Australia important beyond volume, says Ferrari

Never have more new Ferraris been purchased Down Under, but the man now in charge of the marque in Australasia and the region says the local market has relevance beyond volume.

Dieter Knechtel is acting head of Ferrari is Australia, along with his regional responsibilities. Down Under for the unveiling of Australia’s first road-legal hypercar, the Ferrari SF90 Stradale, Knechtel took over after Herbert Appelroth left the position of Australian and Japanese boss unexpectedly. Knechtel is yet to name a replacement locally.

Speaking to carsales, Knechtel commented on the rude health of Ferrari’s Australian operations – up almost 10 per cent in a year when many less expensive marques are dealing with double-digit percentage sales slumps – but made it clear there was relevance to the brand beyond bums on seats.

“Australia has been growing very, very well over the past four years and reached a certain level that can match many of the other important markets in the world [and] within the region of Asia Pacific -- that includes all the markets that I'm in charge of.

“[But] Volume is just one KPI… Even if you're not striving so much for volume, you are striving for consistency in what we do. And we would like to also make sure that the volume is the result of the good work that we have done in Australia. [Which] I think refers also to the development of the [dealer] network,” Knechtel explained.

“We have nice coverage now, everywhere where we want to be. The dealers have become very mature and knowledgeable about Ferrari. We have also, I think we proved a lot about [the importance] with them, of customer experience,” Knechtel stated.

“We're putting together nice programs in Australia – not only in Italy but other big places including Australia and hosting so many drive events. So the network is doing well, which is very, very important,” he commented.

Although Knechtel’s local tenure has been short, it’s easy to sense a change in attitude to local sales.

In previous iterations top-shelf Ferrari models have been ‘reserved’ for current owners. Knechtel, in contrast, has made it clear the order book for the latest, hottest Ferrari, the 1000hp SF90, is open to newcomers.

And in contrast to Mercedes-Benz, which is experimenting locally with an online agency model with its EQC electric SUV, the concept of the dealership model remains important to Ferrari, Knechtel says.

Indeed, he expects local Ferrari dealerships to up weight both skill sets and the number of personnel.

“We can't go with every trend that you see in the market by minimalising. On the contrary, we are enlarging our teams in the dealerships,” he said.

“We are putting even more focus on training of our people and we want to create places of communication where the [customers] feel at home. So I think it's actually the [opposite] trend [for us].”

Knechtel says next steps are for the full local Ferrari dealer network to embrace the latest in corporate ID as well as the company’s impressive digital visualisation tools. In this respect, the local network will likely lead the region and markets like the USA.

“We have started this year and we are going to complete next year [2020] the upgrade of our dealerships – which is related to the new corporate identity that focuses very much on the experience in the showroom and in the topic of digitalisation and end-to-end customer journey,” he explained.

“And that is going to be something that you will see during the course of 2020 in every single dealership in Australia.

“It makes a huge difference. It's a very important step for us also in a direction that we would go – more engagement with clients rather to be just a point of sale,” Knechtel explained.