My dealership was just sold!

[keydiesel]

Rumors have been flying around for months that Bud Kouts Chevrolet in Lansing was being sold to the Marty Feldman Automotive group, today they confirmed that the rumors were true, although the deal isn't going to be finalized until mid May. They are already planning on some serious renovations to the facility, with 5 Chevy stores in the Lansing market I guess they think they can turn this store around. We have a good location between Michigan State University and the Capital but we are definitely in the poorer part of town with the oldest facility. 3 of the other local Chevy stores almost bought us to close it until Feldman came along and bought it up so I guess they know what they are up against and think they can turn it around, we will see. Our previous owners are staying on as managers, seems kinda weird to me.

[XDCX]

Originally Posted by keydiesel

Rumors have been flying around for months that Bud Kouts Chevrolet in Lansing was being sold to the Marty Feldman Automotive group, today they confirmed that the rumors were true, although the deal isn't going to be finalized until mid May. They are already planning on some serious renovations to the facility, with 5 Chevy stores in the Lansing market I guess they think they can turn this store around. We have a good location between Michigan State University and the Capital but we are definitely in the poorer part of town with the oldest facility. 3 of the other local Chevy stores almost bought us to close it until Feldman came along and bought it up so I guess they know what they are up against and think they can turn it around, we will see.

We've had a few threads on the forum about the stress that a Dealer Principal goes through during a buy/sell but I don't think we've ever had one from an employee's perspective.

I'm sure the majority of the employees at your store are concerned about what the buy/sell will mean to them and how it will impact their jobs. To the extent your store is being purchased by an auto group they may have a better process for integrating stores into their system and be able to provide more assurances for the existing employees.

Some dealers will take several actions to ensure that there's a clean break from the old store to the new store - this is mostly for legal/liability reasons. It's not uncommon for the new owners to have the existing employees reapply for their jobs or even have the store close for a day to signify the transition from the old owners to the new owners.

From your perspective I hope the buy/sell goes smoothly and the new owners take care of their employees.

Originally Posted by keydiesel

Our previous owners are staying on as managers, seems kinda weird to me.

It will be interesting to see if this works out.

I'm familiar with one buy/sell where discussions about the existing owners being retained as managers was an active topic during negotiations for the buy/sell but eventually fell apart once the deal was completed.

It was almost as though the purchasing dealer was telling the existing dealers what they wanted to hear early in the negotiations and then slowly backed away from those commitments once the buy/sell was almost complete.

Hopefully everything will work out for your owners.

[mryan55]

I'm not super familiar with the Feldman organization, but believe it or not their original Chevrolet location is where I first started as a green pea sales guy in the car business.

I would say that they've only grown so much since I knew them for a reason... I'm sure they are doing something right. This will make it -- what -- five Chevy stores just for their group alone? Plus I think they have a few import franchises somewhere in Oakland County these days, too.

Hopefully it's all for the better. All of their Chevy stores save for the original Novi store have such beautiful facilities that hopefully they'll get Bud Kouts up to snuff facility-wise.

That facility was old looking last time I was in Lansing, about 10 years ago at this point.

Hoping that everything works out!

[greenlightcody]

I have had the pleasure to work with the Feldman Organization and they are an outstanding group of people. Lansing (Grand Ledge) is my home town and I was excited to hear that they had purchased Bud Kouts!