You shouldn’t have to drive through hell to find a car, founder says; Startup brings concierge service to online auto customers

Not all car buyers want to be in the driver’s seat — especially when attempting to navigate a disconnected roadmap of dealer-focused online marketplaces, said Eric Westphal.

“Years ago, when I was looking for a car, I knew what I wanted and I couldn’t find it locally,” said Westphal, describing the inspiration behind Overland Park-based OneRequest. “I was fine having it shipped in and I was searching nationwide. And I just kept repeating my search over and over again at different sites, different dealer sites.”

When he’d find a couple of cars he was interested in, Westphal would have to fill out time-consuming and privacy-endangering forms with each individual dealer.

“You just start getting inundated,” he continued. “At the end of it, I got just frustrated because I was spending all this time and effort — all this work — and I’m the one spending a lot of money for this car. In what other world does this exist? So how can this be simplified?”

OneRequest — founded in 2020 and internally funded — allows customers to search a nationwide inventory of new and used vehicles, as well as interact with dealerships anonymously. It also allows users to consult with (or completely delegate to) experts.

Click here to start exploring OneRequest.

Although Westphal doesn’t have a background in the auto industry — he and co-founders Nate Lien and Chris Jones come from the executive team at Tallgrass Energy — OneRequest comes after years ideating on how he could improve the car buying process.

The right key for the startup’s ignition: approaching the challenge from an angle often ignored by other online auto solutions.

OneRequest, which recently launched version 2.0 of its online marketplace and has a team of 18 people, is built to serve customers — not dealerships like Cars.com, Autotrader, TrueCar, and CarGurus, said Jen Gulvik, vice president of marketing for the startup.

“They were started as a way to help dealers sell their inventory by giving them a nationwide audience,” she said. “And they’re essentially ad sites for dealers.”

Dealers pay to use those sites, Gulvik continued, so each chooses which one they prefer, which forces customers to search multiple sites to find what they want. OneRequest doesn’t take money from dealerships, instead aiming to provide a comprehensive inventory on one site.

“Dealer A likes working with Cars.com, so they advertise their inventory with Cars.com,” she explained. “But dealer B likes TrueCar. So you don’t get a full picture of the inventory from those sites. But that’s also why they’re meant to serve dealers.”

Such sites operate under a model of extracting more revenue from the dealer, which often comes at the expense of a good customer service experience, Westphal said.

“You can do a search on one site for whatever car and you get these featured listings,” he said. “Or they’re sorted in a certain way and something’s promoted. It may not even be what I’m looking for.”

Some sites also obscure the location and identity of the dealership, he added, requiring the customer to go through the site to inquire about the car.

“Now that site, as well as the dealer, has their email address,” he said. “And then that site contacts that customer over and over and over again.”

There’s money in that data, according to Gulvik.

“Most of them sell customer data,” she explained. “They’re selling it to third party marketing companies that think car shoppers are a pretty juicy audience. … It’s not a great marketplace for the consumer or the dealer.”

Other car sites like Carvana and Vroom seek to eliminate the dealership altogether, they said.

“They went against the traditional dealership and basically created their own dealership,” Westphal said. “To me, that never really made sense. I get the convenience for the consumer, but the dealer network across the country provides so much inventory and so much benefit to the whole process.”

He wanted to find a way to leverage the power of the dealer network, he continued, without being an ad site for them.

“Some people have bad experiences and stuff, but there’s a lot of good dealers out there,” he added. “There’s a lot of value that they add to the whole process.”

Customers often end up paying a premium price on these no-dealer sites for the convenience of buying completely online, Westphal added.

“They don’t sell their cars at rock bottom prices,” he noted. “We think there’s a way to still get that convenience, but use the traditional dealer. Ultimately, that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Handing over the keys

OneRequest offers several service packages — with buyers either steering or hopping in the passenger seat for the car-buying experience.

It’s free to search the nationwide inventory and to get alerts when new listings are posted. The Private Shopper service, which is $9 for 90 days, allows the customer to also communicate and negotiate with dealerships through the OneRequest platform. This keeps their contact information hidden from the dealer and gives the customer more control, Westphal said.

“There’s a dealer in Dallas that I still get emails from probably two or three times a year and I bought that car in December 2015,” he added about the downfalls of communicating directly with dealerships.

The Private Shopper Pro service, which is $50 for 90 days, also includes a one-on-one consultation with a OneRequest pro.

The Concierge service, which launched in early 2021, allows the customer to completely delegate the whole process to the pros. That service, which Westphal said is the most popular paid plan, costs $99 up front and $800 at closing.

The pros do all the searching, Gulvik said, and they know which dealerships are getting allocations and which ones are charging over sticker price.

“We don’t know that as shoppers,” she added. “But our concierge folks are on the phone with dealers all day, every day, and they know. It’s a huge time savings, but oftentimes, it pays for itself, as well.”

They also help the customer save money through negotiating and helping with financing options. The pros additionally can assist with trade-ins and arranging delivery of a vehicle. 

“A lot of customers hate the negotiation part,” Gulvik said. “So that’s another thing we hear from customers that they specifically like about farming it out.”

In the near future, OneRequest is hoping to offer a la carte concierge services, Westphal said. For example, a customer may choose to search for the car themselves, but then have the pro handle the negotiation and finalizing of the deal.

“If somebody maybe doesn’t want the entire full end-to-end white glove service, they can pick a part of it,” he added.

OneRequest’s services especially come in handy during this challenging auto market, Westphal said. Both he and Gulvik have heard horror stories from customers that have come to them for help. 

One man took two days of PTO because it was taking so long to search, Gulvik described. And when he’d find something, he’d find out it was no longer available after inquiring. Another woman spent over 30 hours looking and then got into a bidding war with another customer.

“(It’s) kind of like the housing market,” she explained. “You’re bidding with somebody else at ($10,000) over sticker price. It’s really a frustrating market right now for shoppers.”

Another buyer drove two and half hours for a car, only to get there and find out it was already sold, Westphal recalled.

“It’s tough to find a car,” he said. “We’re working on helping (people) avoid having to go through the hell part of it.”