I have in 3 years created from 1 car a high volume and successful automotive company that specializes in buying and selling pre-owned vehicles.

About a year ago I had a not so unique idea to take our very successful brick and mortar auto dealership and create a cool website, offer all of these functions such as being able to purchase online, sell your car, have it delivered etc. Basically design this state of the art website based off what are are already crushing it at and then market the hell out of our new process and expand.

My thinking is is that because we are executing well on a fundamental level and have street cred and know the numbers as well as anyone it will give us an advantage over some of the others that are trying to do similar things in the auto industry that are coming from more of a tech backround.

My extent of computers is extremely basic. I am 42 and am still a dino with computers. Anything other than writing an email or sth is work for me. Even writing this post will take me a while as I can barely type.

So long story short I went in search of someone who could develop what was in my head and put it online.I then would name the process. I interviewed some web developers, coders, learned a little bit about the tech and auto tech industry etc. Still have not finalized that yet but I have gained more knowledge and it has led me to here.

We are now creating a new company called CARPUL. This will kinda initially be like the management company for our brick and mortar stores. We have 1 with a second opening next month. We will then re-brand as CARPUL with the stores basically taking the name. After we build out the concept more and develop the software etc we plan to open a lot of these.

CARPUL will do and be a number of things. Right now today it is a place( Our dealerships) where you can go and buy an affordable car and have it registered and insured with new plates(we have in-house registry service) in about an hour unless the insurance companies are slow. (I actually have an industry changing idea to eliminate the need for this delay in the transaction but we will work on that later.)

It is also a place you can go and sell your car.

carpul will be a place you can securely purchase a car online and have it delivered to your house. We have the ability to do this now minus the cool interactive platform. I have the plan on how to execute this on a much larger scale. Click and buy is my end game.

Carpul will be a place that you can do a short term lease or subscription on an older pre-owned car. We are currently going thru the licensing process and building out the concept to be able to provide this form of ownership. This is a somewhat forward thinking idea in terms of the auto industry, certainly here in MASS. It's more popular out west and we will be the only people doing it with cars in this price range likely anywhere.

When you do a transaction with carpul you will be connected to us. So there will be a community angle. If you buy, sell, service, rent whatever you will be connected and earn carpul tokens or whatever the hell we will call them that you can use for future transactions.

carpul will be a place that you can go on your phone and sell your car. There are other players working on this in the industry. We believe our version will be remarkable because of our strong understanding of car values and car transactions. Click and sell for consumers is the end game.

carpul will be working on many other forward thinking and ideas within the auto industry in terms of ownership, financing, the way auto and insurance transactions intersect and transportation in general. I have always said that our greatest accomplishment in the auto industry will be the one that we have not yet thought of.

I envision a hybrid auto dealership where you can A)
Go there and buy or sell a car and get the best service at the best price or B) Buy or sell a car from your living room with the best service and price. A) we do now. My plan thinks B will follow.


Quick snapshot of my experience in the auto industry.

When I was around 19 an old school local wholesaler taught me how to buy honda and toyotas etc out of the local newspapers. People did not understand the actual values of these cars and we would exploit their mistakes. This is like 22 years ago, pre-internet, pre-cell phone. Pay phones and pens and paper and a good memory. Good with directions and be there fast and prepared to buy. The game was over after we acquired the asset, selling it was easy.I picked it up very fast. It was and still is all about the numbers.

I then in my early twenties(with my. now business partner) opened a dealership and ran a successful store with our own in house financing program. The state allowed you to do this at the time, now you have to become a lending entity to be a lienholder, which we are working on.

Anyways, in my mid twenties I left the car industry until I came back in 2015 and sitting on this same business partners couch I discovered craigslist. With out going into too much detail we've made 100's of thousands of dollars off CL. CL for me was like the newspapers x10000. An all day and night car trade that I understood and still understand as good any living human. Surprising enough CL now makes up only about 10% of where we acquire vehicles from. I don't have the time to troll it as much as I should as well as there are not enough winners on there to support our inventory.

From there I used that experience to come up with the recipe for the way we approach buying and selling cars today.

I have personally sold in the last few years somewhere around 2000 cars. When I started this I was only a pro buyer. Now, because of the sheer volume of deals I have been involved in and confidence in our process, and overall product knowledge I have a much better ability to close. I wasn't a born closer.


I am currently starting to work on an alternative way for the way lending is approached for subprime paper. I believe in it's current state there is no benefit to the consumer in entering one of these contracts. Overpriced cars that depreciate fast and very high interest rates. That is the subprime model.Coincidentally enough subprime only makes up about 10% of our sales.

in 2017 we sold over 700 retail units. This is with a team of 2(myself and the other owner and a couple workers.


Carpul right now is basically just me and possibly one other person that understands exactly what I am trying to do and is qualified. He is not 100% yet. My now business partner is now in, but he will be focusing on buying and admin.

Also carpul the name is not finalized yet . The color design I came up with was trying to envision a global auto brand and looking at my sons playpen.


Why did I create this thread?

I've been around this place for 12 years. I can't remember a place where I've been able to listen to really smart people chat. What more can I say, you guys are awesome.

what I am not looking for. Money.

What I am hoping for I think is maybe to learn something that will help me or meet someone or someones that have experience in the auto tech industry at a high level or are in the tech world and will be interested in helping me or possibly even joining me to take my share of a billion dollar industry.

You can ask me anything as well!

Essence of your post in two sentences?

I gave it a quick skim and it sounds like carmax with an umlaut. While that has certainly been a successful endeavor, is there no carmax (or carmäx) in your state?

What makes you better than the competition?

Sounds like a thread for the Business Finance and Investing forum.

Also, if this takes off, you need to put your HQ in an old tunnel. Imagine the marketing advantages of the Carpul Tunnel!

Evolving auto dealership inadverently enters the auto tech space while trying to improve it's website. Believes because of their success thus far they deserve a chance to play.

There are 2. I actually use some inspiration from carmax. Although my plan is to use much less staff and infrastructure than they do. But with 190 locations you have to give them credit.

We buy a lot of cars from them. I've been known to call them occasionally as a customer to learn about their process.

Well I think we do our own thing really good which separates us from others and that is helped a lot. But I think our ability to do our job well when acquiring product has given us the flexibility to exploit smaller margins than our competitors.

Ha! Actually I have a skit played out in my head for a commercial with that play on words.

How do your talents translate into the expansion? How many people are you managing now? How many employees do you plan on having?

pretty thin grail imo!

Your core competency is selling cars not developing web pages. You should be researching small software shops or consulting firms who have built online stores before, not talking to old poker players.

and as you expand, thin margins become less profitable inversely to scale. adding rent/expenses/payroll/insurance costs will grow while your margins remain the same. cant hurt to try to grow, but crushing a set market might still work out better in the end

I think my ability to keep the inventory moving which we can then use the cashflow to continue to grow is important. We have self funded to where we are now but I suspect to grow with how I envision will require assistance.

haha true, but I am an old poker player as well so, or was. With the reach of 2plus2 just figured id throw it out there.

Yes our set market niche that we crush now will always be the main focus. I am counting on that to be what makes this all work.

The name isn’t bad but it doesn’t convey what you do. It sounds like a service to find people to carpool with. You might want to work on that. Also, I don’t like the colorful logo. It comes off as childish or playful. I don’t want that for a car. If sticking with the questionable name, consider using the font you have but make it a metallic/silver color. Maybe have it fade from top to bottom or bottom to top. Won’t be terribly original but at least it will look more reputable.

Thanks for the feedback. We like the name because other that just selling cars , carpul will be working on mobility in general. Noted on the colors, will play around with it before we finalize.

Stop with the annoying business-speak.

Free market research is not to be sneezed at.

I just read my last few posts and agree.


Is that what this is?