When Leader Auto Resources President and CEO Robert Issenman looked at the 45-year history of the company, which was built for dealers by dealers to help reduce operating costs, he decided it should be captured and celebrated in a book.
Issenman commissioned author Fred Langan to write the book, Wheels of Fortune, The Rise of North America’s Largest Dealer Buying Group, which is available on Amazon. “The most important thing is we are the largest North American procurement group owned by dealers,” said Issenman. “It is an empire that grew from nothing.”
Langan, who used to write automotive articles for the National Post, has written 20 books, two of them novels and the others non-fiction histories of companies and individuals. One of them is The Commander, The Life And Times of Harry Steele, the late father of Rob Steele, CEO of Steele Auto Group.
Langan told Canadian auto dealer he originally thought the subject material in the book would be boring, but found it really interesting — notably learning how a car dealership works and the most profitable parts of it. LAR began in 1980 with two Quebec-based GM dealers, Fred Pechet and Jean-Marc Bourassa, and expanded to seven dealers. It started out in the office of one of the founders.
Today, LAR represents 3,200 of the 4,500 dealers across Canada. Some of the dealership groups that are part of LAR include Dilawri, Spinelli and Olivier. Moreover, LAR has partnerships with more than 10 manufacturers. It does more than $250 million a year in business and has a 100,000-square foot (9,290-square metre) warehouse.
They also supply equipment for electric vehicles, as well as the distribution and training on the new technologies needed to repair vehicles. The member dealers benefit from the low prices the company is able to negotiate with suppliers.
The shareholders receive a portion of the company’s profits in direct proportion to their individual purchases. There are many dealers that have received more than $1 million in discounts and dividends. The company’s ethos is service to the customer.
Issenman, a lawyer hired by LAR in 1984 after he was involved in a merger with the company and a competitor, said he was guided by four key objectives for commissioning the book: to pay tribute to the founders, early dealer members and dedicated team members who transformed the company from its modest beginnings; the passing of the torch to a new generation of dealers; the “simplicity and effectiveness” of the business model; and to elevate the role of dealers in society and the economy.
He dedicated the book to car dealers across the globe. “Too often car dealers are narrowly seen through the lens of transactions,” said Issenman. “In truth, they are engines of economic growth, stewards of community values and examples of entrepreneurial resilience. Their dedication fuels the world’s journey. This book helps tell the broader story — one that deserves recognition far beyond the automotive world.”
Following the merger, LAR’s Chairman Hank Mews, and a prominent GM dealer in Ottawa, another board member approached Issenman with the idea about running the company. They thought he was the right person for the job, even though he was not a car guy, and Issenman told them they were “likely mistaken.”
Three months later, the two board members approached Issenman again and this time he said he would only take the job under certain terms. He didn’t want to give up his position as a managing partner with a large firm, and he wasn’t interested in getting involved if the board just wanted him to run a “sleepy” company. He was told his conditions were not problematic, which came as a shock to him. He thought he had sufficiently dissuaded them.
Though Issenman wasn’t a car guy, as he describes in the book, he came to a realization that running a successful law firm is not much different from running a distribution business, because they are both about customer service and the fundamentals are the same.
“I worked very, very hard at the beginning of course to learn the business. Not as a lawyer, but as a businessman,” said Issenman. “We’ve got dealers that have all kinds of challenges and our task is to find them the right solution for what it is. I have collision experts, equipment experts and purchasing experts. They know the automotive business. I don’t pretend to be an expert in any of these areas.”
He said the two greatest accomplishments he’s done with the company are broadening it beyond Quebec and Atlantic Canada, and marrying dealers and OEMs together through an arrangement done four years ago with Bosch, the largest automotive supplier in the world. He said dealers and OEMS tended to have a conflictual relationship before that.
“It was a pull and push, but we’re bringing them together and meeting the objectives with a very broad-base program all under the Robert Bosch umbrella,” said Issenman. “We’re making these programs part and parcel of the dealerships’ thinking, making it the alter-ego of the dealerships. We’re present in the field much more than what the OEM programs were. Everybody is a winner.”
