If you are into cars, your next visit to the shopping mall may become a little more interesting – if Tesla Motors gets its way. On Friday, May 25, Tesla opened its first U.S. store of the year and its 22-second worldwide, at The Westchester shopping center in White Plains, New York.
Opening a car dealership in a mall sounds like a strange idea since nobody goes to a shopping center to buy a car, but according to George Blankenship of former Apple fame, that’s the whole idea.
“We want to engage with people when they’re not thinking about buying a car,” Blankenship told CNN Money.
Blankenship added, “At the mall, shoppers’ defenses aren’t up” and that they are “more willing to listen and ask questions”.
Tesla also follows a different approach from regular dealerships in other areas as its current and possibly future mall shops won’t have any service departments, you won’t be able to haggle over the price, and most of its salespeople will have no prior experience on selling cars.
“The people in our stores are more likely to be from Nordstrom’s than from a car dealer,” said Blankenship.
At The Westchester mall, Tesla has two Model S sedans right outside its store, and two more models inside.
Blankenship admits that not all visitors will be interested in buying a car but he believes that a healthy number will turn into buyers. “At a [typical dealership location] we might get 20 people through a day,” he said, “where a typical mall store would get 3,500 a week.”
There is, however, a problem with Tesla’s plans, as pointed out in the report by CNN Money: Tesla owns its stores. You see, by law, most states across the country, including New York, either prohibited or restrict automakers from owning dealerships.
While Blankenship declined to comment on CNN’s question about the legality of its stores, the National Automobile Dealers Association [NADA] wasn’t exactly happy about the idea.
“The business model that works best is having the manufacturers focus on building quality products and the dealers focused on selling and serving the vehicles,” NADA said in a statement.
Up until now, no outside dealer has taken any legal actions against Tesla.
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