A year ago, Metroauto Group established a joint venture with Mekonomen to run service workshops and parts stores under a Mekonomen Mega and Medium concept. The first units were set up in Södertälje, Göteborg and four locations in Stockholm. In mid-June of this year, the partners decided to separate the workshops and parts stores to enable the Metroauto Group to focus solely on running workshops in even more areas in Sweden in the future. At the end of June, the group decided to also set up Mekonomen workshops in Finland.

We met with Satu Wrede and Lars Strang. Wrede is Group Chairman and shares joint ownership of the company with her children. Strang is Vice CEO and Chairman for the Swedish companies. Wrede explains that the company was founded by her husband´s grandfather in 1925. At this time, he was given the chance to be a Ford dealer in Finland. His grandson Mikael Wrede - Satu´s husband - took over the business and ran it until 2007, when he was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident. Satu Wrede, whose activity in the company up until that point was comprised solely of 25 years of board work, decided immediately to keep the automotive company in operation - and to run it. Her first action was to make sure that all employees understood that the company would continue. Her second action was to clarify that the company´s relationship to their subsidiaries  would remain unchanged. The group´s companies would be independent, energetic and operated as a single company.

On June 1, the Metroauto Group supplemented its organization with the acquisition of Mekonomen workshops. Wrede says that they´re noticing vehicles leaving automaker workshops in increasingly greater numbers after just a couple years of ownership, and this is a market that Metroauto also wants to be active on. Recent EU deregulations now give independent workshops access to all previously automaker-restricted information about vehicles, which means these workshops can now repair and service all auto makes. This market is growing.

Metroauto Group was the world´s largest Saab dealer for a number of years. They sold 5,500 - 6,000 Saabs a year. Saab´s recent troubles caused a dramatic plummet in sales to 1,000 vehicles in 2009, which led to Metroauto´s prompt decision to supplement business activities with other auto makes. Now that Saab is up and running again, sales figures are expected to reach 2,000 Saabs in 2010. The new Saab 9-5 looks promising and Metroauto will be placing great focus on it.  Before the financial crisis, the group sold 24,000 vehicles a year, but this number fell during the crisis to 16,000. Now figures are starting to rise again.

Lars Strang explains that vehicle sales are burdened by too much tradition. Sales floors of thousands of square meters when a few hundred would probably suffice. Not enough women in sales. A large proportion of car buyers are women, and we need to bring in people who understand their issues better, Wrede believes. “I´m ashamed that the industry hasn´t had more success with this, but we´re going to implement new and stronger measures in this area."

New types of vehicle ownership are intriguing and Peugeot´s “car account" method where users take out the car they need at that precise moment is very interesting, continues Strang. This year, the Group has 100 Toyota Aygos, which users lease for long periods instead of owning. Metroauto will be involved in this growing trend.

Two final questions for Wrede and Strang: When will you be bringing Chinese vehicles into the business and how many electric vehicles will you sell in 2015? Chinese vehicles don´t fit into the Group´s activities today. We want to wait until Chinese vehicles have reached a certain level of maturity. Then it will be interesting. Electric vehicles are another interesting area. They won´t revolutionize the market completely, but we expect electric vehicle sales to reach 500 - 1,000 in 2015, conclude Wrede and Strang.