VOLVO Cars has invested in online portal carwow, taking a minority stake through its venture capital arm Volvo Cars Tech Fund.
Volvo says it wants insights in areas such as online sales, customer acquisition and content creation, in order to help its shift towards online and direct customer relationships.
By 2025 Volvo says it wants to sell 50% of its volume online.
Based in London, carwow is the leading online marketplace for new cars across the UK, Germany and Spain, having started as an aggregator of reviews before shifting to an online car marketplace.
It’s also the biggest automotive channel on YouTube with over six million subscribers.
Third-party marketplaces play a key role in any consumer industry, which includes the competitive landscape of Volvo Cars. We were one of the first car manufacturers committed to shift to online sales and through this strategic partnership, we will learn and gain insights into online buying behaviour. Our collaboration with carwow will help us and our retail partners grow volumes and reach our target of selling around half of our volume online by 2025.
Lex Kerssemakers, chief commercial officer at Volvo Cars
James Hind, CEO at carwow, added:
We already had a strong and very productive working relationship with Volvo in the UK and overseas, and it’s great to see another OEM join Mercedes-Benz in securing a minority investment in carwow to build on a successful collaboration. This new funding will enable us to accelerate our own investments in new e-commerce solutions and in our direct sales offering.
Ralph Morton is the leading journalist in the leasing broker sector and editor of Broker News, the website which provides information and news for BVRLA-registered leasing brokers. He also writes extensively on the fleet and leasing market in both the UK and Europe.
