UMW Toyota Motor To Divest From Retail – Transfers Outlets To Dealers

UMW Toyota Motor has announced earlier this evening that a majority of the outlets currently owned by the company (branches) will be transferred to existing Toyota dealers.

Prior to this, the company is directly involved in retail sales and after-sales via its own outlets that operate in parallel with outlets owned by dealers. At a glance, both outlets are identical irrespective of whether it’s a UMW Toyota-owned branch outlet or a dealer-owned outlet as all outlets have to adhere to the same Toyota corporate identity.

The only difference is that UMW Toyota’s own outlets will have a signage that reads UMW Toyota Motor while dealer-owned outlets will read the dealer’s company name, Fokus Tetap for example, while retaining the same Toyota-style frontage.

The new restructuring will see UMW Toyota reducing its presence in retail operations in order to focus on what the company describes as “high value added upstream activities such as product development, marketing and dealer network support.”

With this, Toyota’s network in Malaysia will become more similar to rival Honda Malaysia, which relies on a 100 percent dealer-owned network to carry out sales and after-sales activities.

 “It is essential for UMWT to continue achieving high customer satisfaction standards,” said its President, Mr. Ravindran Kurusamy.

“I am extremely excited about working even more closely with our Dealers to realise a shared vision for UMWT, which is to promise the concept of “Best In Town”, meaning a more focused one to one customer engagement. Although this arrangement signifies an important change for UMWT, our customers should rest assured that our service will not be compromised, and even get better in the future” he added.