the OEM guidelines,” she says “but we really pushed what was best for our customers.” She notes that in the six months since the store opened, the feedback has been very positive. Dave Graham, says that being on a four acre site (instead of 1.3 acres at the old location) allows shoppers to sample vehicles firsthand at short notice, since all inventory is now housed on the premises. Being able to show and deliver a car quickly has really helped,” he says. “We can display all our inventory in one location and it is often surprising if we don’t have a particular model or colour combination in stock — somebody doesn’t drive here from 20-50 km away to not buy a car.” |
