Entering Australian multi-brand new-car dealerships — and a full retreat in seven years (2022)

What a seven-year round trip left behind

The heart of this decision lies in folding up entirely, in seven years, the overseas new-car dealership pillar it had once expanded. IDOM, which had built strengths in standardization and a nationwide network through domestic used-car buying, judged that it could carry those strengths straight over to Australian new-car dealerships, and made acquisition after acquisition between 2015 and 2018. But reproducing the same earning power in a different market and a different business line proved hard, and — measuring by growth and capital efficiency — President Yusuke Hatori leaned toward letting go of the stalling overseas new-car business. It moved to withdraw with the same speed it had shown in buying.

A retreat is at once proof of failure and a discipline of resource allocation. By redirecting the capital it had put into Australian new-car dealerships back into large-format domestic retail, IDOM went on to set record profits across the withdrawal. Expand to test where the money is, and fold the pillars that cannot earn — a company that had raced to a record-fast listing on the single business of used-car buying held to the same realism in overseas diversification. How far to widen, and where to fold: the seven years in Australia were a move that tested that line in practice.