Dale Pollak

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Dale Pollak is an American entrepreneur, a former automobile dealer, a best-selling author, and a thought leader in the retail automotive industry.

Early life[edit]

Pollak was born on December 23, 1958, to parents Len and Beth Pollak, in Gary, Ind. He was the youngest of three boys in the family. Pollak’s father was a prominent auto dealer in Northwest Indiana, having owned an independent auto auction and dealership before opening Len Pollak Buick-Opel-AMC in 1969 in Gary..^[1]

Like many children of dealers, Pollak grew up working various jobs in and around the dealership. Pollak sold his first car at the age of 16 after he graduated from William A. Wirt High School, in Gary, in 1976. Pollak then attended Indiana University, graduating in 1980 with a four-year Business Administration degree from the university’s Kelley School of Business.

Career[edit]

After college, Pollak joined the family business in Gary, Ind. He worked in the dealership during the day and pursued a law degree at DePaul University at night. He earned a law degree and received the American Jurisprudence Award four times, an honor marking his top performance in his class.

In 1985, Pollak and his father pursued an opportunity to open a Cadillac dealership, Pollak Cadillac, in Elmhurst, IL. They sold the Gary dealership and relocated to Elmhurst. Pollak served as co-owner of the dealership, focusing primarily on the dealership’s used vehicle operations. The dealership earned General Motors' Five Star award in 1990.^[2]

It was during this time that a degenerative eye condition that had manifested earlier in Pollak’s life worsened. Pollak had trouble seeing and test-driving the used vehicles the dealership purchased and sold. To compensate, Pollak focused intently on the financials of each vehicle, treating them as distinct investments.

In the 1990s, the Cadillac brand lost significant market share in the luxury vehicle segment to import rivals including Acura, BMW, Lexus and Mercedes. The decline^[3] prompted Pollak to add a GMC Truck franchise and increase the Elmhurst dealership’s focus on selling used vehicles. By the late 1990s, the dealership’s emphasis on used vehicles, and Pollak’s interest in automotive technology, led him to become an early user of third-party classified sites like Cars.com and Autotrader, which were gaining in popularity.

Pollak’s first entrepreneurial opportunity arrived as he was exploring new ways to showcase vehicles in the dealership showroom using a kiosk. He realized that the technology that enabled the kiosk to display vehicle photos and descriptions in his showroom might offer a time-saving opportunity for dealers to syndicate and showcase their inventory on third-party classified sites. The idea led to a partnership with Austin, TX-based Digital Motorworks. The company found early success selling its technology to third-party classified sites, rising public dealer groups like AutoNation and several OEMs, who were also interested in a more efficient way to present their vehicles on their websites.^[4]

Based on the success, Pollak sold the Elmhurst dealership and joined Digital Motorworks full-time as part of the executive leadership team. In 2002, Pollak and team sold Digital Motorworks to automotive accounting firm, ADP.^[5] As part of the acquisition, Pollak and other Digital Motorworks team members joined ADP (now known as CDK) under a three-year agreement.

mPower Auto[edit]

A year into his Pollak’s tenure with ADP, he left the company and pursued a second entrepreneurial opportunity. He envisioned a mobile phone-oriented technology that would help dealers focus on the “buy” side of used cars, wherein dealers appraised vehicles using valuation guides from Black Book, Kelley Blue Book and NADA (National Automobile Dealers Association). Pollak believed if dealers acquired vehicles more consistently aligned to their valuation guide of choice, a practice he had developed at Pollak Cadillac, they would achieve better outcomes from the used vehicles they acquired and retailed.

mPower Auto was the first mobile-oriented appraisal tool in the industry. Pollak tapped a former comptroller at Pollak Cadillac, Mike Chiovari, to develop the technology that enabled dealers to enter a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on their phone, see the vehicle’s valuation from a guidebook and enter an appraisal figure. mPower would score each appraisal based on how close the appraisal value compared to the dealer’s preferred guidebook valuation. If an appraisal received a low score, mPower would send a text message to the dealer or manager.

Pollak pitched the mPower solution to dealers in the greater Chicago area and surrounding states. Some signed up for the tool. But most resisted the tool and its scoring system. Dealers believed they knew best how to appraise and value a vehicle for their dealerships and individual appraisers did not like mPower’s scoring system, which effectively graded their decisions.^[6]

When he wasn’t selling mPower to dealers, Pollak spent his time coaching current mPower customers on how to get more value from the tool. Time and again, Pollak would see dealers using mPower to buy vehicles more “right” according to their objectives, but failing to find better financial outcomes from the vehicles they sold. Through the discussions, Pollak realized that even if dealers acquired vehicles more “on the money” using mPower, they could effectively erase the value of acquiring vehicles more correctly if they priced their vehicles too high for a local market. When this occurred, the vehicles did not sell and depreciation, as well as ongoing holding costs, wiped out any profit potential.

To help dealers understand the pricing inefficiency, Pollak would compare a dealer’s vehicles to similar vehicles advertised on Autotrader and Cars.com. The ongoing consultative exercise led Pollak to rethink and re-develop mPower to include a vehicle pricing component—one that instantly compared a vehicle to similar, competing vehicles currently advertised on Autotrader and Cars.com and available in a local market.

vAuto and Velocity[edit]

In 2005, Pollak and Chiovari began to build the appraising and pricing technology, tapping former colleagues from DMI to handle solution coding and development. The solution, which they named vAuto, expanded on the “buy” side technology from mPower Auto and added a retail pricing tool.^[7]

The team built vAuto to support a strategic theory Pollak had developed from his time working with mPower clients. The Velocity Method of Management theory aimed to upturn conventional used vehicle pricing wisdom, wherein dealers typically applied a standard mark-up above their cost to optimize the front-end gross profit they achieved when they sold the vehicle. By contrast, the Velocity method advocated that dealers price their vehicles in relation to competing vehicles in a local market, not just their acquisition cost. Velocity’s principal objective was to help dealers retail each vehicle as quickly as possible to maximize gross profit and volume, while mitigating the risks of aged, loss-producing vehicles that weren’t selling.^[8]

Pollak’s Velocity method also introduced localized, retail market data-based metrics to help dealers base their appraisal and pricing decision on current conditions rather than their experience and instinct. The vAuto solution produced a Cost to Market, Price to Market and Market Days Supply metric for each vehicle. Dealers used the metrics to determine how much to pay to acquire a used vehicle and how to price and position each vehicle among other competing used vehicles available in a market.

Early on, Pollak encountered stiff resistance from dealers as he pitched the vAuto solution. At the time, many dealers viewed third party classified sites and the Internet itself as disruptive to the traditional way of selling used vehicles, where prices were often only disclosed if/when a customer visited a dealership in person and showed interest in a specific vehicle. Many dealers also distrusted the reliability of the data the vAuto solution provided.

Pollak addressed the resistance in his first book, Velocity: From the Front Line to the Bottom Line, which he published in 2007.^[9] The book and the success of early adopters helped vAuto gain a foothold in the market. By the end of 2007, five of the six largest retailers of used vehicles in the United States were using the solution.^[10]

vAuto achieved a critical mass of customers as the 2008-2009 financial crisis took hold of the U.S. economy. Across the country, new vehicle sales plummeted amid an economic recession and many dealers shifted their operational emphasis to used vehicles.^[11] They were looking for a solution that would help them sell more used vehicles faster and boost their profitability. Dealers also appreciated two other industry innovations vAuto offered—the ability to pay month-to-month to use the solution and vAuto’s Performance Management team, a group of former dealers and used vehicle managers who coached vAuto clients on how to use vAuto most effectively.

Cox Automotive acquisition[edit]

By 2010, more than 3,000 auto dealers in the United States were using vAuto and the Velocity method to manage their used vehicles. In the summer of 2010, Pollak and other vAuto leaders agreed to sell the company to Cox Automotive’s Autotrader, which announced the acquisition for $250 million in September that year.^[12]

Since the acquisition, Pollak has remained with Cox Automotive as an executive vice president focused on product innovation for the retail automotive industry.^[13] He has been instrumental in leading the development of several industry-leading solutions—Conquest, a new vehicle inventory management system^[14]; Stockwave, a tool to help dealers efficiently acquire wholesale auction vehicles^[15]; and Upside, a digital online marketplace where dealers sell and acquire wholesale vehicles.^[16]

In 2017, Pollak began to question whether the Velocity method and the vAuto system were continuing to serve the best interests of dealers. That year, NADA reported that dealers achieved a -$2 average net profit per vehicle retailed—the first time the association’s dealership financial data showed that the average dealer sold record numbers of used vehicles and lost money. Pollak suspected that the industry-wide use of the Velocity method, coupled with an ever-more volatile market, might be resulting in less-than-optimal outcomes for dealers.^[17]

Pollak commissioned Cox Automotive data scientists with determining the variables that would best predict a used vehicle’s probability of selling within a seven-day timeframe. The effort led to two key understandings—that vehicles depreciated and lost their value faster than the typical 45- to 60-day timeframe most dealers regarded as the optimal shelf-life of a used vehicle, and some vehicles held their value even longer. The understandings led to the development of a new solution, known as ProfitTime GPS, that assesses each used vehicle’s investment value potential, and recommends appraising and pricing values to help dealers achieve the optimal turn rate and profit potential for each vehicle.

The development work also led Pollak to formulate a new strategy for managing used vehicles based on the new data science, known as Variable Management. Pollak detailed the Variable Management strategy in his fifth book, Gross Deception: A Tale of Shifting Markets, Shrinking Margins and the New Truth of Used Vehicle Profitability.^[18]

As of 2023, Pollak continues to advocate that dealers move beyond Velocity to Variable Management. In industry press interviews, Pollak describes the pivot to Variable Management as a bold decision for an established company like Cox Automotive, noting companies such as Border’s Books and Kodak that failed to reinvent themselves as market conditions changed.

Authorship[edit]

Pollak has published six books that address the evolution of vehicle inventory management technology and its application for dealers for the retail and wholesale markets. His books have all earned Amazon “best-seller” status in the retail automotive industry category.^[19] In addition to books, Pollak writes regularly on his eponymous blog.

Awards[edit]

Pollak’s been recognized by several organizations for his work in the retail automotive industry and active participation in charity organizations. Key awards include:

2010: Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award^[20]

2011: Chicago Entrepreneur Hall of Fame^[21]

2013: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Award (#8589212) Vehicle desirability and stocking based on live markets^[22]

2015: Kelley School of Business (Indiana University) Poling Chair^[23]

2019: Automotive News All-Star for Software Innovation^[24]

2021: Entrepreneur of the Year, Indiana University^[25]

2022: Ring of Honor, National Independent Auto Dealers Association^[26]

Bibliography[edit]

Velocity: From the Front Line to the Bottom Line, New Year Publishing, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-9760095-7-3

Velocity 2.0: Paint to Pixels, New Year, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-9671565-9-0

Velocity Overdrive: The Road to Reinvention, New Year, 2012, ISBN: 978-1-9335547389

Like I See It: Obstacles and Opportunities Shaping the Future of Retail Automotive, vAuto Press, 2017, ISBN: 978-0-9992427-0-4

Gross Deception: A Tale of Shifting Markets, Shrinking Margins and the New Truth of Used Car Profitability, vAuto Press, 2020, ISBN: 978-0-9992427-3-5

Whole Truth: A New Money-Making Approach to Wholesale, the Most Misunderstood Side of Your Business, vAuto Press, 2022, ISBN: 978-0-9992427-8-0

Personal life[edit]

Pollak and his wife, Nancy, live in Austin, TX. They have three sons, Austin, who works in the fashion industry in London; Alex, who works in real estate private equity in Dallas; and Samson, who works in technology sales and entrepreneurship in Austin. Pollak and his wife actively support several charities, including the Foundation Fighting Blindness, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation,<^[27] the University of Chicago Kovler Diabetes Research Center and others. Nancy Pollak has long been active in philanthropy and served multiple community board positions, including past president of the Hinsdale (IL) District 86 school board.

References[edit]

External links[edit]

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