Mercedes Says Over 11,000 Cars Sold Through Retail Of The Future

Mercedes-Benz has revealed that it has sold over 11,000 vehicles under its new Retail Of The Future business model since it was introduced last year. The company had first announced its new business model in June last year under which Mercedes-Benz would directly sell its vehicles to customers. Under the new model, Mercedes itself would own the entire stock of cars rather than dispatching them in numbers to dealerships. Customers would then in turn be provided a single pan India price and be invoiced by the company directly with dealer partners now only facilitating test drives, deliveries, bookings and after-sales services. The new sales model was rolled out in late October 2021.

Speaking at the unveiling of the new C-class Martin Schwenk, MD and CEO of Mercedes-Benz India said, “I am more than ever convinced we are on the right track to do what we wanted to do with our Retail Of The Future.”

The Mercedes-Benz E-Class is currently the company's most popular model in the country.

Schwenk also revealed that the company had received good feedback from customers over the new sales models.

“From a customer angle, we get very strong feedback with our customer rating which is done on a five-star base. We say that 4.6 is a very good result so our customers are in with us on the sales models, they buy the vehicle via this sales model,” Schwenk said.

Also read: New Mercedes-Benz C-Class Debuts In India Ahead Of May 10 Launch

Putting the numbers into perspective, Mercedes had revealed that it had retailed over 1,000 units in a little over a month after its launch in early December. This would mean that the carmaker has averaged sales of around 1,600 vehicles a month (10,000 units in six months starting December 2021) via its new sales model.

However, while the numbers have been positive, the company is struggling with semiconductor chip shortages and shipping shortages. The company revealed that waiting periods for its cars ranged from 2 months to 2 years depending on the model with over 5,000 pending orders. The carmaker had already announced pending orders of over 4,000 units at the time of announcing its Q1 2022 sales results.