Cazoo
Introduction
Cazoo is a British online car retailer located in London, England. The company was founded in the year 2018 by Alex Chesterman. The company has an employee strength of 2200 employees as of 2022. The company has a net worth of 0.6 billion dollars when estimated on August 16th 2022.
Cazoo functions by buying used cars and reconditioning the cars fully, before now offering them for sale on its website. On the website, customers can get to scan through thousands of cars that are in stock at any given time, pick the car of their interest and purchase the car online. After the online purchase, they will have the car delivered to their doorstep in as little as 72 hours. Just by buying the best cars in the market and thoroughly reconditioning the cars after inspection, Cazoo is making an impact on the way people buy used cars.
History of Cazoo
Cazoo had in mind to build their new commerce project from scratch to make sure they are able to deliver a wonderful customer experience. To achieve this, the company took a unique approach by choosing a serverless architecture and microservice-based approach to build their commerce solution. The cloud-native platform was built to support growth and also allowed them to implement multiple payment options for a single order, making the process more convenient for customers.
Cazoo’s new platform was launched successfully in December 2020 and their multiple payment options proved to be a very huge success with the customers. Cazoo also made sure customers had high-quality 360-degree imagery and details of every feature in the car as well as a 7-day money-back guarantee and a 12 months warranty, which made customers trust them even more.
In the year 2021, the company launched used car marketplaces in both France and Germany expanding its reach internationally. Following its expansion, the company intends to grow its inventory to thousands of cars as it expands through Europe over time as well as to add new features to its EU proposition. These features should include buying cars directly from consumers, fully digital car financing and all-inclusive monthly car subscriptions. The founder and CEO of Cazoo said at the launch of the market place “we are very excited to have launched in both France and Germany today. We have reimagined car buying to make it simple and convenient whilst adding transparency and quality to give consumers total peace of mind when buying their next car”. Cazoo confirmed the news of the acquisition of SwipCar, a consumer car subscription platform located in Spain with the aim of accelerating its launch in Spain and Italy. By January 2020, Cazoo acquired Italian online car retailer, BrumBrum and then launched its online car market in Spain later in May.
Cazoo Sponsorships
Cazoo began investing in sponsorship of sports in early 2021 as a strategy for the marketing of the brand.
On February 2021, Cazoo became the main sponsor of Aston Villa F.C. an English football club in the premier league division. The company also started sponsorship of The Derby, The Oaks, the Coronation cup at Epsom and the St Lerger Stakes. Cazoo also went on to sign a multi-year deal with the World Snooker Tour as the main sponsor of the Cazoo cup events, named the World Grand Prix, the Player Championship and the Tour Championship. This later was extended to also include the UK Championship and the Masters, by doing this they broke a decade-long sponsorship with betting companies becoming the principal sponsors of two triple crown tournaments. They also cemented their sponsorship place there when they took over the World championship sponsorship from Betfred after 7 years.
In the month of June, the same year, the company signed into a multi-year partnership with the PGA European Tour that involved the sponsorship of two tournaments which were then renamed the Cazoo open and the Cazoo classic. The next month Cazoo became the main shirt sponsor of the Welsh Rugby Union and The Hundred team Manchester Original. The company sponsored the PDC European Championship, PCD world cup of darts and GrandSlam in 2021, extending their partnership to the PDC world dart championship, UK Open, Premier league and players championship finals in 2022 and the Masters which will begin in 2023.
As this new season of soccer began, Cazoo became the new main sponsor of the French club, Olympique De Marseille, Spanish club Valencia F.C, German club F.C. Freiburg, Lille OSC, Italian club Bologna F.C and Spanish Club Real Sociedad.
According to sponsorship.org, Cazoo alongside Clinch, Just Eat and Tik Tok were the consumer brand that has a breakthrough in sports sponsorship in the UK by the year 2021. This information was gotten from an announcement made by the specialist consultancy ONSIDE. These brands were so successful that they even broke into ONSIDE’s top 10 most appealing UK sports sponsors across four waves of consumer research in 2021. Cazoo began its sponsorship journey earlier than the remaining three of its online competitors but only broke out into the top 10 most appealing sports sponsors when its deals with Wales rugby and the English football league came to light complementing its earlier sponsorships in cricket, snooker, darts, football and horse racing. ONSIDE’s UK and Middle East Managing director Mr Jon Long said “Cazoo and Clinch have followed a well-trodden path in using sports sponsorship to help build brand awareness and credibility.” He continued with the statement “they have both invested heavily in sport sponsorship since the middle of 2020 and these began to cut through with the United Kingdom’s public in 2021. Major sponsorship investments have been a common theme in disruptive sectors where market dominance promises to deliver significant returns. It has been a similar story with the food delivery and started to play out in cryptocurrency trading in 2021.”
The Bologna F.C sponsorship deal which began at the beginning of the Serie A 2022/23 season is the first Italian sports sponsorship deal for Cazoo and has been described as an exciting one by Cazoo’s boss Alex Chesterman. The sponsorship deal is said to cover the production of the shirts for the men’s and women’s teams and also the club’s youth team and academy teams respectively. The company’s adverts will be visible around their home stadium Stadio-Renato Dall’Ara, on the club’s website and all their media backdrops featured on televised football coverages. This deal is projected by Cazoo as a wider marketing campaign with respect to the company’s launch in Italy the next summer. Alex said in an interview in Italy that they look forward to working with the club and the community and he is also hoping to deliver the best car-buying experience to the club’s fans and consumers all over Italy. Bologna F.C finished the last season in 13th place.
