Business View Magazine - October 2018

88 89 other Chevrolet store in Weston, North Carolina. That’s where we got our start.” After college, my dad, Fred, went into the car business and he really expanded it and grew it into multiple stores,”Anderson continues. “We expanded from just Chevrolet to Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, and Nissan, which was Datsun, at the time. In 1987, my dad became a Toyota dealer in Ra- leigh. That was his first Toyota store; his first large store in a metro area and that really catapulted things.” Over the years, that Toyota store became the flagship operation of the Anderson Automo- tive Group, which, today, has become one of the largest dealerships in the Southeastern United States with Toyota, Scion, Nissan, and Kia out- lets located in Raleigh, Sanford, Fayetteville, and Asheville in North Carolina, and Columbia and Charleston in South Carolina. “We’re in the pro- cess of acquiring a ninth store, which will take us close to 1,000 employees and I think we’ll proba- bly push about $850 million in revenue, this year,” Anderson adds. Even with its commanding presence, Anderson admits that the automobile business is always competitive.What keeps his company ahead of the curve, he believes, can be attributed to its values and family-oriented service. “It ultimately comes down to our culture and who we are,” he explains. “That affects the kind of people we hire and the kind of service we give the customers. The technology and the information that’s avail- ANDERSON AUTOMOTIVE GROUP able and the sensitivity to pricing has changed things a lot, but I do think there’s still a good bit of loyalty, and we see that with repeat customers and retention levels. And that’s part of why we’ve been successful - because we’ve kept that a big part of our business. At some point, we all still sell the same cars and we all still have pretty lim- ited pricing options. So, it still ultimately comes down to the customer service and the interaction and the relationships and the connections that you can make.” Those relationships begin with the Anderson family and extend to its many employees and customers. Indeed, all of its dealerships brand themselves as The Family Store. “It’s very much a family business,” says Anderson. “I have two sis- ters who are involved in the business. My dad and I work pretty closely and we’re intentional about AT A GLANCE ANDERSON AUTOMOTIVE GROUP WHAT: A family-owned-and- operated group of automobile dealerships WHERE: Raleigh, North Carolina WEBSITE: www.anderson automotivegroup.com