Discussion
limpsfield said:
CoolHands said:
So looking back, the company came into existence and died in 4 years. How much money did the founder Alex Chesterman get away with?
Specualtion says £100m"The founder of used-car site Cazoo quietly sold shares worth £100 million months before it started work on a £5 billion plan to go public."
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cazoo-founder-a...
So I went and did some further digging, founded in 2018, floated in 2021. From 2020 to 2022 they had an income of £2.079bn and lost £1.357bn, yet somehow they founded managed to walk away with £100m, how the hell can that be legal?
That's the gamble the VC funders take. The company was a long way from insolvent when Chesterman sold his shares but certainly puts him in a bad light. I don't think he'll have an easy time raising this sort of money again but then he never needs to work again so he probably doesn't care.
POORCARDEALER said:
HTP99 said:
POORCARDEALER said:
Another we will change the way people buy cars outfit that’s burnt through hundreds of millions of £s trying .
It’s getting to be a long expensive list of failures
Yes but this is what people want and is needed.........It’s getting to be a long expensive list of failures
t at a wall to see what sticks and hey! wow! we have a business!edc said:
If they priced their cars to make money and the company overall profit, would people still want it?
Their cars weren't conspicuously cheap. Certainly their BMWs were bordering on "approved used" prices, so I've no idea how they've ended up not making a profit, unless it's all that sports sponsorship that's eating up their revenue.Must be high internal costs and interest on debt.
I sold my car to them and it was shown on their website 3 weeks later and sold within a week. They probably made about £3500 on it. So if the numbers were right for the consumer they could make it work. It was car in good condition.
If you factor in debt, internal prepping of cars, the odd lemon, all those trucks and venues... They probably scaled up too fast.
I sold my car to them and it was shown on their website 3 weeks later and sold within a week. They probably made about £3500 on it. So if the numbers were right for the consumer they could make it work. It was car in good condition.
If you factor in debt, internal prepping of cars, the odd lemon, all those trucks and venues... They probably scaled up too fast.
MitchT said:
edc said:
If they priced their cars to make money and the company overall profit, would people still want it?
Their cars weren't conspicuously cheap. Certainly their BMWs were bordering on "approved used" prices, so I've no idea how they've ended up not making a profit, unless it's all that sports sponsorship that's eating up their revenue.You'd hear remarks on here how someone had sold their car to them and exclaimed that once the service, valet, couple of alloy scuffs and the dents on the rear door had been sorted, they wouldn't have been turning a profit at all on the car.
I think they had an arrogant view of what they hoped to achieve, basically be the leaders in used car sales, put most others out of business, whether physical sites or online, so started hard, not earning much on the cars they sold, get the foothold they wanted then start to put decent margins across their cars by paying properly for them, of course this hasn't worked.
Megaflow said:
That's a lot of cars on to the market at trade prices, it will interesting to see if it does anything to second hand values.
There are 443,000 cars on Autotrader (I know some of the number will be New car placeholders), so 3000 cars (that were already listed for sale?) is a fraction of the market.MitchT said:
edc said:
If they priced their cars to make money and the company overall profit, would people still want it?
Their cars weren't conspicuously cheap. Certainly their BMWs were bordering on "approved used" prices, so I've no idea how they've ended up not making a profit, unless it's all that sports sponsorship that's eating up their revenue.Megaflow said:
demic said:
Just been on their website and the total cars for sale has gone from 3000+ earlier today to just over 800.
That's a lot of cars on to the market at trade prices, it will interesting to see if it does anything to second hand values.Gassing Station | Car Buying | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff