Quantity of stock available for dealers to buy on carwow jumps 27% in first half of 2023

26 July 2023, London: carwow, the UK’s online car buying and selling marketplace, has reported a significant rise in the quantity of used vehicles available for retailers to acquire via its stock sourcing platform. During the first half of 2023 there were, on average, more than 11,000 different cars available via carwow’s online trade auctions each month, a rise of 27% compared to the previous six months.

This significant growth is a key contributor to the biggest shift in carwow’s revenue mix in its 14-year history, with stock sourcing transactions in H1 2023 contributing to 46% of the company’s UK revenue figures, up from 35% in the second half of 2022.

carwow typically has over 3,000 units of fresh used stock going into its auctions every week. With a larger pool of used vehicles available, more dealers are joining carwow’s online used car auctions and making bids. In the first half of 2023, carwow saw the total number of dealers making bids rise by 42%, with the total number of offers increasing by 99%. Meanwhile, dealer purchases from carwow’s online auctions grew by 60% compared to the second half of 2022.

In November 2022, carwow moved to an auction model for its stock sourcing platform and introduced more stringent control over listings to maximise quality. Since then it has continued to market its ‘Sell My Car’ proposition to consumers, achieving 30% more customer sign-ups in the first half of 2023 than in the second half of 2022.

carwow’s new CEO, John Veichmanis, was responsible for the introduction of the proposition during his three-year tenure as the company’s COO. Commenting on the latest figures, Veichmanis said: “This phenomenal rate of growth has been possible because we continue to listen to what our dealer partners want, and in the last six months we have made significant improvements to how vehicles are listed, with a focus on damage reporting and collecting service history documents. We also made changes to how we calculate recommended reserve prices to ensure they better reflect current market conditions. We’ll continue in that fashion to build an even greater source of stock for our dealer partners.”

This half-year business update on carwow’s stock-sourcing platform coincides with the launch of its Q2 Insider Report, which highlights recent research across key industry themes including the expansion of ULEZ and the rise of Chinese OEMs. The report also provides an overview of the most configured makes and models on the carwow platform in the quarter.

You can find the full report here: https://www.carwow.co.uk/news/7099/carwow-insider-q2-23-download