CarPrice in Japan: features of the national auto auction
You may have heard that CarPrice works not only in Russia, but also in Japan. The market for used cars there is very developed, and at first glance it seems that it is simply impossible to occupy a certain niche. But it is not.
Japanese companies that sell used cars work on well-honed schemes. Mechanisms of interaction are polished to a high shine, but they practically do not take into account the wide possibilities that IT offers. Having evaluated the Japanese market from this side, we saw the prospect of taking a share in this market.
In terms of volume, the Japanese market for used cars is smaller than the Russian one - last year 3.2 million were sold in Japan and 5.2 million used cars in Russia. The average price of a used car in Japan is only 188 thousand in translation into rubles, and 428 thousand in Russia. Cars with mileage there are cheap, there are practically no “killed” copies. In Japan, the level of motorization of the country is much higher than ours: about 64% of residents have a car, against Russian 39%. Because of the rather tough laws, operating a car older than 13 years in Japan is unprofitable and practically meaningless, while new cars are no longer a luxury and are available to everyone.
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About 75% of cars Japanese sell in trade-in, and the price of each is always determined approximately, "by eye". Car dealers attract buyers huge discounts on new cars. Something like this: we take your car for $ 200, but for a new one we give a discount of $ 2,000. The absolute majority of new cars are sold on credit - interest rates are so low (about 2–4% per annum) that a loan looks more like an installment plan.
The largest player in the used car market - Gulliver Auto, has 400 points. This is a real monster company that buys cars from the Japanese and resells them abroad. Usually in “Gulliver” give half of the market price, but the money immediately. After buying the car can be anywhere - from Africa to Australia.
However, the most interesting and technological is Japanese auto auctions, where professional traders work. Cars there are legal entities, the buyers are companies from around the world. The sale of cars at such auctions is organized with real Japanese thoroughness and works like a clock. Each auction lasts a few seconds, up to 16 auctions per minute. Every day such auctions sell tens of thousands of cars. They are sent to various corners of the globe - to countries with "native" for Japan, right-hand traffic like Australia, to the USA (expensive American cars with left-hand drive), throughout Southeast Asia, and also to our Far East.
While mostly heavy jeeps and expensive premium sedans are brought to Russia from Japan, the Japanese themselves prefer frankly small cars, including more and more hybrid ones. The government encourages the development of electric vehicles and hybrids, subsidies are provided for the purchase of such cars. Toyota Prius - perhaps the most common hybrid in Japan. Cars run by Russian standards are ridiculous. It is quite possible to meet a five-year-old car with a mileage of 10-15 thousand km. The condition is also, as a rule, ideal - almost like a new car.
We have already said that owning a frankly old car in Japan is unprofitable. Ten-year cars with mileage of 100 thousand kilometers can cost only 50-100 dollars. Sometimes companies selling used cars even offer to pick them up for free to save the owner from a headache. But in fact, such machines are quite on the move and after a while turn out to be in the open spaces of our Far East, in Africa or at Middle Eastern analyzes.
The Japanese, unlike us, do not go "on dalnyak" - for a half thousand kilometers to relatives in Rostov. For this there are high-speed trains. In large cities like Tokyo, owning a car is very expensive: parking costs about $ 10 an hour, and parking space near the house is at least $ 300 a month. Many Japanese corporations in the contracts of employees prohibit coming to work on their machines. At the same time, corporations pay for public transport employees. In rural areas, on the contrary: the main means of transportation is a car.
Now in Japan, a new class is gaining popularity - small cars with motors of about 0.8 liters. Suzuki Wagon R, Daihatsu Tanto, Honda N-Box and similar kids filled the big cities. They are bought not so much because of fuel economy, but because of the small size, which allows you to park wherever the markings allow.
So, in November 2015, four CarPrice employees appeared in Japan who started making a Japanese website. In January 2016, the first version of the site was ready, but then the first customers appeared. After that, during the year we worked on refining it (including through AB testing), did specific pages for certain traffic. The current design is the third or fourth. In Japan in this regard, its features, this is the country of mobile first, mobile phones here ruled the Internet before the advent of smartphones. In Russia, the sites are divided into mobile and normal, but the Japanese https://www.carprice.co.jp/ we got responsive design. In general, the story of the Japanese site is a separate post, we will prepare it in the near future.
In the meantime, back to the features of the local market. Due to the very high rental rates, it was not profitable to create a network of our own offices, it was easier to use the existing infrastructure - Japanese car services and petrol stations (local refueling is another story - maybe we will post about them if readers are interested). CarPrice partners inspect cars according to our methodology, after which they enter the cars in the auction card. So the car gets into the online environment.
Cars bought at auction are loaded onto an auto transporter and sent directly to dealers' salons. About 90% go to Japanese dealers for resale in the domestic market and in the end do not leave the country. As a rule, these are relatively new cars, from 3 to 5 years old. And only about 10% are exported.
Premium cars - Lexus, Infiniti and the like - travel mainly to the Middle East and Singapore. There are Africans among our dealers: they buy cars, dismantle them, and then send spare parts to African countries. So they, having spent on the purchase of a car about 200-300 dollars, only with the motor help out 400 dollars and more.
Unlike Russia, where the seller of the car receives the money immediately, in Japan they are transferred a week later - after the car gets to the dealer at the warehouse. Former owners are not upset at all - for them it is more important to get rid of the car, and money can be obtained later. The Japanese literally have blood in their order, and it is even more important there than in Germany. If the client has a contract in his hands, it is impossible even to imagine deception.
Gradually, we synchronized with the market and completely switched to fast auto auctions, abandoning lengthy ones. In order to increase the speed, they introduced the “exit assessment” popular in Japan - when the manager comes to the client, and not vice versa. In general, we are actively using the more developed Japanese car market to test new technologies for buying and selling cars there and, if successful, introduce them quickly in Russia.
The most expensive car we bought in Japan is the Ferrari 458 Spyder, which costs about 400 thousand dollars. In Japan, such machines are not uncommon. As a rule, cars are more expensive than 200 thousand dollars issued to large corporations, firms and firms as a way to reduce taxes. Most of these machines do not have a run, or it is very small. Often the Japanese use such machines as a means of accumulating capital. Japanese banks simply do not accrue interest on deposits - this is a consequence of an overheated economy. We have to find other ways of preserving and increasing our “wealth”.
In the following posts we will describe in detail how the Japanese website was created, and share other interesting observations about business in this country.
I almost forgot the most important thing. In our Japanese office, we are looking for a leading PHP developer, tester and iOS developer, as well as a front-end developer from Russia. If you want to work in Japan, send your resume to hr@carprice.ru .
UPD : On creating a site for the Japanese market, you can read in our new article .
Japanese companies that sell used cars work on well-honed schemes. Mechanisms of interaction are polished to a high shine, but they practically do not take into account the wide possibilities that IT offers. Having evaluated the Japanese market from this side, we saw the prospect of taking a share in this market.
In terms of volume, the Japanese market for used cars is smaller than the Russian one - last year 3.2 million were sold in Japan and 5.2 million used cars in Russia. The average price of a used car in Japan is only 188 thousand in translation into rubles, and 428 thousand in Russia. Cars with mileage there are cheap, there are practically no “killed” copies. In Japan, the level of motorization of the country is much higher than ours: about 64% of residents have a car, against Russian 39%. Because of the rather tough laws, operating a car older than 13 years in Japan is unprofitable and practically meaningless, while new cars are no longer a luxury and are available to everyone.
')
How do they sell cars in Japan?
About 75% of cars Japanese sell in trade-in, and the price of each is always determined approximately, "by eye". Car dealers attract buyers huge discounts on new cars. Something like this: we take your car for $ 200, but for a new one we give a discount of $ 2,000. The absolute majority of new cars are sold on credit - interest rates are so low (about 2–4% per annum) that a loan looks more like an installment plan.
The largest player in the used car market - Gulliver Auto, has 400 points. This is a real monster company that buys cars from the Japanese and resells them abroad. Usually in “Gulliver” give half of the market price, but the money immediately. After buying the car can be anywhere - from Africa to Australia.
However, the most interesting and technological is Japanese auto auctions, where professional traders work. Cars there are legal entities, the buyers are companies from around the world. The sale of cars at such auctions is organized with real Japanese thoroughness and works like a clock. Each auction lasts a few seconds, up to 16 auctions per minute. Every day such auctions sell tens of thousands of cars. They are sent to various corners of the globe - to countries with "native" for Japan, right-hand traffic like Australia, to the USA (expensive American cars with left-hand drive), throughout Southeast Asia, and also to our Far East.
What cars do the Japanese own?
While mostly heavy jeeps and expensive premium sedans are brought to Russia from Japan, the Japanese themselves prefer frankly small cars, including more and more hybrid ones. The government encourages the development of electric vehicles and hybrids, subsidies are provided for the purchase of such cars. Toyota Prius - perhaps the most common hybrid in Japan. Cars run by Russian standards are ridiculous. It is quite possible to meet a five-year-old car with a mileage of 10-15 thousand km. The condition is also, as a rule, ideal - almost like a new car.
We have already said that owning a frankly old car in Japan is unprofitable. Ten-year cars with mileage of 100 thousand kilometers can cost only 50-100 dollars. Sometimes companies selling used cars even offer to pick them up for free to save the owner from a headache. But in fact, such machines are quite on the move and after a while turn out to be in the open spaces of our Far East, in Africa or at Middle Eastern analyzes.
The Japanese, unlike us, do not go "on dalnyak" - for a half thousand kilometers to relatives in Rostov. For this there are high-speed trains. In large cities like Tokyo, owning a car is very expensive: parking costs about $ 10 an hour, and parking space near the house is at least $ 300 a month. Many Japanese corporations in the contracts of employees prohibit coming to work on their machines. At the same time, corporations pay for public transport employees. In rural areas, on the contrary: the main means of transportation is a car.
Now in Japan, a new class is gaining popularity - small cars with motors of about 0.8 liters. Suzuki Wagon R, Daihatsu Tanto, Honda N-Box and similar kids filled the big cities. They are bought not so much because of fuel economy, but because of the small size, which allows you to park wherever the markings allow.
How did CarPrice earn in Japan?
So, in November 2015, four CarPrice employees appeared in Japan who started making a Japanese website. In January 2016, the first version of the site was ready, but then the first customers appeared. After that, during the year we worked on refining it (including through AB testing), did specific pages for certain traffic. The current design is the third or fourth. In Japan in this regard, its features, this is the country of mobile first, mobile phones here ruled the Internet before the advent of smartphones. In Russia, the sites are divided into mobile and normal, but the Japanese https://www.carprice.co.jp/ we got responsive design. In general, the story of the Japanese site is a separate post, we will prepare it in the near future.
In the meantime, back to the features of the local market. Due to the very high rental rates, it was not profitable to create a network of our own offices, it was easier to use the existing infrastructure - Japanese car services and petrol stations (local refueling is another story - maybe we will post about them if readers are interested). CarPrice partners inspect cars according to our methodology, after which they enter the cars in the auction card. So the car gets into the online environment.
Cars bought at auction are loaded onto an auto transporter and sent directly to dealers' salons. About 90% go to Japanese dealers for resale in the domestic market and in the end do not leave the country. As a rule, these are relatively new cars, from 3 to 5 years old. And only about 10% are exported.
Premium cars - Lexus, Infiniti and the like - travel mainly to the Middle East and Singapore. There are Africans among our dealers: they buy cars, dismantle them, and then send spare parts to African countries. So they, having spent on the purchase of a car about 200-300 dollars, only with the motor help out 400 dollars and more.
Unlike Russia, where the seller of the car receives the money immediately, in Japan they are transferred a week later - after the car gets to the dealer at the warehouse. Former owners are not upset at all - for them it is more important to get rid of the car, and money can be obtained later. The Japanese literally have blood in their order, and it is even more important there than in Germany. If the client has a contract in his hands, it is impossible even to imagine deception.
Gradually, we synchronized with the market and completely switched to fast auto auctions, abandoning lengthy ones. In order to increase the speed, they introduced the “exit assessment” popular in Japan - when the manager comes to the client, and not vice versa. In general, we are actively using the more developed Japanese car market to test new technologies for buying and selling cars there and, if successful, introduce them quickly in Russia.
The most expensive car we bought in Japan is the Ferrari 458 Spyder, which costs about 400 thousand dollars. In Japan, such machines are not uncommon. As a rule, cars are more expensive than 200 thousand dollars issued to large corporations, firms and firms as a way to reduce taxes. Most of these machines do not have a run, or it is very small. Often the Japanese use such machines as a means of accumulating capital. Japanese banks simply do not accrue interest on deposits - this is a consequence of an overheated economy. We have to find other ways of preserving and increasing our “wealth”.
In the following posts we will describe in detail how the Japanese website was created, and share other interesting observations about business in this country.
I almost forgot the most important thing. In our Japanese office, we are looking for a leading PHP developer, tester and iOS developer, as well as a front-end developer from Russia. If you want to work in Japan, send your resume to hr@carprice.ru .
UPD : On creating a site for the Japanese market, you can read in our new article .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/341380/
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