Browns of Richmond began with 23 cars, no outside investment and a first year in which the fledgling dealership “ate cash”.
Two years later, founders Fraser Brown and Tim Roelich are targeting turnover of up to £27 million by combining used EV expertise, disciplined buying and data-led management with an insistently human approach to customers.
Browns of Richmond whose launch was officiated by prime minister and Richmond MP Rishi Sunak on Yorkshire Day, August 1, in 2024, has travelled considerably further than its founders originally envisaged.
The independent dealership began with little certainty that its decision to specialise in used electric vehicles would pay off but now employs 31 people, sells between 80 and 100 EVs in a typical month and has recorded monthly turnover of more than £2 million for three consecutive months.
Projecting that performance across a full year puts Browns on course for turnover approaching £27m, although co-founder Fraser Brown prefers to temper that figure with a more cautious expectation of “north of £20m”.
Either would represent striking progress for a business which has just celebrated its second anniversary.
“Our first year was probably the most difficult thing I have ever done in business,” Brown says. “The business just ate cash. You would not expect a dealership to make money in year one, but we could not afford not to make money.”
The experience has given Brown, who also runs automotive consultancy MotorVise, a new appreciation of the pressures facing the retailers he advises.
“The biggest thing operating my own dealership has taught me is cash flow,” he says. “In the first 12 months it was terrifying. I take my responsibility to the team very seriously and knowing there is enough money in the bank to pay people is incredibly important to me.”
From a side hustle to £2m a month
The business had an unassuming beginning. Tim Roelich, who had previously worked with Brown and had joined his MotorVise consultancy after leaving the franchised dealer sector, needed to replace his lease car.
Rather than pay retail price, he asked whether he could open a BCA account through MotorVise and buy a car at auction. That conversation quickly developed into the idea of buying and selling a handful of vehicles locally.
“I missed buying and selling cars,” Roelich says. “It is what I have always done. We started looking for a site where we could stock 15 or 20 cars, then found this one with capacity for around 75.
“We could not afford to fill it, so we started with 23 cars. The important message to everyone we worked with was that we wanted to grow, but we were going to do it organically.”
That organic growth has been underpinned by an unusually clear division of responsibilities.
Roelich concentrates on purchasing and vehicle knowledge, while Brown leads the people, marketing, compliance and wider management of the business.
“Most places find it difficult to buy cars, but buying is all I do,” Roelich says. “Every waking moment, when other people are playing golf or asleep, I am buying cars. I use data to support my instinct. I like to think I know what will sell, then I use the data either to verify that feeling or dispel it.”
Brown describes Roelich as “the best buyer of cars I have ever met”, while Roelich says Brown’s understanding of marketing, compliance and day-to-day business management is “second to none”. The partnership also rests on a relationship stretching back to 2005.
“There is a level of trust because we have known each other for more than 20 years,” Brown says. “Tim is utterly honest. Customers respond to that and, if they buy a car from him once, they tend to come back because what he tells them proves to be right.”
Finding the used EV opportunity
Around six months after opening, Browns decided that the vehicles it actively purchased would be entirely electric. Petrol, diesel and hybrid models are still retailed when suitable examples arrive as part exchanges, but its buying operation is now focused on EVs.
The dealership’s best month produced 110 sales, the large majority electric, while its regular EV volume has grown to between 80 and 100 cars.
Brown argues that many retailers have concentrated on the risks surrounding used EVs while overlooking their value proposition.
“By the time an EV is three years old, the depreciation curve has become much shallower,” he says. “Combine that with the fuel savings and a used EV becomes an incredibly strong proposition.
“To understand electric vehicles, you have to live and breathe them. We have driven them for years and we know the issues customers will ask about.”
Browns has developed particular strength in used Teslas and today claims to be the UK’s largest single-site retailer of used Teslas, having bought 54 through BCA in one recent month.
Volatile residual values that have caused pain elsewhere in the EV market have helped make three and four-year-old Teslas more attainable for used car customers.
The dealership aims to buy them while they remain within Tesla’s four-year vehicle warranty, allowing Browns to inspect the cars and have any issues rectified before selling them.
Roelich also rejects the idea that a used EV battery is inherently more difficult to assess than an internal combustion engine.
“With a petrol or diesel car, without taking that engine apart I cannot know the full extent of the wear inside it,” he says. “With an electric vehicle, I can plug in a diagnostic device and within 30 seconds that tell you the state of health of the battery.”
Browns has invested in diagnostic software to produce battery health information itself, while also receiving independent reports with some of the vehicles it buys. Brown says customers frequently ask for the battery health percentage during their initial inquiry, although notes that few ultimately request the certificate.
“Sometimes it is the customer testing our knowledge,” Roelich says. “They want to know whether we have the data and whether we genuinely understand the product.”
When EVs do develop faults, Brown says the problems are more likely to involve charging equipment, software or components surrounding the battery than the battery itself. That knowledge helps the sales team discuss risk without trying to pretend it does not exist.
Rural customers make stronger EV prospects
Being based in deepest North Yorkshire might appear to make Browns’ EV strategy more difficult, but Brown believes the opposite is true. The biggest barrier to EV ownership, he argues, is not distance from a public charger but the inability to charge at home.
“If you live in a flat or a terraced house without off-street parking, you may struggle,” he says. “In a rural area, people generally have more opportunity to charge at home and they often cover higher mileages because everything is further away. That means the financial benefit can be greater. Most of our customers do not use public charging regularly.”
The dealership’s reach has also extended beyond its immediate North Yorkshire market. Browns says its natural sales area now runs from Morpeth to Sheffield, while around 15% of customers travel from further afield, including Northern Ireland, Scotland, Kent and Cornwall. Word of mouth among Tesla owners has been particularly valuable.
Aftersales gives the promise credibility
Browns recognised from the outset that EV specialism would be difficult to sustain without the ability to support customers after the sale.
It therefore developed its own workshop, MOT facilities and EV-trained technical team. The operation has since been strengthened through the acquisition of Richmond Motor Services, bringing established employees, customers and Nissan expertise into the business.
Browns still looks after a substantial number of Nissan customers, particularly Leaf owners, although Brown says Tesla specialist is now a more accurate description of its position.
Aftersales is generating around £55,000 a month in labour sales, despite the dealership not yet having the three to five-year vehicle parc normally required to support a mature workshop operation.
“Aftersales is essential,” Brown says. “If you are selling EVs, you need to be able to tell customers that if they have a problem, they can bring the car back and you have technicians who can fix it.” That commitment sometimes extends beyond the strict limits of a used car warranty.
Roelich recalls a customer whose Jaguar I-Pace stopped accepting a charge around a year after purchase. A franchised dealer traced the problem to a broken wire that was not covered by the customer’s warranty.
“We picked up the bill,” he says. “She had been good enough to purchase the best warranty we could provide and we believed it was the right thing to do,” he says. “A used car warranty will always have limitations. The important part is how the retailer responds when something falls outside them.”
AI in the background, people in the foreground
The influence of Motorvise – the consultancy that Fraser Brown leads – is most visible in Browns’ use of operational data.
The dealership has developed an AI-based reporting system that brings together information from Autotrader, Cap HPI, its DMS, CRM, accounts, website, Google Vehicle Ads and wider marketing activity.
It monitors stock levels, pricing, advert views, inquiries, sales activity, ageing stock and whether leads have been correctly recorded in the CRM. Brown says it can predict with around 90% accuracy which individual vehicles will sell during the following week.
The same approach has helped Browns reduce average vehicle preparation time to four working days using MotorVise’s Vehicle Progressor system.
Yet Brown draws a firm boundary around where automation should end. “We do AI very well, but we do not give AI to our customers. We give people to our customers,” he insists. “Everything that is not customer-facing should be automated wherever possible. If it is customer-facing, it should remain human.”
That makes receptionist Linda one of the most important people in the dealership, Brown says. She provides an immediate welcome, directs customers to the right person and helps establish the first impression on which the remainder of the visit is built.
The showroom itself has been designed around that experience.The premises feel closer to a boutique hotel lounge than a conventional used car dealership with comfortable furnishings, warm, low-level lighting and a barista-style coffee station. Background sound and acoustic panels allow customers to hold conversations without feeling exposed. That all creates a relaxed, hospitality-led atmosphere that dispenses with the clinical atmosphere of a traditional glass palace.
“Everything about car sales is about people, not cars,” Brown says. “The car is the outcome of a conversation with a human being.”
Can the culture be replicated?
That people-first philosophy extends into Browns’ recruitment and its relationship with the community of Richmond. The business has supported 25 local clubs and events and worked with more than 300 schoolchildren since opening. One initiative funded an indoor stage for children performing at the town’s Christmas market, allowing them to remain warm and dry.
Brown believes that community involvement and customer reputation were important factors in Browns being named Rising Star at the 2025 Autotrader Retailer Awards and has accumulated more than 500 customer reviews across Google, Autotrader and Trustpilot, almost all of them five-star.
The next question is whether the formula can be reproduced elsewhere.
Brown is considering the longer-term potential for additional locations, although no decision has been made. Any new site would need to be far enough away to avoid cannibalising Richmond’s market while being capable of recreating its buying expertise, workshop support and culture.
For Roelich, simply acquiring enough suitable stock would present a major challenge as a second operation matching Richmond’s volume could require the business to purchase six cars every day.
Finding another buyer with the knowledge, discipline and appetite to do that would not be straightforward. Nor would recreating a culture that has developed around the personalities inside the original dealership.
That is why Browns’ £27m turnover ambition, impressive though it is, may not be the most significant part of its story.
Brown has spent years advising retailers that culture, operational discipline and customer experience matter. Browns of Richmond has given him the opportunity to test that advice with his own money.
The result is a business using AI to predict its next sale, data to govern its stock and technology to move cars through preparation, while still believing that its competitive advantage begins when a customer is welcomed through the door.
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