Todd Ingersoll is one of those guys you would buy a used car from ”“ if you could find him on the car lot that is. He really isn”™t there or in the new-car showroom much anymore. He”™s too busy running his Saturn of Danbury and Saturn of Watertown dealerships ”“ Saturn calls them retail stores ”“ or helping run a minority-owned Chevrolet/Cadillac/Saturn showroom in Harlem, or sitting on the board of directors of the General Motors Minority Dealers Association.
“I”™m a Hispanic dealer,” Ingersoll said of his heritage passed along to him by his mother. “My middle name is Aurelio.”
But what has been keeping him really busy the past few months has been the construction and outfitting of his new Saturn showroom on Federal Road in Danbury, about a mile from the old, smaller facility tucked into a string of nine new-car showrooms. His new facility, however, isn”™t just another Saturn retail store. It”™s Saturn”™s official flagship store, the first in the nation designed from the ground up by Saturn to reflect its revamped methods of selling its newly expanded line of autos.
Saturn “will fly retailers in from all over the country to see what our brand should look like down the road,” Ingersoll said. The showroom will also be used for TV commercials as Saturn positions itself to compete with Honda. Beginning next year, each of the car company”™s 440 showrooms will be renovated in the Danbury store”™s image.
And to further underline the importance of the Danbury store, Troy Clark, president of General Motors North America and second in command at GM, and Jill Lajack, president of Saturn, will attend a grand opening later this month or early next month. “We”™re going to fly some product in from Europe and have invited the national media to unveil the new face of Saturn to the public,” Ingersoll said.
Â
Setting the stage
When Saturn debuted its single-car line in 1990, the company considered its showrooms to be retail stores with a salaried sales staff and a consumer-friendly, no-haggle approach that eliminated the adversarial ritual of other car dealers. Back then, its demographic was more interested in value and pricing; today”™s demographic is more interested in style and driving experience. “In today”™s market, customers are smart and informed,” Ingersoll said, and come to the showroom having already Googled their comparison shopping online.
In fact, Saturn customers will be able to continue their online research at computer stations in the newly designed store, which includes a concierge desk where a receptionist welcomes the guests ”“ “We don”™t call them customers,” Ingersoll said ”“ and determines their preferences. “Some want to be guided through the sales process, some want to do it themselves and some just want to save time. This new setting allows you to do all three of those processes. We”™re trying to let the guests drive the sales process.”
Saturn announced it would change its retail design elements at just about the time Ingersoll was beginning to lay out his new, 30,000-square-foot facility. Three years earlier, the lease on his 15,000-square-foot Saturn store on three-quarters of an acre was running out, and he began to hunt for a new site. He settled on 10 acres that had once been the Danbury Drive-In theater, and which is now approved for three buildings. “Down the road, I”™ll look for at least one other franchise on the property, something that would complement Saturn and its approach to business without cutting into its core base,” Ingersoll said.
Â
The timing of planning and building his new showroom proved providential, and it was chosen by Saturn to be the flagship store. “They wanted a new design that mirrored their new product portfolio,” he said. “I joined one of the design teams that helped pick the furniture and layout for the stores.”
During Saturn”™s research, “they put together groups of people to go out and shop different retail stores and find out who”™s doing it right, what makes them unique,” Ingersoll said. What they came away with is that successful retailers create a sort of theatrical piece, with a set, props, actors, costumes and a script. Go into an REI outdoor clothing and supply store and the set includes a pond where water purification systems are demonstrated. The actors at an Apple computer store are young kids in black T-shirts with lanyards around their necks. The props at a Williams-Sonoma store are pots and pans and dishes.
Saturn, he said, was able to start with a clean slate for its entire approach to the new showrooms and sales techniques to sell its expanded portfolio of cars. “The play has changed,” he said. “How do the set and props change?
“The whole idea is to add new props,” such as a user-controlled video-projection setup that uses a car”™s hood as a screen and shows the computer-assisted drawing of the car, how the crash structure works, even the moving engine inside the car. But all those bells and whistles aren”™t worth a fig if nobody wants the cars. “You”™ve got to build very good cars, which we do,” Ingersoll said.
Â
Community involvement
Ingersoll grew up in Bethel and after graduating from Bethel High School in1988, “went to UConn for a while and decided to join the Navy because I just wanted to travel and try some different things.” While at basic training in Pensacola, Fla., he met his future wife, Tami. After two and one-half years of active duty, he returned home and began attending Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, majoring in business management, and began looking for a job.
“Saturn was just starting, and they had this ad running that they were starting this new dealership,” he said. “I thought, ”˜Gee, while I”™m going to school, I can do this part time,”™” and he signed on as a salesman, noting: “We call them consultants. I took to this business like a duck to water.”
The short version is that Ingersoll quickly worked his way up the ladder to financial services at Danbury after the franchise owner opened Saturn of Watertown in 1993. “I would have been about 23 or 24 years old and I was running the facility,” he said.
A year later he married Tami ”“ the couple live in Newtown and have three children ”“ and he eventually became executive manager of both facilities and then, in 2001, became the retailer ”“ “Saturn”™s way of saying ”˜dealer.”™” ”“ of both the Danbury and Watertown stores, which operate under the Ingersoll Automotive banner. The Danbury store, he said, has the highest Saturn sales volume in the state, and both the Danbury and Waterbury stores have received five Saturn Summit Awards, “which in the Saturn community is the highest recognition you can have, based on certain criteria like profitability, sales penetration, training and community involvement.”
Ingersoll”™s community involvement is sometimes unique, ranging from offering to fill the gas tank of a Saturn bearing the Danbury Saturn logo he sees at a local filling station, or pulling together a local church choir, the Danbury High School ROTC class and a local pastor for the dedication of the 140-foot flagpole in front of his new Saturn store last month.
The flagpole, he said, is the tallest in the state and can be seen for several miles. But more important than its size was the opportunity Ingersoll took at the dedication to announce “that we”™ll maintain the car of any parent or spouse that lives in the immediate Danbury area with a son or daughter or spouse serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.” Saturn of Danbury, he said, will provide “oil changes and general maintenance no matter what the make or model until they return.”
Â
Â
