Invest in CarLocity

First, some facts:

• 1 in 5 Americans would rather give up sex for a month than haggle the price of a car (Edmunds survey)
• 65% of Americans think car dealers are unethical (KPMG)
• Discrimination is more than common: 62.5% of better-qualifed non-white car buyers receive higher-cost purchase options than their white counterparts (National Fair Housing Authority 2018)

CarLocity is Dealership - based because most people won't buy an unseen car from a website

Now that we have your attention...we want to toot our horn a bit:

Why You Should Be Excited

We've made some pretty amazing accomplishments without brand recognition or big budgets, but to cite some specific data points:

• **100%** of the Buyers who attended their test drives purchased the vehicle we sent them to buy. (We know this will not stand, but even if it drops by 2/3, we'll be over 50% higher close rate than Dealers' current best source of deals, and 500% more than their average leads!)
• **100%** Dealer take rate when we generate an active Buyer. We've never met a Dealer who doesn't want to sell a car!
• ~90 Minute average transaction time vs. industry average >3 hours
• Network effects - 20% of our users are referred by friends or family
• Network effects - 30% of our Deal Requests™ have come from 23 States outside of AZ - and we haven't spent a penny outside of the Phoenix, AZ area
• 5X typical online ad response - we view this as another indicator of Buyer-side validation

Now... the long version:

Executive Summary:

CarLocity is an anonymous car shopping marketplace that provides car shoppers with a secure way to shop their local dealerships for cars without being subjected to games, discrimination in the shopping/pricing process, and without being harassed or their phone getting "blown up."

Dealers receive exclusive, anonymous, orders for vehicles (we call them "deal requests") and provide written deals/offers back with line-item pricing - selling price, tax, licensing, doc prep, dealer fees etc... in a transparent offer sheet (we call them "deal sheets").

Buyers then either schedule a test drive, or click "reject" and CarLocity sends them a quick survey to help us and the dealer perform better over time.

How did we get to this solution?  Glad you asked!

The car that started it all....

CarLocity is Born....

The idea of CarLocity was born in January 2020, when our Founder - Peter D. - needed to upgrade his commute vehicle.  After doing what most of us do - going to a car shopping website, looking at different cars, picking one, then putting his information in - he suffered two HORRIBLE dealership experiences.  Price changed.  Bait-and-switched.  Shown vehicles completely out of the plan. Sat in one dealership for over.....5......hours....

Then he walked out frustrated.  The next day, he came up with the process that would be the start of CarLocity...he then engineered the best car buying experience of his life and decided it needed to be shared with the world! 

Dealer & Buyer Interviews

Over the next 5 months, we interviewed dozens of car dealership employees - primarily leadership and sales - and over 100 consumers to determine what was broken and how to solve it in a way that was attractive to both parties in the marketplace.

What we learned is this:

Buyers (most of them) would prefer to purchase their vehicle from a local dealership because they want to see, smell, and drive the vehicle before purchasing.... but they want to keep their information private until as late in the process as possible.  They want fair, honest, and straightforward pricing.  And they want to be out of the dealership in about an hour.

Dealers just want people to come in and buy a car, but fewer and fewer people are doing that.  In fact, less than 13% of car buyers simply drive to the lot.  These dealers are purchasing leads that close at alarmingly low rates (6-8% is considered the norm). The average franchised dealer (one that sells new cars) spends over $50k per month on lead services alone!

The Solution

Peter then went into solution building mode and - with the help of a few friends - he came out with the CarLocity anonymous car shopping solution!  We've gone through several iterations to date, launching our marketplace version in May 2022.

Market Testing

With the MVP launched, we began market testing with geo-targeted marketing in the Northwest Phoenix, AZ area and began getting Buyers to the site and driving Deal Requests for dealers.  We also commissioned a 3rd party survey of car shoppers to determine the Buyer-side efficacy of our solution.

What we learned about CarLocity Buyers in Market Test phase:

• 34% Plan to purchase in the next 7 days or less
• 72% seek vehicles priced at $15,000 or more (16% over $40k!)
• Buyers rate the ease of using CarLocity 4.9 Stars
• Women and people of color feel particularly abused in the car buying process.  CarLocity's anonymity helps to minimize it!

Market Survey

We commissioned an independent buyer survey - designed and conducted by an independent PhD - to determine demand on the car buyer side.  When presented with anonymized descriptions of CarLocity's process, Car Shopping Websites, and Online-only Dealerships, Buyers preferred CarLocity....

- By a 72% margin over online-only dealers and

- By a 47% margin over  car shopping websites

Cool.  We're in!  Let's go find a customer....

Then we signed up the largest volume dealer in our state as our first customer.

BOO YAH!  Off to the races!  Time to go big or go home.

2 weeks later, we added 4 more. We are at 14 as of this writing and we project to be at 50 or more (paying) by the end of 2023!

(Disclaimer: These projections cannot be guaranteed.)

The Investment

We're back on Wefunder raising money to continue to build out our technology, grow our sales, client success and marketing,  reach product-market fit, and prove duplicability. 

We have 14 active dealers, a 100% Dealer take rate on Deal Requests™ and a 100% Buyer transaction rate when they attend a test drive!

Jump on board and take the ride with us! This is a huge market, ready for disruption!