This is the fourth chapter about CitNOW, the company we started from a kitchen table in Winnersh, Berkshire. If you’d like to read from the beginning, here are the previous chapters - chpt 1, chpt 2 and chpt 3. Each one is roughly a 5-minute read. These are all early drafts for a book.
CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.
We were now mobile, and I could wander around any car dealership with my video camera; at least, that was the idea.
Ian (our Honda promoter and thoroughly good egg) introduced me to Adam, the Dealer Principal** at Honda Holdcroft in Stoke-on-Trent, someone who would take an interest in our video presentation tool. It was a simple arrangement. Honda provided £20k of seed funding, Adam gave me access to his dealership to test the technology and he became the final arbiter on quality control. Nothing would be presented to an actual customer until he was satisfied with the results, watching my video stream on the internet from the comfort of his office as I wandered around on his forecourt.
One quick decision made at the first meeting was to switch the focus away from selling new to used cars. The original idea had always been to sell new, but Ian was happy with the change of emphasis. Manufacturers, including Honda, were often under pressure for not doing enough to support the franchised dealers’ efforts to sell their used car stock.
It’s easy to forget that it’s one of the few business sectors where the sale of a shiny new model is often dependent on a part exchange with the customer’s current vehicle. It’s also the lifeblood of every dealership because most of the profit from a sale is found in their quality used stock.
I liked working with Adam. He was gracious enough to always find time when I wanted to see him. But he never bothered me, even when he knew I was in the dealership. He figured I’d knock on his door when I needed something, which was a perfect arrangement - there was a lot to get done before it was ready for his keen eye.
The first real test with Adam observing was a flat no. It was to be expected. John (video engineer) thought the application might work if he upped the frame rate to 6 or 7 (television traditionally being 25).
The results weren’t good enough. Adam did not like the size of the video window he was watching. It was too small, and the picture quality was simply not good enough. I want it as big as possible, was the takeaway that time.
It was only part of the jigsaw we were trying to piece together. With broadband still being relatively new and often only one dedicated line into the dealership, we needed an alternative installed and a new phone number to handle calls.
Apart from the video camera, we added a small portable laptop that the salesperson could easily carry while showing the vehicle. This allowed them to connect to the internet wherever the car was on the forecourt. It soon became clear that the wireless headset for the call would be the limiting factor. Separation from the base station, typically located on a desk somewhere, meant a range of about 100 metres. On bigger sites, cars were moved closer to the showroom, where we knew everything would work, touch wood. On sites packed with vehicles, difficult to move, there was no sale.
While it sounds convoluted now, the need for a small netbook connected to a video camera and a headset for the phone seemed so simple - a small price for a good demo and the customer’s continued interest. But then I got to practise nearly every day as CitNOW version 1 slowly took shape, my future firmly focused on this being more than a technical trial.
For over a year, I travelled to Stoke every week, sometimes twice, if there’d been a software improvement. I used to leave Winnersh no later than 6:00 a.m., so I’d be in the dealership by 9:00 a.m., roughly 160 miles, allowing for traffic around Birmingham. I’d usually leave by 3:00 p.m., testing done, left with my thoughts in my radio-less Vauxhall Corsa on the drive home.
The staff at Holdcroft Honda were terrific and always happy to help if they could. On one particularly windy day, there was a complaint about it being hard to hear what I was saying, which I relayed to the Aftersales Manager, who’d only asked how it was going in passing. A few minutes later, he returned with a sponge, which he’d neatly shaped to fit over the microphone. It worked perfectly. Vanessa kindly volunteered to be in the PR shots I was after. She didn’t even work in sales. And then there was Anthony, the Sales Associate for Used Vehicles, who I bothered far too often for help.
Version 1 of the product continued to progress. John had found Roger online. He was already working with the FastVDO card on his projects and became a great asset over the next 12 months. It turned out to be John’s last good deed, leaving soon after to focus more on his existing BBC relationships.
I found out a lot later that he’d started his own company working on interactive TV projects for what became the Freeview platform. Sold up now, I expect he’s still enjoying the rare occasion when fresh snow has fallen in the Cairngorms for a perfect skiing day.
Where John had helped with hardware and connectivity, Roger became my regular contact for software. He was a resourceful Javascript programmer, which meant he could create complex interactive features on web pages - exactly what I needed when the sales exec started a presentation. His familiarity with the FastVDO card was also vital because we needed to improve the picture quality before we could start selling. When we spoke, I often heard engines screaming in the background. I think his day job was working for a racing team in East Anglia until he moved back to New Zealand.
I hoped to continue working together despite the time difference, but he politely declined. I’d been pushing harder for his time as we inched towards a viable product, and it wasn’t getting any easier.
Roger probably just wanted a clean break, especially as I was already working with Berrie from an IT consultancy called Codevio. John had found them as well, a chance meeting while attending a tech conference in Stirling. The only issue and wish to continue working with Roger was that I could only afford a day a fortnight of Berrie’s time, and the list was growing quickly.
*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.
**Every car dealership has a boss or Managing Director. Most of them are called Dealer Principals.