If you were starting out in business and were told that not only would you have to find a way to grow your company but also survive things like a gas shortage, multiple market fluctuations and a global pandemic that made finding a portion of your product even more difficult that it already was, there’s a good chance your last name might by Strickland.
As mile markers go, 50 years in business is a pretty good one to hit. Strickland’s Automart and Strickland’s Toyota celebrated that achievement earlier this summer, and general manager Lon Eeley took some time to reflect on his time with the family-owned company.
“Jeff and John Strickland started out in Goderich, and they had the ability to go back to their dad’s dealership but they wanted to strike out on their own because they had their own methodology of what they wanted to do in the car business,” he said. “They did it well, and they were able to find people the best deal on a car. I come from a family business as well, so I was able to relate with what they were trying to do here: taking care of the customer and getting the best deal for them. There’s no more secret sauce than that - just find the best deal and replicate it again and again and again.”
Hard work, Eeley says, is one of the main ingredients to the company’s success. And being as big as the company has become - used car dealerships in Stratford, Brantford and Windsor along with brand-name dealerships - gives them a larger reach than most other competitors. That reach helps them when it comes to living up to the first part of their quest.
“We might not be the shiniest gem in the box, but we work the hardest at finding the best deal for the customer,” he said. “It’s easy to sell a car when it’s the best deal in Ontario, but it’s very hard to find the best deal in Ontario.”
He added that over the last few years, Stricklands learned to adapt to the market around it; when COVID made finding used cars that much harder because the inventory just wasn’t out there, they turned to buy-sell-trade and purchased vehicles off the street from people who’s lifestyle had changed.
“This business was built around the idea that we wanted to get people the best price on a vehicle, and that doesn’t change whether we’re buying it from them or selling it to them,” he said.
Stratford Toyota Sales Manager Josh Bes was bullish on the company’s ability to reach across the province - and in some cases, beyond that - in order to help their customers. They’ve sold and shipped cars across the country, making sure the Stricklands name is known through generations of family car buying.
“I was recently at a house in Embro and both vehicles in the driveway had Strickland’s plate brackets on them,” he said. “It’s great to know a few generations in that family have bought their cars here, but it shows how when you treat someone right they’ll come back. I’d be willing to say that anywhere between 80-90 per cent of our business is people who come back.”
Bes says they get calls almost daily from customers, wanting to know if they can track down a specific car for them. He jokes that they’re not a used car factory, but in some ways they are.
“We’ll have plenty of options for people - the colour, the model, the number of kilometres, if the car was owned by a smoker or non-smoker,” he said. “I think the biggest thing is people want to know they have options, and we have that. Because we do, they come to us from everywhere.”
One of the best things about working for a company like Stricklands is that certain amount of flexibility that comes with owners who want to make an impact. Their recent donation to the Stratford General Hospital Foundation points to that, and Eeley loves that about his employers.
“If we were a dealer group or a corporate dealership, there’d be people somewhere having a committee meeting about giving $5,000 to the hospital,” he said. “We did that and have moved on to our next project. We’re able to be that quick on our feet and use our own brains to get things done.”
It’s been a long road to 50 years for Stricklands, and the next 50 could see even more innovation to the business model. Bes believes the future is going to be just as bright as their past has been.
“The old saying goes, you’re nothing without the people,” he said. “It’s going to be challenging, but that’s the fun part about change. There’s a lot of change coming our way, but I believe the best is still to come for Stricklands.”