I attended a BMW Ireland media briefing earlier this week and their executives reflecting on the past ten years provided some interesting details.
John Ives, MD BMW Group Ireland told the assembled press: “During the past 10 years we’ve delivered more than 43,000 BMWs, 7,000 MINIs and sold over €170m of parts.
Ten years ago there was only the core 3, 5 and 7 Series plus one X product and Z3. Our small hatchback was the Compact. The MINI had just been launched. Now we have 1 Series, 4 Series, 6 Series, X1, X3, GT, and six more MINI derivatives.
We were also first to market with BMW Service Inclusive / MINI TLC packages and the first to offer a 2nd year warranty on used cars. And now we are the first to market with 5 Star (see separate story below).”
New BMW i3
He pointed out that the first few years of BMW Ireland were in the highs of the Celtic Tiger years, while the last five or six have been in very difficult times, but the company has continued to evolve and grow.
Paul Murray, Director BMW Group Aftersales reiterated the great performance of €170m of parts sales in the past 10 years and that BMW Ireland offers 96 per cent of parts availability from 300,000 part numbers staocked at their major distribution centre at Pineham in the UK.
He added: ” We have approximately 3,000 retail service customers per month in the network, and 1000 training days per annum completed by the network with the majority of this being technical training. We have also electronic vehicle health checks implemented throughout the dealer network since 2012.
We launched a dedicated service site, bmwservice.ie in April 2011 and used by 33 per cent of all BMW owners since then. And 90 per cent of cars that they have sold this year, were sold with a ‘Service Inclusive’ package.
And finally, we have just launched our 5 Star programme offering online reviews of dealers by customers in December 2013″.
Brian Merrigan, MD BMW Financial Services gave us some addition figures of interest:
“we have funded over 6,400 Irish car buyers this year, which is up almost 20 per cent ahead of 2012.
We have built a total portfolio of over €270m in under 3 years, and for 2013 alone we will have financed €140m to customers. We have an 84 per cent acceptance rate on BMW / Mini applications, and compelling Select Offers on every model in the range for 2014, even including cars up to one year old.
We are proud of our standards and standing in BMW Financial Services, having the ‘Best Dealer Satisfaction Results’ in Europe including South Africa and Russia; ‘Best Staff Satisfaction Results’ in the same region; and BMW Financial Services In Ireland is still number one for growth worldwide”.
BMW Ireland’s Sales and Marketing Director, Michael Nugent, missed the briefing through illness – we wish him a speedy recovery. And finally, based on the information we were given at the briefing, the team at BMW Ireland certainly appear to be on top of their game in all facets of their business.