PLANO, Texas -

Teams from CarOffer and Asbury Automotive Group have collaborated to build a group trade platform that allows dealers within the same group to buy, sell and trade vehicles between one another, thereby tailoring inventory distribution to the specific needs of individual stores within the group.

CarOffer’s Group Trade platform gives dealers the ability to utilize the CarOffer Matrix platform and do so from a multi-store vantage point.

Asbury, which brought the idea of this platform to CarOffer seven months ago and worked with the company to develop it, will be among the first groups to enroll its dealerships in the platform.

“At Asbury, we’re committed to evolving the auto retail experience using the most innovative and performance-driven solutions available,” Asbury president and chief executive officer David Hult said in a news release.

“The CarOffer Group Trade platform streamlines vehicle sourcing and brings much-needed simplicity and optimization to the inventory process,” Hult said. “It allows our dealerships to keep inventory flowing seamlessly without raising their hand to bid on a vehicle or taking focus away from servicing our guests.”

The platform is designed to facilitate automated, real-time, in-group offers at the time of appraisal on all group inventory, CarOffer said. Groups can manage offers centrally or on a store level. Additionally, CarOffers will streamline logistics and inter-group bills of sale.

Beyond the dealership group aspect, if stores that are not in the same dealership group wish to utilize the platform for private trading among themselves – dealers in the same 20 Groups, for example – the Group Trade platform can be customized for that purpose.

In the release, CarOffer founder and CEO Bruce Thompson said: “We believe our new Group Trade platform is a break-through for the industry.

“We took the power of the Buying Matrix and dialed it in at the group level so that groups could maximize their buying power and optimize vehicle demand among store locations. It creates opportunities for profitability and scalability that have never been seen before, and we are thrilled that Asbury is leveraging this tool across their stores.”