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dealership spotlight / special finance buyer who really has no other opportunity. When your mission truly is to try to sell everyone a car, you come up with creative ways to make it happen, and that was the idea behind Aunt Bessie's." The dealership's processes for things like complaint resolution and getting repairs done are designed to cater to the lower-subprime market segment. Ring commented that often dealers working in special finance want to pick up a few more deals each month by trying to take on some lower- tier subprime business, not realizing that the lower-tier subprime business must sometimes be handled much differently than what the dealer is used to. Even with good reconditioning, vehicles stocked for the lower-tier subprime customer can be problematic simply because they are typically older and higher-mileage than the regular used car inventory and even the upper-tier subprime inventory. "They get involved, and they realize that the way they sell their regular used cars generally won't work for the CAC business, and then the cars start to break down a little bit and then you have upset customers coming in the showroom," he said. "That's the idea behind Aunt Bessie's … It's a place outside of your normal way of doing business where you can cap- ture another percentage of your market and put a little bit of insulation between the two stores." In keeping with the theme of "Aunt Bessie" —that of a kindly senior who can be re- garded as a trusted family member—Ring said the deal- ership relies on a sort of "Mrs. Doubtfire" persona invented to help field customers' problems through a number of older 30 When it comes to mechanical repairs for special finance customers, Aunt Bessie's Family Car Mart offers greater flexibility than when dealing with a regular used car customer. employees staffed at the dealership. "These people are generally the people who are greeters at the front door." Customers will often already recognize these individuals from previous visits to the dealership. "The biggest frus- tration I see with customers who have a problem is they don't know who to talk to," Ring observed, adding that customers will often call a number of different people at a dealership in an attempt to resolve their issues. "By the fifth call, they're ready to go absolutely postal." Ring commented, "Nine times out of 10, people have a bunch of other issues, and the car is the final straw, and it's easiest to blow up on the car dealer. We've got big shoulders; we can take it, and we're here to try and make it better." At Aunt Bessie's, he said, "We have an Uncle Bill, we have an Aunt Julie, and they're just nice, nice people … They have a heart for helping people, and they're very solution-oriented. And when customers have is- sues, they talk to these people, and these people assure them that we're here to get their problems fixed and put them in the right direction." When it comes to mechanical repairs, Ring said a greater flexibility is required than when dealing with a regular used car customer. This is another reason some dealers aren't prepared to handle lower-tier subprime business. "If people come back and they have an issue and it's not covered under warranty, we're there to work with them," he said. "We just do whatever we've got to do to keep that car running, keep it on the road … [and] keep my name good … You can't take one car deal and ruin everything we've built up, so we spend some money keeping these cars going. It's the cost of doing business." The typical inventory at Aunt Bessie's differs quite a bit from the vehicles stocked for special finance inventory at Brown Daub Kia, which tend to have fewer than 50,000 miles with an average actual cash value around $12,000. "Our Aunt Bessie's formula, the CAC car, is less than 130,000 miles, [and] we want to own the car at about Black Book average … maybe a little over." However, acquiring these cars can be a challenge. Ring has avoided having too strict a formula for evaluating potential inventory in order to keep things flexible. "You have to look at every car as a case- by-case situation, and when we try to make a generic pol- icy, it's definitely a big mistake. It really needs to be hands-on." Ring actually has a standing deal with a few wholesalers to help him keep inventory coming in. "They know my parameters, and they drop cars off. They let us have the car for a couple of hours. Our shop drops everything and gets that car in, gives it a quick once-over, and if the money's right and we can get it through the shop and get it out on the lot right, we buy it," he ex- plained. If it isn't a fit, they let it go back to the wholesaler. In terms of a formula for accepting those vehicles, Ring said $700 seems to be the "magic number" for markup from the wholesaler. Ring commented that he truly loves the used car and special finance business. "The whole deal, I just love. It's just more contact with the customers. The more somebody needs help, the more you really get to know the person and form that relationship with them … I have customers that I've been selling cars to for 10, 15 years who I've seen go through the whole gamut of a divorce, a bankruptcy, a foreclosure; and they're back. They're driving a new minivan, and they live in a new townhouse, and that's a beautiful thing."