Harold Hurst, COO for Purdy Group USA, aims to run a people-first operation.
For instance, their dealerships shut down for five days the week before Christmas for paid time off that doesn’t impact employees’ personal time-off banks.
Hurst credits the group’s people-first philosophy for helping fuel their growth.
Driving the news: The paid Christmas break is just one example of how Hurst/Purdy tries to do things differently, even if it’s not universally loved.
“The manufacturers hate it,” Hurst told Daily Dealer Live host Sam D’Arc about the Christmas shutdown.
Still, he pointed out that those specific days are historically the slowest selling days of the year.
And, while regular staff are off, Hurst schedules contractors to come in during those times, for tasks such as painting, re-striping the parking lot, and handling facility repairs that would otherwise interrupt business.
Staff then return the day after Christmas refreshed and ready to work.
For context: Purdy Group, founded in 1957 in Costa Rica, entered the U.S. in 2012.
The group just added Mazda and Volkswagen dealerships, both in Bryan, Texas, where they also owned a Toyota dealership in the city.
Now they own five, including a Hyundai dealership in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and another Toyota store in Huntsville, Texas.
Hurst said the group’s people-first culture started with a wadded-up financial statement.
On his first day as an incoming GM, Hurst showed up to a quarterly business review in a suit, bad financials in hand.
When the family patriarch asked what he thought of the people, Hurst opened the statement instead.
"He grabbed it out of my hand, wadded it up," Hurst said. "He says, 'Now I want to know, what are you gonna do about the people?'"
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Internal promotions: Part of their people-first approach includes uplifting internal candidates. Every F&I manager, sales manager, and general sales manager in Purdy's U.S. stores came up through sales or service.
Hurst said they never bring in outside managers, and work to build a bench in every department.
When he acquired the Broken Arrow Hyundai store in Oklahoma, he kept the entire existing team, promoting the general sales manager to general manager.
"Sometimes it's painful,” Hurst said. “But at the end of the day, that is our culture."
Purdy Group also has a specific acquisition approach.
Single-stores: Hurst said the group specifically looks for medium-to-large single-point dealers, not metro stores.
The reasoning: The group can make a bigger community impact, have longer-tenured employees, and have more room to develop people.
"We're not big on the race to the bottom and all that kind of stuff,” Hurst said. “We really like to provide value.”
Bottom line: Purdy Group USA runs its dealerships with a specific approach with most of their decisions built around it. So far, it’s working.
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