WHEN is a negative sales figure a positive news story? When you’re Kia, that’s when! Let us explain..

In the SMMT sales figures this month Kia has posted registrations down 16 per cent on June 2009.

But there’s an interesting story behind those numbers. Kia sales director Yaser Shabsogh called Car Dealer Magazine this week to explain.

He told us that in June Kia sold 4,150 units – whereas last year it registered 4,900 cars. But remember that was at the height of scrappage.

Delve deeper into the figures, he explains, and you’ll see that last year of those 4,900 cars, 2,700 units were scrappage sales.

This June, of the 4,150 units sold, only 700 were scrappage orders. And at the same time Kia increased its retail sales.

‘As it stands we are 10,000 units up on 2009 already,’ said Shabsogh. ‘And we expect to finish the year up on last year – despite scrappage ending. In 2010 we want to register 55,000 cars.’

That’s compared to 50,637 in 2009…

Ok, so there’s a lot of numbers there but what Kia is trying to say is that despite sales figures showing a decline – it’s actually good news for dealers.

‘New products like Venga, Soul, Sorento and Sportage will all help towards our goal of selling more units this year,’ added Shabsogh.

‘Kia is in a great place. We used scrappage effectively and now we’re capitalising on our seven-year warranty. Dealers are getting a lot of traffic off the back of it.

‘Dealers are happy, they are making better margins and we’re now competing for market share with the likes of Seat, Nissan and Mazda. This is great news for us.’

by JAMES BAGGOTT

Tags: Kia, SMMT

This entry was last updated on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 8:16 pm and is filed under News.