“Our problem is that we have to find the used inventory, and then we have to have the money to buy the units and the space to store them,” he added
Noteworthy was the “other” category, which includes new trailers and used boats, and PWC. In 2012, the dealership sold 40 new and 40 used “other” units, up from 31 new and 13 used in the previous year. The dealership had good growth in pre-owned PWC in 2012 over 2011. (Click chart for a larger view.)
For the year, service was the poorest performer, but we saw that as we tracked the dealership’s operations each month. Revenue from service last year was $299,271, down sharply from $411,136 in 2011. That’s a drop of $111,865, or 27 percent, year over year.
Customer labor revenue came in at $234,063, or 98 percent of the $240,942 forecast, but it was off from the $279,380 generated in 2011 — a drop of $45,317, or 16.2 percent. Service gross profit for 2012 was about flat, coming in at $161,484, off slightly from $162,149 in 2011.
Accessories revenue for the year also dropped, year over year, slipping from $421,586 in 2011 to $354,761 last year. “You either need parts, or you don’t,” Shenk said. “You can’t affect this too much. Accessories you want, and a good salesperson and a good sales process sells more accessories. We ran for nearly half of the year without strong salespeople in parts, and it shows.”
The sales manager was out for the last couple of days in November and first four days of December.
Revenue was off sharply across all departments at the dealership in December. Total revenues for the month were $374,815, down from $629,168 in December 2011.
It was a slow month all around. Guest traffic was down from 197 sales contacts to 144 for the month. Unit sales were down, with a total of 38 new and used units being sold for the month, compared to 55 units in December 2011. Unit sales revenue dropped from $493,321 in December 2011 to only $275,943 in December 2012.
With the decline in unit sales, F&I revenue also was off, dropping from $21,248 in December 2011 to $10,251 in December 2012.
Gross profit for December was $105,904, compared to $139,283 in the previous December. December net income also was off sharply, $11,906 this year, compared to $34,594 in December 2011. (Continued)
