Kevin O’Leary group announce expansion

THE Kevin O’Leary Group have announced plans to expand their existing car franchises this summer.

In business for the last 58 years, with retail motor locations in Bandon, Silversprings, and Clonmel, Co Tipperary and 150 employees, they said growth and expansion remains the focus despite a challenging year,

Group director Kevin O’Leary announced a third addition to their existing Opel and Honda brands in Silversprings, from the beginning of June, as they have now entered a partnership with Suzuki Automotive.

The new seven car showroom will include a dedicated Suzuki customer lounge and the indoor handover area will also be a first for Suzuki customers in Cork.

Like many other industries, Mr O’Leary acknowledged that it had been a challenging year with lockdowns but added that the group had worked hard to adapt and improvise during the pandemic, with a more efficient, online focussed approach to car sales.

‘It has been a tough year but we have adapted accordingly, we’re lucky to have such diligent and efficient staff. We’ve had to really focus on the online sales element of our business and we have refined it significantly since the pandemic began. We are very fortunate to have been able to remain open for service throughout this Level 5 lockdown and we have also operated click and deliver fully for vehicle sales.’

He admitted they had to become much quicker and dynamic with online enquiries.

‘We’ve been utilising personalised videos to send to our prospective customers. We notice that customers currently enquiring about cars tend to be serious buyers and we need to be very engaged when it comes to their interest.

‘Necessity is the mother of invention and we’ve been pleased with how we made the transition to complete online sales platforms and how our customers have adopted to this new way of doing business.’