Reedman-Toll Auto World

REEDMAN-TOLL AUTO WORLD one Honda. The Langhorne location, being the largest, contains three of those franchises in an auto center, while the other ones are single point dealerships in Downingtown, Springfield, Exton, Jenkintown, and Drexel Hill. “For a visual,” O’Flanagan reflects, “it is like our dealerships are a half moon across the top of Philadelphia. We draw customers from all over that area and further afield as well.” The company has between 750 and 800 employees and sells around 15,000 vehicles in a normal year. Of those vehicles, 10-11 thousand are new and four to five thousand are used. “We are always open to growth,” O’Flanagan adds. “We have grown relatively quickly in the last five or six years and have added four stores to the group in that time. So, I think we are going to continue to grow but we are going to do it very strategically in the next few years. If we grow now, we are going to buy dealerships or franchises that are either really close to our current locations or that are franchises for products that we aren’t currently covering. In Langhorn, which is our biggest store, we have a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and a Chevrolet, and a Subaru, for example, and if, say, a Ford or a Honda dealership became available in that market area, we would be very interested.” Reedman-Toll believes that its success is based on a combination of staying ahead of the curve when it comes to embracing new ideas, but mostly on adhering to the strength of its own ideas and culture. O’Flanagan admits, “If I were to rank what I am most concerned about, number one would be the employees, number two would be the customers, and number three would be the bottom line. But there is no question about the employees; if you take care of them, they take care of everything else, and it is very easy to run the business when you have well-trained, well- recruited employees who commit to your culture. And it is almost impossible if you do not. That is why we try and recruit employees early in their career and really train them in the way we do things, in our culture, in the hope that this will become not just a job for them, but a career.” Another reason for the company’s success is that