Click. Buy. Drive. Clutch Canada chief executive officer Dan Park thought of the idea when he realized how tedious it can be to purchase a vehicle.
“You basically have two options when buying a vehicle. It’s either you go to a dealership and spend most of your Saturday shopping for a car. Or you go on to Kijiji, and you find a stranger and you meet them in a McDonald’s parking lot,” he said.
In this day and age where essentially everything is available at the click of a button, buying a car online did not seem so impossible for Park and the Clutch Canada team. Clutch Canada is a platform that allows Canadians to order one of life’s biggest purchases online.
Established in 2016, Clutch Canada is available for residents in Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and neighbouring East Coast provinces. Purchasing a car from Clutch Canada is pretty simple.
“It’s actually not that different than buying from Amazon,” according to Park,
Customers can go onto the site and look through a selection of vehicles. They also have access to the vehicle history as most of the cars are used. After that, buyers just add the car to their cart and checkout.
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They can choose a delivery time and the car will be at the customer’s door within 24 to 48 hours or even faster depending on the location and situation.
For example, Park recalled a time when a customer needed a car to get down to his cottage, and Clutch Canada was able to arrange it at a fast pace.
“They texted us and said, ‘hey, I’m going up to the cottage for the summer. I’d love to have a Jeep there. Do you think you could deliver that this afternoon?’ He wrote into our chat at around 11 [a.m.] and we had it in the driveway by five o’clock,” Park said.
Over the past year Clutch Canada has seen an increase in site traffic as the pandemic has created a demand for a contactless way to purchase products. The company was also able to implement a few new features to help customers out.
“We introduced 360 degree photos, which can do these virtual tours of each of the cars. We revamped our online checkout process, to make it even easier for you to buy a car,” he explained.
Buying a car online also eliminates the need for in-person paperwork, which works out to be more sustainable.
Everything buyers need to know about the car is listed online, so returns are pretty uncommon even though the company does offer money-back returns after 10 days. The entire process is faster, cheaper and more sustainable.
It brings up a great question: are buying cars online the new future?
Park suggests that around 10 years ago no one would have thought that buying a TV or expensive jewelry online was possible and now with online shopping it is possible.
The pandemic accelerated digital transformation, and in the next few years, online car platforms may just be the next big thing.