■ A car for coffee....Gorillas&Cars!
■ Stefan Göbel grew up in the family business. His car dealership group now operates ten locations, including one very special one.
By Dominik Großpietsch F.A.Z., translation AutoNews24
■ Stefan Göbel sits at a high table with a cup of coffee in front of him, adjacent to a red Mitsubishi car. This is one of the vehicles potential customers can explore while enjoying a cup of Gorilla coffee. However, not everyone takes advantage of this experience.
■ A man with a shoulder bag enters, orders a coffee, and then quickly leaves. For Göbel, this is just a part of daily life. "People come in, grab a coffee, and disappear again," he remarks. Yet, the car dealership offers more than just coffee; it provides a relaxed atmosphere where customers can leisurely look at vehicles, should they wish to do so.
This Heinrich Göbel car dealership group location stands apart from the others. Most of their nine other branches operate as traditional car dealerships. Here, Göbel successfully combines tradition with innovation. "This used to be a Porsche dealership," he recalls fondly, remembering when he would pass by this place with his father to pick up spare parts.
He operates in one of the most renowned car dealerships in and around Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Göbel now runs the very building that holds so many childhood memories for him. In 2013, he took a bold step by transforming this space into a place where cars and coffee coexist—a shared experience. Mitsubishi was the only brand willing to embrace this concept, which was a daring move since the success of his multi-brand dealership group, now with ten locations, has historically been closely tied to Mercedes.
This year, Göbel has ample opportunities to reflect on the car dealership's rich history as it marks the 100th anniversary of the company's founding. In 1924, Heinrich Göbel began as a motorcycle dealer in Neu-Isenburg, and today, the company is one of the most recognised car dealerships in and around Frankfurt. Over the years, Stefan Göbel, the grandson of founder Heinrich, acknowledges that life and work at the company have evolved significantly. For a considerable time, the dealership focused its strategy solely on Mercedes.
■ The company's current size was not planned from the start
Old meets new: In the past, only cars were sold here.
But those days are over. "You have to increase the background noise," says Göbel, meaning the variety necessary to meet the manufacturers' requirements. Today, Göbel's employees repair and sell vehicles from Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Smart, Ford and other brands.
■ Even owners of commercial vehicles are not turned away by their employees. According to him, this strategy has the advantage, among other things, of balancing out fluctuations in individual providers' popularity.
Recommended by LinkedIn
■ "In the past, there was a car dealership for one brand in every town with 20,000 inhabitants," says Göbel, but today, this specialisation has softened, and most companies work for several manufacturers. His approximately 300 employees work at ten locations, selling 1,000 vehicles a year and putting in over 100,000 hours in the workshops.
■ The company's current size was not planned from the start. When Stefan Göbel took over management in 1991 at 22 years old, he faced a considerable task. His father Heinz had died unexpectedly at just 55, and Göbel had to continue running the car dealership, which consisted of two locations in Neu-Isenburg and Langen. "I wanted to study," he says. But one month before he started his studies, he had to jump in at the deep end when his father died.
"For me, social issues are more important than sales."
The staff who had previously worked with his father were significantly older than Göbel. "I had to tell people ten years older how to do things," he remembers. In 2008, he officially took over the GmbH from his mother, and with his wife Stefanie, who supports him in management, he continuously expanded the company.
This was often associated with pain and insights that he would have liked to have learned from his father or during his studies, and he even felt that any generational conflict that might have arisen from this was an enrichment, he says.
Nevertheless, Göbel continued to develop the company, and today, the company has a turnover of around 50 million euros annually. The company could only grow because it always had good employees, Göbel hastens. "For me, the social aspect is more important than turnover."
■ Despite his successes, Göbel stays grounded. He aims to structure the company so that it can operate independently of him. He wants his children, Gina and Patrick, to be accessible to decide if they want to take over the family business. "We are gradually appointing managing directors so they can carefully consider their options," he explains.
■ The location is a symbol of tradition that is evolving.
Göbel aims to modernise "hundred-year-old structures" in the car trade. He plans to achieve this by combining traditional services with innovative concepts, such as a coffee house offering diverse brands. His goal is to prepare the car trade for the future.
Source: F.A.Z.
#Mercedes #Mitsubishi #Autohaus