Top end car business aiming for £100m turnover within five years
A business which specialises in buying high-end cars is on track to hit £100m turnover in five years.
Lee Collins founded Rochdale-based Revilo Automotive in 2016 along with Joe Greenwoood two years after selling his car dealer group Hillendale.
Turnover reached £5m within six months of launching and is expected to hit £30m.
He said: “When you look at specialist cars, particularly cars where people have added specifications, there is a better way to maximise the value of the car and that’s where we believe we come in.
“We’ll travel at our expense to their home or office to inspect the vehicle and the owners will get a better price from us the majority of the time. All we expect is for the customer to describe the car accurately.”
Revilo Automotive is backed by Coutts bank and is one of a number of companies that form part of Revilo Group, including Revilo Capital; Revilo Developments, Revilo Homes, Revilo Mortgages and Revilo Life.
Collins, who left school at the age of 16 with just two O-Levels in maths and English – is a majority shareholder in all the businesses.
His started working in the industry 19 when he got a job as a salesman for Lookers in Rochdale.
He quickly rose from salesman to general manager, trebling the profitability of the BMW franchise in East Lancashire he went to work for.
After being made managing director he oversaw an MBO of the dealership, which rebranded at Hillendale Land Rover in 2006.
“I rented an office on the outskirts of Rochdale with a brief case, lap top, one desk, a land line and no idea of what I was going to do,” he said.
Restrictive covenants prevented him doing anything around cars for two years but a chance meeting with Joe Greenwood ended with the pair launching Revilo Automotive.
