A com­bi­na­tion of a fall in the sale of new cars, in­creased de­mand for used parts and a change in its busi­ness strat­e­gy has re­sult­ed in Massy Mo­tors now go­ing in­to the re­tail sale of ve­hi­cle parts.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Mag­a­zine, Massy Mo­tors Se­nior Vice-Pres­i­dent Jean-Pierre du Coudray said the open­ing of its lat­est ven­ture, Massy Mo­tors re­tail, is just one of many to come in the en­ti­ty’s strat­e­gy mov­ing for­ward.

du Coudray ex­plained that Massy “Every­thing Au­to­mo­tive” at Mar­aval will lay the foun­da­tion for oth­er sites.

“We will be us­ing this open­ing as a pi­lot project to see how things go to learn the busi­ness, to learn the dy­nam­ics of that par­tic­u­lar in­dus­try be­cause it’s a new in­dus­try to us but so far it’s off to a fly­ing start be­cause the feed­back from the launch has been very pos­i­tive.

“So we an­tic­i­pate things to go well for us in that par­tic­u­lar lo­ca­tion,” du Coudray said, adding that the com­pa­ny had in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in tech­nol­o­gy and state-of-the-art equip­ment sourced from Eu­rope for its Mar­aval site.

But, he said, a key fac­tor which kept the out­let from open­ing soon­er was en­sur­ing that there was a strong dig­i­tal plat­form in place for cus­tomers.

“Now that we have this, cus­tomers can book ap­point­ments on­line and re­ceive reg­u­lar sta­tus re­ports about their ve­hi­cles among oth­er ben­e­fits and so there is the very high pos­si­bil­i­ty for a very con­tact­less op­er­a­tion from a cus­tomer stand point.

“We want to be heav­i­ly fo­cused on cus­tomer ser­vice be­cause we know that time is every­body’s biggest com­mod­i­ty,” du Coudray added.

Fur­ther, as the dy­nam­ics of any busi­ness con­stant­ly changes due to COVID, he em­pha­sised that digi­ti­sa­tion is a key com­po­nent.

Ac­cord­ing to du Coudray Massy Mo­tors in­tends to add oth­er re­tail out­lets in key strate­gic lo­ca­tions such as San Fer­nan­do, Point Fortin, Ch­agua­nas, Ari­ma and To­ba­go lat­er on.

He said Massy Mo­tors is cur­rent­ly vis­it­ing the pos­si­ble lo­ca­tions to car­ry out the nec­es­sary in­ter­nal gov­er­nance to en­sure the projects are jus­ti­fied and ap­proved.

How­ev­er, du Coudray said be­fore the end of the fi­nan­cial year- around Sep­tem­ber 2022-Massy Mo­tors should have an­oth­er three re­tail foot­prints up and run­ning.

And the im­pe­tus to move in­to the re­tail sec­tor, du Coudray not­ed was a nat­ur­al tran­si­tion for Massy Mo­tors.

Not­ing that the com­pa­ny has a very strong op­er­a­tion on the whole­sale busi­ness he said this move was on­ly a mat­ter of time.

In the past two years the over­all new car sales sec­tor has been down be­tween 15 and 20 per cent, du Coudray cit­ed, adding that Massy Mo­tors is prob­a­bly aligned to the re­al­i­ty of the mar­ket.

He said the re­duc­tion was due to sev­er­al rea­sons.

The im­pact of the pan­dem­ic on the glob­al sup­ply chains is a main fac­tor du Coudray ex­plained, “We are not get­ting the num­ber of ve­hi­cles we would like. All the brands we rep­re­sent-Vol­vo, Sub­aru, Volk­swa­gen, Hyundai, Nis­san and MG-they all seem to be hav­ing some sort of sup­ply is­sues as a re­sult of COVID.”

Ac­cord­ing to Fo­cus2Move in Sep­tem­ber 2021 T&T’s mar­ket keeps grow­ing in dou­ble-dig­its af­ter a 48.9 per cent in­crease in sales the pre­vi­ous month, and re­ports 1,071 units sold (+44.3 per cent), lead­ing year-to-date sales at 9,225 units, a 24.1 per cent in­crease in sales com­pared to 2020.

Com­pared to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els the mar­ket is not re­cov­ered ef­fec­tive­ly yet, in fact, with re­spect to Sep­tem­ber 2019 sales are down 11.7 per cent.

Fo­cus2Move is a mar­ket in­tel­li­gence and con­sult­ing firm spe­cial­ized in the four-wheel­er in­dus­try, pro­vid­ing da­ta, fore­cast, in­sights, con­sult­ing and sup­port to all en­ti­ties in­volved with this unique in­dus­try.

It al­so not­ed that due to COVID-19 full-year sales for 2020 have been 10,122, re­port­ing a 31 per cent de­crease com­pared to 2019.

Fur­ther, du Coudray at­trib­uted the drop in sales to a glob­al short­age of the semi­con­duc­tor chip which is a very key piece of tech­nol­o­gy used in ve­hi­cles.

And ex­pect the semi­con­duc­tor short­age to last un­til ear­ly 2023, De­loitte said in a new re­port, adding that by the end of 2022, cus­tomers will still be wait­ing 10 to 20 weeks for mul­ti­ple kinds of chips.

A semi­con­duc­tor chip is an elec­tric cir­cuit with many com­po­nents such as tran­sis­tors and wiring formed on a semi­con­duc­tor wafer.

Cou­pled with the short­age of the chips, du Coudray said giv­en the fi­nan­cial fall­out of COVID19 to­geth­er with ris­ing in­fla­tion this has re­sult­ed in more peo­ple be­ing wary about in­vest­ing in a new ve­hi­cle.

“The dis­pos­al in­come is prob­a­bly not there as it was two or three years as be­fore and in this pe­ri­od of un­cer­tain­ty peo­ple tend to be a lit­tle more con­ser­v­a­tive and prob­a­bly hold­ing off from pur­chas­ing a new ve­hi­cle,” he added.

How­ev­er, this pre­sent­ed a new op­por­tu­ni­ty for Massy Mo­tors as the com­pa­ny al­so cap­i­talised on this op­por­tu­ni­ty to get in­to the re­tail sec­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to du Coudray with more peo­ple want­i­ng to hold on to their ve­hi­cles de­spite the age there would there­fore, be an in­creased de­mand for parts and ser­vices.

“So they would need more bat­ter­ies. They would need more types and ac­ces­sories which is where the re­tail foot­print al­so came in­to play,” he added.

Massy Mo­tors car­ries dif­fer­ent brands for dif­fer­ent seg­ments.

Re­gard­ing top sell­ers, du Coudray said Vol­vo has gen­er­at­ed ‘a lot of ex­cite­ment” in Trinidad, not on­ly com­ing with the tra­di­tion­al com­fort, safe­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty as­pect but he added that these ve­hi­cles are much more sleek, in­no­v­a­tive and mod­ern-look­ing.

“We have seen a very pos­i­tive in­crease in that mar­ket share for that brand,” he added.

But the bulk of the com­pa­ny’s sales cur­rent­ly fall in­to the Nis­san, Hyundai and MG which du Coudray de­scribed as “the more down mar­ket or val­ue for mon­ey seg­ment.”

He not­ed that the main sell­ers has been the Hyundai Tou­son and for Nis­san, the Fron­tier pick­up.

Re­gard­ing the for­eign ex­change crunch du Coudray said Massy Mo­tors has been man­ag­ing its cash­flow “very smart­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly” as the en­ti­ty has been meet­ing its US$ re­quire­ments to date.

“So luck­i­ly our sup­ply is­sue is not linked to for­eign ex­change,” he added.

Ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2022, T&T will be re­mov­ing all cus­tom du­ties, mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax and val­ue added tax on the im­por­ta­tion of bat­tery-pow­ered elec­tric ve­hi­cles with an age lim­it on im­port­ed used bat­tery-pow­ered elec­tric ve­hi­cles of two years.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had said this was in keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to pro­mote a green econ­o­my and re­duce the coun­try’s car­bon foot­print.

Ac­cord­ing to du Coudray it is an in­cen­tive for bring­ing in elec­tron­ic ve­hi­cles.
“This will be fea­si­ble for us to im­port elec­tron­ic ve­hi­cles and we have al­ready start­ed this process. So we have en­gaged with our sup­pli­ers and we ex­pect that by the mid­dle of 2022 we will have maybe two or three elec­tron­ic ve­hi­cle op­tions to of­fer to the mar­ket,” du Coudray said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said Massy Mo­tors will al­so have to en­sure it meets the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­tur­al re­quire­ments for this ven­ture not­ing that “it’s one thing to or­der the ve­hi­cles but an­oth­er thing to sup­port that whole busi­ness.”

Hence, there’s a lot of in­fra­struc­tur­al in­vest­ment which Massy Mo­tors has to un­der­take, du Coudray added.

“Not on­ly charg­ing sta­tions but al­so from be­hind-the-scenes op­er­a­tions in terms of a work­shop with the right train­ing and the right tech­ni­cal staff to deal with the elec­tric ve­hi­cles be­cause they would ob­vi­ous­ly be dif­fer­ent to the tra­di­tion­al ve­hi­cles,” du Coudray not­ed.

In pur­suance of goals and ob­jec­tives to­wards net-ze­ro un­der the Paris Agree­ment, and the en­er­gy tran­si­tion, many coun­tries have al­ready sig­nalled that they will be phas­ing out the sale of new ve­hi­cles that run on fos­sil fu­els (in­clud­ing com­pressed nat­ur­al gas) and in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gines (ICE ve­hi­cles) by as ear­ly as 2025, by re­plac­ing them with elec­tric ve­hi­cles (EVs).