Ben Fleetwood

In May 2018, having relocated to Witney, Oxfordshire, my business partner, and I made the decision to start up our own independent vehicle leasing broker business, supplying all makes and model of vehicle on contract hire to both personal and business customers.

We were able to establish ourselves in Oxfordshire as a small independent fleet management service by initially drawing on previous experiences of cold calling local businesses to generate a database. We also investigated several alternative ways to attract customers to our business, exploring local networking opportunities and asking for introductions to key decision makers where fleets were still operating. Our strategy has been to build relationships with small businesses that showed good potential for growth. This way we could grow alongside them as their vehicle requirements increased and paired with our focus on customer service, we would continue to be their preferred supplier.

What at first appeared to be a setback when the Covid-19 pandemic temporarily closed us for a few months in 2020, actually became a fantastic opportunity, as during this time new rules regarding company car tax on electric cars came in to practice. We drew up a plan to transition and rebrand our business during this closure and monitored the business environment for the remainder of 2020. At the beginning of 2021 we completed our transitional rebrand to become Your E-Car, becoming one of the first early adopter broker businesses to supply solely electric and plug in hybrid vehicles.

Having now been established for 4 years, we have become referral partners for a number of accountancy businesses across Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. This paired along with the repeat business and referrals that we receive from our existing customer base is continuing to grow our brand across the two counties.