Drew Martin
When you pioneer an industry, there will be copycats that come and go. Bring a Trailer created an entire segment and upended the auction industry by moving it to an online town square in the most public way possible — no sealed bids, no back-room dealing.
On the latest episode of The Drivecast, Howard Swig, President of Bring a Trailer, told The Drive, “So you can’t expect to have the big moat forever and ever,” when asked about Cars & Bids and whether it has hurt business.
Swig compared the online automotive auction space to the streaming industry. “Yeah. I mean, we got obviously a really nice head start, right? I mean, Netflix was 100% of streaming forever and now they’re 50% and you have the other folks. So you can’t expect to have the big moat forever and ever,” Swig said.
On whether Cars & Bids has hurt business and what keeps Bring a Trailer ahead, Swig said, “I think that the best auction platform tends to get the best cars, and I think we’re still there. But yeah, for the first time, the last, I would say two years, for the first time ever, there’s other options and viable competitors that buyers and sellers can go to instead of us. So yeah, we track that. There’s good folks running those companies. They’re trying their damnedest to grow volume and quality and all the stuff that we already know. It’s not easy though.”
Cars & Bids isn’t the first competitor to emerge, but it is one of the few that has stuck around and given Bring a Trailer real competition. “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. We used to have a running list of whatever, copycat auction sites, and most of them have shuttered, but it’s like over 100. You guys probably remember the first wave was kind of ‘16, ‘17, ‘18. And then a couple, RM tried their hand at online auctions for a couple years there,” Swig said.
At one point even Porsche tried its hand with an online auction platform. “Yeah. Marqued was the Porsche back thing. Maybe there was another one. There’s a ton, like I said, there was literally a hundred folks that have tried in some form or another to do online auctions,” Swig noted.
For now, Swig views Cars & Bids as Bring a Trailer’s largest active competitor. “So Cars & Bids has emerged as probably the most viable site that is self-sustaining and they’ve got market share and they’re trying to grow. I’m sure they’re a competitor and they’ve done a good job and you look at the stuff they’re selling, we’d probably sell most of the cars that are appearing on their site,” Swig said.
As for sustaining Bring a Trailer’s lead, Swig added, “So we got to keep doing what we’re doing, listing great cars, giving people good experiences, and that daily action on Bring a Trailer. I lived for it 10 years ago. I still live for it today. That is something, the entertainment value, one hand washes the other, it all goes hand in hand. If you list a bunch of boring 2018 F-150s, people probably aren’t going to be too stoked about that, but as long as we keep the curation up and have this rabid community that still loves commenting, I think it puts us in a good place going forward.”
Bring a Trailer continues to generate headline-worthy auction results — including $2 million Ford GTs — and Swig has made clear that those record-breaking sale prices are legitimate. With a deeply engaged community, a strong curation standard, and more than a decade of brand equity, Bring a Trailer appears well-positioned to hold its ground even as the competitive field continues to grow.
