BacklotCars completes historic $425M exit, joining ‘power and fierce entrepreneurial spirit’ of KAR Global
November 13, 2020 | Startland News Staff
The $425 million acquisition of Kansas City-based BacklotCars is complete, nearly two months to the day it was announced.
“There is so much energy and excitement around this combination with our employees and with our customers,” Justin Davis, president and co-founder of BacklotCars, said in a release announcing the milestone acquisition’s completion Thursday by KAR Global.
“I’m proud of what the BacklotCars team has built and the thousands of strong dealer partnerships we’ve developed over the past six years,” Davis continued. “And I can’t wait to introduce the innovation, power and fierce entrepreneurial spirit of KAR Global to our culture, our products and our customer base.”
Believed to be the biggest exit on record within Kansas City’s startup ecosystem, BacklotCars announced the sale in September and its founders intentions to continue working within the company — which KAR will leave running in the metro.
Since 2014, BacklotCars has amassed a network of customers across 46 states. It has scaled its operations and marketplace, leveraging technology to deliver upon the mission of making wholesale easy, the company previously told Startland News.
After significant expansion in 2019, the company’s growth accelerated in 2020 as COVID-19 forced the automotive industry to take a digital-first approach to wholesale.
Justin Davis, BacklotCars; Back2KC 2018
Click here to learn more about BacklotCars.
BacklotCars joins a fleet of digital marketplaces within the KAR portfolio, including TradeRev, ADESA.com, and OPENLANE — the largest private label platform for exclusive, off-lease inventory in North America.
“We are laser-focused on providing dealers with the most efficient, convenient and economically advantageous digital marketplaces to sell and source inventory,” said Peter Kelly, president of KAR Global.
BacklotCars is set to help the company accelerate company growth into new markets while keeping a steady hand on the wheel of operations in existing cities, KAR said in a release.
The startup employs 187 full-time employees, 90 based in Kansas City. KAR has no plans to move BacklotCars from its local headquarters — which it established in the renovated Lightwell building last fall.
2020 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
Investing in the arts earns KC designation as UNESCO’s only ‘City of Music’ in US
Landing on a United Nations agency’s City of Music list reflects more than Kansas City’s century-old link to American jazz, said Jacob Wagner. “This designation is a recognition of our investment and commitment to music, arts and creativity as a driver of urban economic development,” said Wagner, faculty director of the Center for Neighborhoods at…
PayIt exec departs to launch Australia-based OpenCities office in KC
An executive with Kansas City-based PayIt has departed the company to open an area office for another government tech firm. Previously head of local government solutions at PayIt, Luke Norris now is leading the Kansas City office of Australia-based OpenCities, which is a provider of website and digital services for governments across the world. “The…
Cooking class curator wins Google-backed Startup Weekend competition
Nine teams made it through Startup Weekend, but only one team earned the dough: PopChef, which cooked up a platform to sign up for interactive kitchen classes with local chefs. PopChef co-founders Zack Kern and Ruby Montoya were ecstatic to win the competition, Kern said. In addition to receiving an hour of consulting with Lesa…
Preteen inventor’s kid-friendly Comfy Cup athletic gear ready to leave the dugout, family says
A preteen baseball player who helped develop a more comfortable athletic cup for young athletes wants to scale the business to include a deeper product line and sizes for adults. Lenexa native Kyler Russell, who turned 12 Thursday, invented Comfy Cup as a Little League player. He was required to wear an athletic cup, even…