Lovely as it is, Hatfield might not seem somewhere with a big enough pull to require a visit from Lamborghini’s top executive team. Yet the Hertfordshire town is now home to Lamborghini’s 11th and largest UK dealership, and the new HR Owen franchise opened its doors at an event attended by more than 200 UK customers.
The frontman for Lamborghini is Stephan Winkelmann, now on his second stint at the top of the company. While the designs of Lamborghinis are wild, Winkelmann himself is more refined in how he dresses, with the sharpest collar in the industry and a tie knot never out of place. But when he speaks, the formality slips: his eyes smile and give extra meaning and theatre to his words.
We talk Hatfield first. A vast new dealership – part of a complex of new luxury dealerships from HR Owen on the site – might seem at odds with the trend to a move online and smaller, urban dealerships. (For the record, Winkelmann says: “We are not adopting the agency model.”) But in the luxury world, such touch points remain hugely important and their role goes beyond that of selling cars.
“Dealers are the ambassadors of the brand." Winkelmann says. "Selling cars is still the main activity but more and more it’s to entertain, and to make [buyers] feel part of the club. These make the difference. There is huge competition with luxury brands not just on cars. There’s a huge trend of offering things money can’t buy. We need to create a fuss.”
Still, the firm is continuing to invest in its digital platforms, building software to help dealers help customers to configure and explain their cars, due to their complexity. But “it has to be humanised and hands on”, says Winkelmann, with Lamborghini itself “never interfering in the sales process”.
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