Category: Opinion

A story of brand risk

April 25, 2023

In a world of social media, where anyone can publish to the world and any given story can take off and reach an audience of thousands, companies need to be particularly careful about how their actions might be seen. It …

A little bit of one-on-one

February 24, 2023

For many of us in the automotive industry, there is plenty of time spent poring over charts and tables of data, trying to glean the insights the data is willing to yield. The Canadian auto dealer team has the benefit …

Year end grab bag

December 30, 2022

As I write my last publisher’s note of the year, I’d like to clear out some odds and ends I thought worth highlighting. Back together again I’d like to thank the provincial dealer associations across the country for their commitment …

Economy, whither art thou?

October 31, 2022

Over the last six months or so, we’ve seen the economic outlook go from strong to not strong. The expectation now is that we’re facing a recession through 2023. I thought it might be worth a slightly deeper look at …

Emerging and connecting

October 31, 2022

As we, as a society, emerge from the pandemic, and we, as an industry, see glimmers of the end of historic supply shortages, I’m doing a bit of a slow emergence myself, from behind the scenes to being a more …

Do you trust your gut?

September 30, 2022

When it comes to making key decisions, it’s always an interesting question: does someone with years (or decades) of industry experience rely on their “gut” instinct or numbers in a spreadsheet to make a decision?  Dealers have to make key …

How’s your tech stack?

July 29, 2022

Every so often, you hear a term or phrase used often enough that it penetrates your consciousness.  Like, “tech stack.”  At Universus, we were doing an analysis of our own tech stack, to see if our tools were suitable for …