Jamie Suid, Marketing Director, Florida Fine Cars

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00This is in the dirt with a soda. So we're hidden. It's just one of those. We start podcast with, with Jamie Suid Jamie is I hope I got the last name right Suid Jamie Suid. There we go. And he's the marketing director with Florida Fine cars, which is interesting because we actually don't talk to a lot of people that are within the independent dealership ecosystem. And it's cool because you actually are integrated a lot with what's happening on the franchise side of the business like you're in and amongst the marketers and the technologies and out here at modern retail conference. How like, what was your decision? Like? How did you get into making sure that you are leaning into that side of the business, even though you're in that independent world orJamie Suid: 0:49

so? Well, one is not to say anything for about it. But you know, frankly, they the franchise related conferences and things are, they've got everybody, right. And so who's who the all the vendors are there, whereas you go to some of the independent conferences, it's not necessarily the case still fine. And you can make a lot of headway there. But especially in the technology side of things, events like this events like Digital Dealer, though I haven't been to one of those and a little bit now. But Pasch always does a good job here. And so yeah, that's mainly why I come to these. Then also here, I just presented with Orbee as well. Gotcha. So as a client of theirs,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:28

yeah. So and talk a little bit about because you know, the scale, especially when you think like used car dealership and independent dealership a lot of times, you know, people don't recognize that there are dealerships that are kind of scaling up and utilizing technology in these new and unique ways. Talk a little bit about the evolution and the growth in especially technology that for to find cars particularly has seen over the last couple of years.

Jamie Suid: 1:51

Yeah, so for us, so I've been with the company for 11 years. And one of the first things I had to learn when I got to Florida Fine Cars was that they actually have their own DMS system. So we actually have a sister company called Auto matrix that it's our DMS, it's their CRM, it writes the service tickets, it handles payroll does everything does all the accounting, all the reporting. And so there was a steep learning curve. My previous experience at a dealership, before fortifying cars was a Volkswagen dealer that used ADP, not, of course, CDK. So and it was night and day. And the reason why we went that direction with hiring developers hiring, web design, and all this stuff is we needed to be more flexible with everything, whether it's the reporting the data, so we wanted our hands on everything. And no matter which vendor we looked at, we always felt like either one. It's way too expensive, right? We have four locations. So we do Okay, right. And we're gonna open up a fifth location next year. But we always wanted to hands on the data at all times, it was our data, these are our customers, we want to be able to reference that data in any way for any kind of reporting, helping BDC better know who they're talking about, help the inventory managers know what cars to look for, what to price for, what's hot, what's going to sell quickly, all that stuff. And so that was the big step there. But in terms of marketing, advertising, all this stuff, too, I also look at just retail in general, you know, the different trends we see outside of automotive, because you learn very quickly, everyone kind of lives in the same silo. And since I don't have to play by OEM rules, I have a lot more flexibility. And, you know, I mentioned earlier before, and one of the reasons why I've been with them for seven years or so is, is there's a lot of will to do stuff differently. You know, so if I see something as an example, just looking at BestBuy one day, this is maybe five years ago, and I noticed, you know, it's like, I like this history thing that shows me all this stuff. I like that I've looked at why why are we not doing that? Hey, tool, you know, hey, you know, or be because it's something you could help us with? Yeah, absolutely. So build us that widget, right. And so definitely leaning in as much as possible to the personalization, but especially in terms of the analytics side as well.

Paul Daly: 4:09

So, give give everyone a little bit of a summary. So you said you have four locations? Yes. What kind of volume? Like because, yeah, so a lot of context needed, I

Jamie Suid: 4:16

think, okay, yeah, sure. So depending on the month, a small store of ours will do, let's say 80 units on a, on a good month, you know, well over 200 and we we definitely had our days, where we are in the, you know, 700 Mark, for multiple locations. So, yeah, you know, at a minimum, I would say 75 80 90 units, roughly.

Paul Daly: 4:37

And how far from your locations? Do you typically sell cars? Like what's what's your blast radius?

Jamie Suid: 4:42

Yeah, I would say, well, especially in Florida, where everything's so condensed, really, you don't get much outside of I would say 12 to 15 miles. It's pretty compact, because I mean, just take where we are, and you go out where are you? What are the locations? Oh, so we're in Miami Margate, which is basically so we're in The three major gaps, right? We're in Palm Beach, Broward makes a lot more sense, right? And so point the point where you're about 65 or 70 miles apart, and then we have a store right in the middle. And like I said, you go 15 miles away from our Miami store, you basically got all of Miami, you know, essentially, there's enough there's a there's millions of people. So yeah,

Paul Daly: 5:19

heading into 2023. Where is a big part of your focus and trajectory? What do you think the key is going to be to unlock 2023? For you?

Jamie Suid: 5:26

Sure. So the biggest action that we're working on now, basically is to make is to take all these reports that we have, right, we're super heavy, and looking at the data. And I'm sort of the data nerd at the company, me along with one of the owners, and is making everything actionable. You know, it's one thing to have meetings, it's one thing to share information, but it's just a lot, we can save a lot of time, in just telling them just telling our employees telling our staff, this is what you need to do today. You know, whether it's a buyer looking at the exact cars that we need to replace, or something maybe that's selling in the market that we haven't sold, just tell them that, you know, be very direct, if it's a BDC manager, right, here's all your leads that came in the last hour that don't have anybody attached to it. Just take the actions, you know, get rid of get away from the reporting and reporting is great, especially from a macro level. But when it comes to everybody else, it's just getting them as actionable, the most actual data possible. That's our big move right now,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:25

moving anything insights, action, I think is is a key, especially when like the dish so much you can bet there's so much data. So dial in on where people can be effective. And that's where you can leverage technology to your benefit. So hey, Jamie, thanks so much for hanging out with us and glad to see you're here at MRC and can't wait to see kind of how you all unlock that data. And thank you for listening to In The Dirt with ASOTU. We love the automotive industry and the people who make it run day in and day out. We would love to connect with you more through our daily dose of fun, a free email that you can sign up for at asotu.com That's a s o t u.com. We put our heart and soul into it every day. Thanks again for listening. Join us next time for more Conversations In The Dirt with ASOTU

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