When a customer is in a garage reception or waiting area, it’s a sales opportunity. Coffee and magazines can only hold someone’s attention for so long. What might a motorist be motivated to purchase in that situation? Depending on their lifestyle, seat covers might be a good impulse-buy option. Since 2004, Portsmouthbased Town & Country Covers have been providing vehicle seat covers. The company has around 20 staff across design, admin, warehousing and sales. As we worked our away around their UK H.Q, within surfing distance of the sea, Sales Account Manager Cliff Culver explained: “We design all the seat covers here, in the UK, with our design team based in the building. This is also our warehouse. We supply a number of countries in Europe with seat covers.” “The owners of the business wanted to be able to get into their vans with their wetsuits on, but keep the seats protected. So, they started making seat covers, and they started supplying them to their mates and for other people 54 AFTERMARKET MARCH 2024 ON THE ROAD www.aftermarketonline.net Aftermarket went undercover in Portsmouth to find out more about Town and & Country Covers and the seat cover opportunity that were jumping in and out and then quickly realised that actually there was much more application for this, for tradespeople and so on, and the rest is history.” “The first were universal covers that slid over the top really easily, with not a lot of form to them; Quite simple. Over the years, we've been doing more and more what you would call a tailored cover. Seats have become infinitely more complicated, especially in vans, and vans are still the core of it. They need to accommodate dropdown trays, under-seat storage, folding here, folding there, all sorts of stuff. “There's so many different applications, definitely, that you get the trade user who's in and out of his van, especially for those that lease the vans, they want to protect the inside of the van. We also do floor mats now, but if you protect all these areas, your residual value on the van is going to be so much better when you get rid of it.” The company also supplies reusable seat covers that can be used by garages: “This goes back to an easy slip-on IT’S A COVER-UP!
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