AKD taking advantage of boom in used car market

The 2024 AKD World Luxury Car Show was held on May 27 at the AKD Center in the North Hongqiao Business District. — Li Pin

Li Pin and Yang Yang

AKD, a leading used-car company, is embracing trans-formation of the industry by scaling production and digi-talized management.

An important link in the automobile industry chain, the trade in used cars is be-coming standardized and professional.

At AKD’s center in Jiading’s North Hongqiao Business Dis-trict, the thousands of cars on show include Porsche, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi, Land-Rover, Toyota, and new-energy vehicle brands such as Tesla, NIO and Li Auto.

“Live-streaming is a good way to sell cars. AKD Shanghai runs about 130 live-streaming sales events monthly,” said Zhu Xia, head of the Shanghai center. “And it performs well. About 30 percent of our total sales are now achieved through live-streaming events.”

Digitalized management is also being applied at AKD and covers the entire lifecycle of auto consumption.

Each automobile at the cen-ter has a condition report. Through scanning a QR code, customers are able to learn a vehicle’s maintenance, insur-ance and renewal records.

An online platform has been set up to synchronize online and offline car information and offer recommendations.

“Digitalized management offers clear information and promotes standardized devel-opment,” said Zhu. “Hopefully, used-car trading on our plat-form in the future will be as convenient as buying a cellphone on an e-commerce platform.”

Zhu added: “We have totally abandoned the traditional rental service mode, neither are we an agency. We have established our own brand, exhibition halls, and brick and mortar stores, to offer a high-end second-hand car shopping experience.”

AKD is also organizing a 500-strong pre-sales and after-sales team. Some will be responsible for car re-newal, which requires 360 testing, certification and re-newal steps. Each used car, over a period of seven days and assisted by 10 senior technicians, will have its ap-pearance, inner decoration and functions restored before being ready for sale.

“We’ve been carrying out a buy-it-now service for more than 10 years,” Zhu said. “We offer customers a good price after thoroughly judging a car’s condition, its mileage and the market.

“When purchasing a used car, we assure the sellers that we won’t have a gross profit margin higher than 5 percent. If we do, then 50 percent of the additional part will be returned to the seller.”

Car registration can be ac-complished on the same day at AKD and the whole process might be completed as fast as within 30 minutes.

Used car trading is set to play a bigger role as the na-tion’s car market continues to expand. In 2023, the accu-mulated transaction volume of used cars in China was 18.4133 million, up 14.88 percent year on year. Its accu-mulated transaction amount reached 1.179 trillion yuan (US$162 billion).

AKD has served over 300,000 customers nation-wide. About 20,000 cars are transacted at AKD every year with transaction value exceed-ing 10 billion yuan. Currently, AKD is present in Shenzhen and Chengdu as well and will soon open in Tianjin.