Steve Marshall
Sixty years ago, Steve Marshall started out as a dealer principal with a small Mercury store in B.C., and has since expanded his business into a group of stores, including two in Hawaii, as he marks a milestone in automotive retail.
Marshall said he is especially proud that he’s still active in the business but no longer involved in the “heavy lifting.”
When asked about his start, Marshall laughed.
“That’s way back when,” said Marshall. “But I’m still the original owner.”
Marshall had an automotive retail background. His father had been a Mercury dealer in Manitoba and then sold his store and moved out to Courtenay, B.C., to operate a motel. Marshall, who had worked for his father in entry-level jobs as a kid, later worked in sales for the new owner to whom his father sold his business.
Then he and his wife moved out to Campbell River, about 50 kilometres from Courtenay, and he began as a used car dealer at a Shell station. He then pursued the idea of buying a Mercury store and, after a while, was approved by Ford to purchase an existing dealership. He was only 21, the youngest-ever Ford-appointed dealer at the time — a distinction he still holds 60 years later.
Campbell River has a population of about 50,000 now, but when Marshall started it was less than 6,000. “The town has grown a lot, but any town would grow in 60 years,” said Marshall.
There were only six employees in the dealership when he began. He now employs 539 in his group of stores. Besides Ford, Marshall retails Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Fiat, Nissan, Honda and Mazda. He also has a finance company and a truck and RV business.
He has a team that is recording videos for the anniversary, but Marshall has also become part of it by interviewing friends and customers to make it “feel like a hometown thing.”
“We’re not trying to make a big deal of it,” said Marshall. “The staff makes a bigger deal of it than I do. It doesn’t feel like 60 years. I’d say the last 30 years have gone by really quickly.”
Ten years after becoming a dealer principal, he began expanding in Campbell River. He said within the last 15 years, he’s really expanded the business. He also built a new dealership seven years ago in Campbell River to replace the first one.
While several Canadian-based dealership groups have expanded into Texas and California, he is the only one in Hawaii. He ventured into the U.S. state two and a half years ago when he became aware of a Ford store. He now has two there. He said unlike other dealership groups that buy underperforming stores and bring in their own management, his company has trainers who work with the existing management.
“We try to retrain the people who are there and see if we can get them to work in a manner that works for us,” said Marshall. “That’s really what we do. We have our own trainers that we hire and they go from dealership to dealership. Most of the trainers have been with us for a while.”
He said his dealership group has an excellent reputation for treating its management well, and that has helped it acquire trainers from other groups. In turn, the trainers help explain to the existing management of an acquired store the Steve Marshall Group way.
“We do it more like a country style. We really try to look after the customer,” said Marshall. “We don’t hard sell or anything. We have more of a softer style and try to be friendly with the people rather than move on to the next one.”
Marshall said if the trainers do really well in an acquired store, they are usually offered a small ownership stake after a couple of years.
“I think it’s a formula that works for us,” said Marshall.
