Grants, New Mexico, is the kind of place that reminds you of a town in an old western movie, a place where there is more tumbleweed crossing the street than cars. It was in this town that Eddie B. Corley Sr. and his wife, Gladys Mae, raised their eight children in a modest home on a dusty, dead-end road.
In those early days, the uranium mines fed Corley’s grocery store, clothing store, gas stations, and restaurant with plenty of customers. But when the mines shut down in the early 1980s, Corley kept food on the table by pumping gas, washing windows, checking under hoods at his service station, and working at the local post office. “It was hard. And my wife always stood by me even though we struggled sometimes,” recalls a teary-eyed Corley, now 74.
Then fate stepped in the day John Herbert, a minority dealer-manager for Ford, pulled into Corley’s station for gas and inquired about the abandoned Ford dealership lot across the street. Not knowing who he was talking to, Corley told him that it went out of business because it was mismanaged. “Why don’t you take it and open it,” Herbert suggested. Corley answered that he would, but he didn’t have the money.
“So when he left, he gave me his card. It said, ‘Dealer Placement Manager, Ford Motor Company,'” Corley recalls in mock shock. “We put together a deal, and I opened up the Ford dealership in 1982. I believe it was the good Lord that opened the door for me.”
Over the next 26 years, Corley would turn one Ford dealership into eight dealerships across six manufacturing brands, including Hyundai, Nissan, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Lincoln, and Dodge — and they are all managed by his children or other family members. Named the Corley Automotive Group, the dealerships together earned $107 million in sales for 2007 — a 16% increase over the previous year. Because of that impressive growth, combined with a steadfast commitment to customer service and a strong work ethic, BLACK ENTERPRISE has named Corley Automotive Group its 2008 Auto Dealer of the Year.
FAMILY RECIPE FOR GROWTH
To get started, Ford invested 80% of about $400,000 needed for Corley to purchase his first dealership. Corley put in the other 20%. Within five years, Corley had repaid his debt to Ford, and his dealership was generating between $12 million and $17 million annually. Corley admits that he had no sales experience, but he did have business experience. “I followed the dealership guidelines to the letter, keeping expenses tight and overhead low. We started out with about five cars on the lot, but soon we were able to sell up to 35 used and 30 new cars. It went a long way to helping us pay off the dealership.”
In 1994, Corley was approached by Dodge to open a dealership about 60 miles away in Gallup, New Mexico, which he purchased. His son Kaul, 45, became the general manager for the new site. They proceeded to open a Chrysler store in 1995 in Grants, now managed by daughter Faye Geter, 49; a Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, and Volvo dealership in Albuquerque in 1995, managed by son Eddie Jr., 46; a Nissan franchise in Gallup in 1999, now managed by daughter Debora Money, 50; and they added a Chevrolet in Grants in 2006, managed by daughter Carolyn Mazone, 47. In 2007, the Corleys added a Hyundai store in Gallup, run by daughter Ruthie Stephens, 52, and another Ford dealership in Espanola, managed by a cousin, Hartford “Trey” Hudson.
Jim Myers, a retired branch manager with the Ford Motor Co. Dealer Development department, which conducted the program instrumental in working out the deal for Corley’s first dealership, says he had faith in Corley’s ability to be successful after their first meeting. “He learned the car business pretty quick,” Myers says. “But another advantage for him was that he was very well-known in town and well thought of. You can’t go to a restaurant in Grants with Corley without people coming up to the table to offer their greetings. Ed really knows his market.”
According to Charles Henson, president of the New Mexico Auto Dealer Association, these are very trying times in New Mexico for auto dealers. “Whether you’re selling domestics or imports, it’s difficult. The industry is under a lot of pressure with gas prices and pressure with lenders. Many of the rural areas are populated with low-income people who require loans to buy cars. So the lender crackdown is going to create challenges that will take all of the Corleys’ creativity to overcome.”
The Corleys are no strangers to challenge. They are skilled adapters, and once faced an enormous hurdle that could have easily thwarted their growth and their faith.
TRYING TIMES
Sometime between 1999 and 2000, things began to fall apart, especially at their Ford location. Corley admits that the company was probably growing too fast and that he didn’t have the people in place at the time to watch cash flow, manage the service departments, and keep car turnover high on the lots. The company was also using its cash assets instead of loans to fund its growth. Profits dropped 50%, and the Corleys struggled to manage their dealerships — which numbered five back then. The company decided to hire an outside consultant to manage the finances, organize the company’s records, and generally help with the accounting.
Corley is now convinced that the person he hired to help get the company back into financial shape actually wanted to destroy the company. “He gave us all the wrong information. Things happened to my records, and once Ford Motor Co. stepped in to help, my accounting was unauditable. I couldn’t pay my bills and I was behind the eight ball with everyone, including the IRS.”
To make matters worse, the same consultant began to drive wedges and breed distrust within the family, daughter Faye says. “The consultant didn’t tell us things and would tell one person one thing and not tell everyone else, or tell the other person a different thing. So no one was on the same page,” she recalls.
On a day Corley says he doesn’t want to remember, he and all his children went to the Ford headquarters to hammer out an action plan — together. They also fired the first consultant and hired a second person to help clean up their books. “The first thing we did in the meeting was pray,” Corley says. “Then everybody went around the table and gave a reason why they were not putting all of their efforts into the business. In the end, we all made commitments to each other that we would take this and we would fix it together and go forward.”
As a result, Corley Automotive Group recapitalized a large portion of its Ford dealership stock with the Ford Dealership Development program, keeping only a 12% interest in it. Unloading the dealership helped the family get back on track financially, and the cash infusion helped them pay their bills and shore up operations. They now own about 23% stock in their original Ford location.
Something else that came out of the gathering was a company-wide meeting every three months so that family and employees can discuss how the dealerships are being managed, talk about successes and failures, set goals, and offer incentives for innovative ideas that can help boost sales.
The Ford store is also back in a profitable position, Corley says. His daughter Florence recently took over the finance department there and has been working to find new ways to deal
with lending restrictions customers are facing with the banks. “It is definitely harder to get things rolling, but we’ve been creative with the kinds of deals and incentives we offer potential buyers,” she says. Some of those incentives include free car wash service for the life of the vehicle at all locations.DRIVING FORWARD
Despite a turbulent automotive market and past hardships, Corley Automotive Group was able to recover after 2000. Itgained an increase in sales because of the strategies put in place that helped increase new and used car and light duty truck sales. Purchasing three additional dealerships between 2006 and 2007 decreased their profits by about 15%, but the family hopes that recent executive promotions and other goals they’ve established will help them recover their profits and continue to grow sales.
Corley appointed his eldest son, Eddie Jr., to be CEO of Corley Automotive Group in June 2007, as part of his succession plan. “On the job, Eddie Jr. has done very well, and it seems like my other children will all accept his lead. He’s real smart, so he will make a good CEO,” Corley says.
In March, Debora, who is the general manager of the Nissan store, was made general sales manager of all three Gallup dealerships. “She is the strongest in our Group in finance, so she’ll oversee all the sales managers and finance managers. She is making sure that they maintain our gross profit,” Eddie Jr. explains. He also asked Kaul, the general manager of the Dodge dealership, to manage used car sales and inventory at the three Gallup stores: to be responsible for putting the numbers on all of the trade-in units and to keep inventory turn under 60 days. Stacey will fill the same role for the Grants Ford, Chevy, and Chrysler dealerships.
Other goals the Corleys have set in place are to increase the number of technicians they have in all the stores. To do this, they’ve made a commitment to help train some of the local community members at the General Motors technical school in Farmington, New Mexico. “I’m looking for kids out of high school that we can sponsor at the college. We’ll invest in this man if when he finishes his training he’ll come work for us,” explains Debora, who aspires to create a pipeline of skilled professionals for all the dealerships.
Eddie Jr. also hopes that moving his Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, and Volvo dealership from a leased lot to a newly purchased, state-of-the-art dealership will attract new buyers and people
who had been traveling out of the area for service. “We are relocating to another part of Albuquerque, and it is going to increase our business because we’re going to be strategically located in the center of town, where all the growth opportunities are,” Eddie Jr. says. The project, which will cost between $5 million and $7 million to complete, will increase the number of service bays from 18 to 23 and will create the capacity to hold 250 to 300 vehicles in inventory. “The new location is going to be in plain sight off of the interstate, so we’ll get a lot of visibility. In addition to that, all of my competitors are on the same interstate: Lexis, BMW, Cadillac, Mercedes, Porsche, and Audi. So we’ll have a real chance to compete.”Jim Mitchell, president and owner of the Jim Mitchell Auto Group in Winchester, Virginia, has known the Corleys for nearly two decades. He said of his friend Eddie Sr., “I think what he’s managed to do is very unique, especially for an African American. To start from scratch — because it wasn’t passed down from his grandfather or anything like that — and build a successful business is hard to do. I really don’t think you’ll find any other example of an African American who has built such a successful business and has brought in his family to run it.”
And that was Corley’s vision all along — to run a successful business with his family. “It’s mighty funny that doors open to those who work real hard. But I think you also have to have trust and faith that it can happen because I always wanted to have a dealership for each one of my children. It’s a very risky business, handling so many dollars. But now all my children own percentages of their own dealerships, and they’re happy. I’m very pleased and my wife is also,” he says.
Corley adds that he always looked to surround himself with good people that he felt could be trusted as well as perform in the workplace. “I’m proud of who I am and what I have been blessed with. You have to be blessed with the family. They don’t have any choice who their people are — I wasn’t able to choose my parents and they weren’t either — but since I’ve been blessed with them, I try to live to be the kind of father and businessman and person who they can always respect. And that’s my life.”