Carcraft

Carcraft was established in 1951, by Frank McKee in Rochdale. In July 1998, his sons Noel and Darren McKee bought the business from him in a deal backed by the Royal Bank of Scotland’s Development Capital arm, valuing it at £50 million.[2] In April 2000, Carcraft acquired a car supermarket located in Newport from Car Group for £10 million, whilst Car Group was in receivership.

It also purchased a former Carland store located in Sheffield.[3] In December 2000, Carcraft was put on sale, with a price tag of £200 million.[4]

In December 2005, Carcraft became the first independent second hand vehicle retailer to create and found a contract hire car company.[5] Named ‘All in One leasing’, the business provided services to companies who have small to medium fleets of cars, with Carcraft leasing them new vehicles, then replacing them and selling the used vehicles at its used car supermarkets throughout the country. In October 2006, Carcraft acquired another four sites from Carland, which were located in Chertsey, Enfield, Lakeside, and Stockport.[6]

In April 2014, a management buyout was led by current Chief Executive Robin Bridge, and was backed by Apollo Ventures, for an undisclosed sum. On 30 April 2015, the company was placed into administration, suffering substantial losses and failing to keep up with rival marketing (marketing spend was £100k a week with a return of average sales of two hundred cars a week). Staff were told by the administrators the very same day leaving over five hundred people, with no redundancy pay or notice.[7]

The Carcraft brand is now owned by the Rix brothers, Reg and Louis Rix, who also own Carfinance247,[8] a firm fined £30,000 in September 2016 for sending 65,000 spam text messages.[9]