??From Mom-and-Pop Car Lot to Major Dealership Group??

■Car Pros CEO Matthew Phillips tells how he became a megadealer.

Car Pros began 31 years ago as a small mom-and-pop used-car lot south of Seattle. It’s now a megadealer operation.

CEO Matthew Phillips, his parents, and dealership co-founders Ken and Robin Phillips built that shop into a dealership group with more than 700 employees and nine stores representing Kia, Hyundai, Honda, BMW, and Mini in Western Washington and Southern California.

■Car Pros began 31 years ago as a small mom-and-pop used-car lot south of Seattle. It’s now a megadealer operation. CEO Matthew Phillips and his parents and dealership co-founders Ken and Robin Phillips built that shop?into a dealership group with more than 700 employees and nine stores representing Kia, Hyundai, Honda, BMW and Mini in Western Washington and Southern California.

■Car Pros collectively sells more than?25,000 cars per year with annual sales of over $1 billion. It currently ranks as the top Kia U.S. retailer, having sold more than 175,000 new vehicles for the South Korean brand since 2001Phillips draws from his finance background and organizational psychology studies to form a management style that is both performance-driven and empathic to customers and employees alike. His business has won an award for diversity efforts

■In a WardsAuto interview, Phillips talks about what makes his organization tick. Here’s an edited version of the Q&A. WardsAuto: It all started?as a two-staffer used-car lot.

Phillips: The two were my mom and dad. I washed cars there on weekends as a kid. They grew it to a nice-sized used-car operation.

In 1999, right after I left college, we got our first new car dealership, a Hyundai store in an old gas station in Lacy, WA (pop. 53,526). At the time, Hyundai was a great opportunity because many dealers weren’t paying attention to their Hyundai dealerships.

The only new vehicle option was selling Hyundais, so we went in with a lot of drive and focus. Ours became one of the top 10 Hyundai dealerships in the nation, even though it was in a small town.

In 2001, we got a Kia store in Tacoma and continued to make it from there.

Our Kia store was No.1 for many years. In 2004, we expanded into Southern California with Kia stores. Five years ago, my dad stepped back, and I took over the business.

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