The Car Leasing Shop is
part of Key Vehicle Solutions, a family business set up by
me, Nick Venter, and my old dad Chris back in 1999.
The story of my family's association with cars starts many years
ago. As a teenager Chris was
fascinated with cars and enjoyed tinkering around with
granddad's Austin Ten. In fact he enjoyed it so much that
on leaving school he joined a local motor
company as an apprentice mechanic.
The 1960's were a boom time for the car business and only a few
years after finishing his apprenticeship, Chris set up his own
garage business working on cars like Hillmans, Humber, Sunbeam
and Singers. A few more years found Chris running a couple
of service and repairs garages and selling used cars and new
cars from British Leyland - which helped to keep the workshop a
very busy place!
When I came along all I wanted to do was work with cars, so
after leaving school and spending a few years working with dad,
I decided the grass was greener and moved on. I worked in
large dealerships selling things like new Fords, Hondas, and
then BMWs.
Fast forward to the to the 1990's; Chris was running the fleet
sales department for a major motor group and I was in my seventh
year of selling BMW's. Completely by chance we both moved
jobs at around the same time to work for different car leasing
companies, and it wasn't very long after that that we both
started to think that we could run a leasing business better
than the companies we were working for.
We were really amazed that leasing wasn't more popular, however,
it quickly became apparent that the majority of customers were
at least a little confused by the various leasing schemes on
offer, which was hardly surprising as the majority of car
dealers didn't really (and still don't!) understand the
different options and their implications on tax, cash-flow and
VAT etc.
On
discussing this we saw an opportunity for a business to guide
people through the various ways of buying and financing new
cars. We realised that a small efficient business, with
low overheads, could do a better job at explaining the options
than many of the big established garages. Thus Key Vehicle
Solutions was born in December 1999.
Key Vehicle
Solutions was a great success and still is. Customers ranging
from private individuals and sole traders through to
multi-million pound PLC's appreciate the straight forward, no
nonsense advice and great deals that we offer. Over the last
couple of years however, we've seen one particular form of
leasing come to prominence and have recognised that people enjoy
the convenience of buying this over the internet - and that's
Contract Hire.
To move with
the times and to streamline our Contract Hire offers, in summer
of 2006 we decided to launch a new website to concentrate
exclusively this side of our business. Thus the Car
Leasing Shop was born. The formula is the the same as Key
Vehicle Solutions; low overheads to ensure value for money, a
great choice of cars and vans, and to treat customers like
people - not an inconvenience!
The Car leasing
Shop has been hugely successful and has attracted customers from
literally all over the UK. We have stuck to the original
formula and by working hard to find great deals and by offering
above average customer service we hope we'll be here for many
years to come!
