More Than 100 Sites Tried Copying Bring a Trailer. One Has Its Attention

When you pioneer an industry there will be copy cats that come and go. Bring a Trailer created an entire segment and upset the auction industry moving it to an online town square in the most public way. There’s no sealed auction or bidding here.

On the latest episode of The Drivecast, Howard Swig, who is now the President of Bring a Trailer, told The Drive, “So you can’t expect to have the big moat forever and ever” when asked about Cars & Bids and whether it’s hurt business.

Listen below from the moment Swig addresses competitors, both those that have come and gone along with Cars & Bids below.

Swig compared what has happened in the online automotive auction space to that of the streaming segment. “Yeah. I mean, we got obviously a really nice head start, right? I mean, Netflix was 100% of streaming forever and now they’re 50% and you have the other folks. So you can’t expect to have the big moat forever and ever,” Swig said.

As to whether Cars & Bids has hurt business and what makes Bring a Trailer still stand apart Swig said, “I think that the best auction platform tends to get the best cars, and I think we’re still there. But yeah, for the first time, the last, I would say two years, for the first time ever, there’s other options and viable competitors that buyers and sellers can go to instead of us. So yeah, we track that. There’s good folks running those companies. They’re trying their damnedest to grow volume and quality and all the stuff that we already know. It’s not easy though.”

But Cars & Bids isn’t the first competitor to come along, but it’s one of the few that’s stuck and given Bring a Trailer real heat. “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. We used to have a running list of whatever, copycat auction sites, and most of them have shuttered, but it’s like over 100. You guys probably remember the first wave was kind of ’16, ’17, ’18. Man, now I’m going real back in my subconscious. And then a couple, RM tried their hand at online auctions for a couple years there,” Swig said.

At one point even Porsche tried its hand with an online auction platform. Swig noted, “Yeah. Marqued was the Porsche back thing. Maybe there was another one. There’s a ton, like I said, there was literally a hundred folks that have tried in some form or another to do online auctions.”

For now, Swig views Cars & Bids as Bring a Trailer’s largest competitor. “So Cars & Bids has emerged as probably the most viable site that is self-sustaining and they’ve got market share and they’re trying to grow. I’m sure they’re a competitor and they’ve done a good job and you look at the stuff they’re selling, we’d probably sell most of the cars that are appearing on their site,” Swig said.

As for Bring a Trailer and sustaining its lead, Swig said, “So we got to keep doing what we’re doing, listing great cars, giving people good experiences, and that daily action on Bring a Trailer. I lived for it 10 years ago. I still live for it today. That is something, the entertainment value, one hand washes the other, it all goes hand in hand. If you list a bunch of boring 2018 F-150s, people probably aren’t going to be too stoked about that, but as long as we keep the curation up and have this rabid community that still loves commenting, I think it puts us in a good place going forward.”

The reality is Bring a Trailer still to this day is producing headline-worthy auction results like $2 million Ford GTs, and that’s not money laundering.

Got a story? Send us a note at tips@thedrive.com

The post More Than 100 Sites Tried Copying Bring a Trailer. One Has Its Attention appeared first on The Drive.

Source: www.thedrive.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.