Warm People, Cool Cars
Maserati of Minneapolis

Minneapolis is a great place to visit; good hotels, fine restaurants, museums and art galleries, parks and river front. Further afield there are picturesque towns and pleasant scenery, along with near-empty roads. And on top of all that there is Maserati of Minneapolis, one of the most friendly, open and just plain fun dealerships we have had the pleasure of visiting.

As soon as you walk through the door, a receptionist seated behind a desk greets you with a friendly smile; it is clear that they encourage rather than discourage browsing. People are welcome to come in, wander around, admire the cars and try them out – Maserati may be an exclusive brand, but at Maserati of Minneapolis, the feeling is very much one of inclusiveness.

We spent several hours hanging out at the dealership with General Managers Karl Schmidt and Barb Bowman and Marketing and Events Director Melissa Hartwell, and one of the first things we talked about was the showroom ambiance, and how they set about creating such a welcoming atmosphere. “Our vision has always been that this place should have the feel of a boutique hotel – cool, hip, personal and private,” Karl told us. “We ensure everyone is greeted as soon as they walk through the door, we let people know that the cars are here for them, whether they are here to purchase one or simply to admire them. At times we’ve played it up, such as having a sign that read: No dress code required. A lot of luxury dealers can be too protective of their cars, but we want people to be relaxed; if someone wants to sit in a car, or take one for a drive, that’s fine with us. We’ll engage people in conversation, because you always have to bear in mind that even if this person won’t buy the car, their neighbor or their boss might want to. It’s nothing fancy, it’s a straightforward, basic approach – you welcome someone, make eye contact quickly, engage with them, start talking to them.”

“We do have people who come in and start with an apology, so you can tell right away that they’re a little intimidated,” explained Barb. “So we do all we can to break that down – even before they speak to us, our receptionist will welcome them in, invite them to look around, sit in anything they would like. And we have a Polaroid camera, so if someone wants a picture of their kid sitting in a car, we can do that. We’re right next door to the Mazda dealership, which is part of our group, so customers from there often come here to take a look around. That’s fine, we’re happy to have them looking at these great cars. We want this place to feel like a small boutique – very service-oriented and very different from any other car dealership they are going to visit.”

The dealership is owned by Morrie Wagner, and on the way we had passed several other of Morrie’s dealerships; we asked about the history, and how Morrie had become so successful. “Morrie Wagner started out as an automobile mechanic in the late 1950s; he always had a fondness for imported cars,” said Karl. “He fixed Saabs in the 1960s when nobody else did, and he had Citröen – people driving those brands in Minnesota in the 1960s were pretty eccentric! He built his business on making very personal connections with people, from a service standpoint. People bought his cars and a number of them came back and supported his business ventures – he bought buildings from them, or they provided capital for the business. That was our vision when we opened our Maserati showroom – create that same personal experience. And with Morrie’s background, we go out of our way to include the service department in that experience. Our service manager is Steve Rand, and he spends about half his time in the showroom speaking to clients – he relates very well to them. Obviously at this level, people are very enthused about their cars, and very protective too, so they like to know who is in charge when their cars come in for service. Our aim is to build the brand that way, on the basis of relationships.”

“So we’re trying to create a unique showroom – to a certain extent we want it to draw interest to the brand in a similar way to a museum, but we also want it to be somewhere that a buyer will feel, whoah, this is something different,” he continued. “We’re not going to be like Mercedes-Benz or BMW – yes, they sell luxury cars but they also sell $30,000 basic transportation. It’s very hard to combine the two; you just can’t provide the same high-end personal experience as you can by controlling volume and relating to people on a one-on-one basis. It’s small details that make the difference – hand-washing the cars, individual phone calls, hand-written cards, getting to know people to the point where they feel that owning a Maserati is an experience, rather than just owning a car.”

Minneapolis may be a vibrant city, but it is still firmly part of the Midwest, which brings with it a natural conservatism which the dealership is working hard to overcome. “This is quite a conservative market, but we have found that getting cars out on the street works really well – people see them, and it makes them realize that it’s okay to have one, and drive it,” Barb told us. “We’ve been in the city for four years, so there are quite a few cars out there now, which means that people are beginning to see them in their communities. There’s a real mystique to the Maserati brand that people find attractive – when someone sees a Maserati, they know it’s something different, it’s not a car they’ve seen ten times already that day.”

“Minneapolis is changing, the dynamic is changing; according to a recent article in a local magazine, it is the seventh wealthiest city in the US, on a per-capita basis,” Karl said. “There is a concentration of Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies here, so there is a lot of wealth in this community. There are boutique hotels opening up – in the last five years we’ve had five boutique hotels open, where before that we had none. People are going to the hotel bars, they’re dressing differently – it really is starting to change. And Maserati fits perfectly into that dynamic. In the luxury market it seems that there is a never-ending quest for exclusivity – people want to go to the island that no one else has gone to, the latest restaurant, a fine boutique hotel. It seems to be about having access to something that most people simply can’t get. With Maserati, the limited production and hand-built nature of the cars simply plays into that.”

“Of course, there’s also the performance and handling aspect; I have one customer who says: ‘If you want to drive a couch, buy a Lexus – I drive a Maserati’,” continued Karl. “He was here with another customer who was deliberating, and he came out with that line. But it really is the exclusivity; it means people hold the car in a different regard. It’s the uniqueness – people will use it as their ‘event’ car, their ‘going to dinner’ car, it’s special for them.”

So how do they go about overcoming that conservatism? By doing all they can to have the cars seen out and about, by supporting local charities, and by partnering with select local companies who tap into the same market. “We partner with some of the best hotels, restaurants and jewelry stores in the Twin Cities,” explained Melissa. “We do all that we can to get people into the cars – even where we have a car on display at a restaurant, for example, we collect the details of people and give away a prize of the use of a Maserati for a weekend. And we also lend cars to the senior staff at hotels, for example; once they know how great the car is, they will be enthused and talk about it, and word-of-mouth is worth a lot. This year we were the title sponsor of the Wheels of Italy car show here; they get around 300 vehicles turning up, cars and bikes – Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Ducati and of course Maserati. It’s great fun – it’s a free event, down by Lake Minnetonka, and people just turn up to hang out and admire the cars. And then we do what we can to help charitable causes, often at the request of our customers. For example, Tom Wicka is a great guy, and his son Nash has Duchene Muscular Dystrophy, so for the annual Bash for Nash fund-raiser we donated a one-year lease on a car. That was a big deal for us – but it was worth it, because it raised something like $40,000, and that all went to the cause.”

“It’s also a great help that we have people who are crazy about cars, dedicated to the company and good at their job,” Melissa continued. “For example, Mark Potter is our Marketing Manager – he looks after the Web site, he does lots of photography, stuff like that. But he also hosts a party for each Formula One Grand Prix here at the store, when we show the race on our flat screen TVs. The race can be on at 4 in the morning and he’ll still have 70 people show up! The store has become a destination – even though the BMW dealership is right up the street, the local BMW Club asked us if they could hold a meeting in here. Mark also has a ‘Cars and Coffee’ event – once a month they go to a coffee shop, then go for a drive somewhere. That’s getting so popular that some coffee shops can’t handle the number of people who arrive. It’s all about understanding where you are at with the cars. The cars are cool – they’re really beautiful, so we just need to tap into that, get people to look at the cars.”

Cool cars, great staff, a friendly, welcoming atmosphere mean that Maserati of Minneapolis is far more than just a car showroom. It truly is a destination, a place you can look forward to visiting. Now, how many dealerships can you say that about?