Lithia to provide Shift with capital and facilities to grow
Shift Technologies has quickly become one of the largest used car retailers in California. By investing heavily into its online platform and sophisticated pricing algorithms, Shift continues to streamline the car buying and car selling experiences and make them much more user-friendly.
Lithia is the fourth largest auto retailer in the US, operating 160+ stores in 18 states. With this new partnership, Lithia will be able to provide greater vehicle storage capacity, reconditioning facilities, and access to capital to expedite Shift’s growth and expansion.
News roundup: Shift & Lithia’s new partnership
The recent $140 million Series D funding and partnership has been making the rounds. Learn more from a selection of news articles below.
Auto Portal Watch: Shift, a US-based online used car marketplace, raises $140 million
Auto Remarketing: Lithia leads $140 million financing round in Shift
Auto Remarketing: Lithia investment, partnership can drive Shift scalability
In an early meeting between the companies, the management at Lithia Motors posed this question to the co-CEOs of Shift, an online automotive marketplace: “Since all this stuff is so good and it works so well, what’s preventing you from scaling this thing quicker?”
The answer Lithia got back “really opened our eyes up to the potential synergies between the two companies,” Lithia chief executive Bryan DeBoer said in a conference call with investment analysts last week.
Automotive News (subscription required, but accessible for free if you search via Google): Lithia invests in alliance with used-car startup
Shift Technologies’ appraisal algorithms and consumer-controlled online platform helped it quickly become one of the largest used-car retailers around Silicon Valley. So Lithia Motors Inc. CEO Bryan DeBoer posed this question in a meeting with Shift’s senior leadership: Why haven’t you scaled up that model at a faster pace?
“They said they didn’t have the capacity of storage, reconditioning facilities and access to capital,” DeBoer told Automotive News. “Three items Lithia has easy access to.” …
Continue reading “Shift and Lithia’s Strategic Partnership in the News”