Celebrating 15 Years – Our Founder Chris McDermott recounts how it all began at Baytree and just how far we’ve come.

This year we are celebrating our 15th?anniversary here at Baytree. We’ve come a long way from where we started in 2007.

For the last 9 years we have been serving our customers from our headquarters in Derby and are now the go-to company for prestige and performance cars in the UK.

I set up Baytree 15 years ago, trading cars from a room in my house, following a period at Astle BMW, as Head of business. After turning over ￡500,000 in the first trading year, I was offered an opportunity to hire a desk at Orchid IT Solutions and bought and sold cars on Autotrader from there. Initially, it was just me with a computer, buying and selling but it quickly expanded to a team of six.

A friend was selling his company while I wanted to expand mine, so he decided to invest in Baytree. Thereafter, an opportunity arose to move to Donington Park race circuit. Our first showroom was on Redgate corner in a tiny office next to the track. We had 20 cars, from BMWs and Mercedes to Audis and Porsches. However, we needed more accessible premises and in 2013 we came to our current site in Derby.

Just when Baytree was at a crossroads as I was setting up the base in Castle Donington, my beloved son Frazer, who bravely fought a brain tumour for 20 years, sadly passed away. We then moved to our current showroom in Derby, we were living hand to mouth, not knowing whether the company would go on, but Frazer’s strength in adversity gave me a real determination to succeed.

The prestige element, which is now a major selling point, began after one contact asked us to sell a Ferrari 458 for ￡200,000. Thereafter, the supercar market snowballed.

Recent years have seen us expand the number of cars we have on sale as well as developing and expanding our team. We have also seen unprecedented growth during the pandemic due to an uplift in the used car market. Independent dealers like us were able to move quickly to fulfil demand, whilst main dealers struggled to get hold of new stock.

To mark our anniversary and to ensure we can offer our clients as much choice?as possible, we are investing in refurbishing our showroom and increasing our storage facilities. The works are expected to complete next month and will allow us to showcase more vehicles in our showroom, stocking around 120 cars on site.

The expansion will also feature a dedicated handover area that will allow us to add even more pizazz to those special moments.

I’m very proud of what we have achieved here at Baytree and we are looking forward to what the next 15-years holds for us.