It's hard to believe that sixteen years have passed since NetPlates emerged as a fairly inconspicuous but extraordinarily determined one-man business.
Back in 2010, NetPlates was virtually indistinguishable from the host of sole-traders selling modest holdings of number plates using whichever publicity opportunities they can find. A founder, with a passion for number plates, working from home, and selling predominantly to the trade.
What set our founder apart from other sole traders was his ambition, his refusal to compromise on the competitiveness of his pricing and quality of service, his truly obsessive knowledge of number plates and their sources, and his knack of tracking down hugely saleable plates for stock. Sixteen years on, he still hasn't let go of his commitment to unmatchable deals. Providing dateless plates from (at the time of writing) base prices of £40 helps maintain a very brisk throughput of trade. At those prices, as you can imagine, the profit margins are low. And I'll be honest in sharing that NetPlates currently makes a markup of as little as £17 on some plate sales - even in the £200 to £300 bracket. But we're talking about a boss who was born with a must-sell mentality. And you tend to sell a heck of a lot more when you keep your prices super-sharp.
Today, NetPlates is a high-profile, still-fast-growing family business, run by a husband and wife team, and perpetually juggling office space as more staff members join the exciting NetPlates experience. In fact, NetPlates has now grown through three premises, and gladly, at the current office, in Shirley, West Midlands, there's more space for development.
HUGE STOCK OF PLATES
NetPlates is special in that it holds a very large stock of number plates. Like all major UK plate retailers, we also syndicate plates from other sources (and that's a story in itself). But the thousands of plates we hold on retention certificates, ready to assign to your vehicle pretty much on the spot, ranks among the top few such holdings in the country. We enable you to view and search our stock plates specifically, and the advantage of this is that - provided no one has ordered the same plate immediately before you - you know the plate you choose will be available and almost instantly transferrable to your vehicle.
TRUSTED, PROVEN
We're very highly regarded by customers, recognised by the DVLA and verified on their Linked Dealers page, and registered with the key industry trade bodies. At the time of writing we have over two and a half thousand genuine reviews on Trustpilot. At a time when so many businesses try to fake their review scores, we pro-actively suggest digging into our reviews to assess their integrity.
There are several classic signs of fake online reviews, but one of the most reliable ways to investigate a review's integrity is to go through to the reviewer's profile and look at their overall activity. Real reviewers tend to:
- Leave both positive an negative reviews, whereas a fake's reviews will be overwhelmingly positive.
- Leave a realistic number of reviews. Usually just a handful per person. A total running into scores or hundreds suggests fake activity, because real people a not sufficiently motivated to leave that volume of reviews.
- Review brands within their own locale. People in the UK will overwhelmingly review brands with a presence in the UK. Fakes, in contrast, often review companies from all around the world.
We welcome anyone using these pointers to check us out on Trustpilot. The management and staff here have put everything into providing an exceptionally good service, and it matters that this has been met with genuine recognition.
THE INTERIM
But a company doesn't suddenly transform from a sole trading reg plate fanatic into one of the biggest and best-trusted number plate retailers in the country. What happened in those sixteen years?
Well, most companies don't like giving away their secrets of success, but we're proud of everything we do, and we think people should know about the business they're dealing with. So here's a summary of the things that made us a top UK supplier and seller of private registrations:
Free Valuations and Sell a Plate
When you're aiming to build a presence in the number plate market, you need to be able to offer a plate to meet everyone's desires. To help accommodate this, NetPlates set out not just to build and sell a fantastic stock of numbers, but also to act as an agent for any member of the public wishing to sell a number plate. This service has been an incredibly important part of NetPlates' growth, and if you visit our aforementioned Trustpilot page, you'll see that sellers, as well as buyers, tend be be very happy with the outcomes.
The service, which you can set in motion on our Free Valuations page, begins with a professional appraisal of your plate. It's not instant. All plates are assessed by an industry expert, and since this is a free service from a high-profile brand, there's always a long queue of requests.
When valuing a plate, our experts take all sorts of factors into account when determining what a registration is worth. They know the market inside out, and can anticipate who the buyer would be, as well as how much they'd be expected to pay. I've seen them find a match in moments, communicating a wonderfully apt plate suggestion to a TV personality, who snapped up the deal pretty much on the spot.
Within three to five working days of a valuation request, they'll email an accurate, market-rate valuation in response. This provides a solid starting point for sellers, whose registrations are then advertised across a powerful network - all free of charge.
Among the benefits for sellers (apart from that cost of £zero), are the facts that:
- NetPlates' websites sees thousands of high-intent plate searches per day, and features strong search algorithms which can recognise names in number plates. Most buyers will search for their name, or the name of someone they want to gift. So the website's ability to interpret a search for Janet and return plates such as J4 NET, J14 NET, JAN 37X or JA11 NET, is vital in matching customers with plates. Most great name plates are approximations of names rather than the actual names, so the technical ability to translate potential buyers' input into real registrations has become a bedrock of NetPlates' free service to sellers. It's something the company has extensively worked on, and barely a day goes by without a new technical improvement finding its way onto the site.
- We syndicate sellers' registration plates to a network of reputable, participating dealers' search results. So NetPlates is not the only place where the plate can be seen. It's a purpose-conceived system which connects a range of the biggest and best number plate vendors. But it never compromises on privacy. Only the registration and price are ever syndicated. Personal data remains tightly protected at NetPlates. Indeed, our capacity to take privacy and security seriously has engendered confidence in customers and fellow traders. That confidence has been another key factor in the rise of NetPlates.
- It's not necessary to remove the plate from a vehicle before it's advertised. Many sellers wait until a sale is confirmed before they worry about the removal of their reg. And we'll actually take care of that for them if they choose - although of course, since the DVLA charges us £80 to perform that action, we have to deduct the charge from the proceeds of the sale in that circumstance. Otherwise, The seller receives the full return amount agreed, with the buyer paying our commission - which is renowned for being modest as compared with that of some competitors.
And for the buyer? Well, we're realistic with the seller when we value their plate. We know that if we value the plate at an unrealistically high figure, it won't sell. And since we also pare our commission down to a minimum, the buyer gets a great deal. Better still:
- Because we're only acting as an agent for a private individual, we don't have to charge VAT on this type of sale.
- The dynamics are very similar to those you might see when buying privately, peer to peer - except we completely remove the problem of distrust that can exist when two private parties want to transact, but don't know anything about each other. We provide trustworthy mediation, keeping both parties' identities totally private, and making sure everyone is happy.
- On almost all of these "commission plates", as we call them, it's possible for the buyer to make an offer. Our team will then communicate the offer to the seller. They may accept. They may submit a counter offer. We never know what will happen. But once again, this to an extent mirrors the peer to peer environment, where some negotiation may take place before sale. And whilst sellers may insist on their full return price, they're usually happy to be informed about any offer made. It's win/win.
The Personal Touch
We're an online business, and that's been the case since the start. But a flick through our reviews shows that we're very traditional in terms of communication. Call us in office hours, and you'll talk to an experienced colleague with the knowledge to answer your questions in an accurate manner. You may even talk to one of the bosses. They're in the office every day, overseeing all service, leading by example. They genuinely enjoy passing on their years of expertise. They love the business. This kind of access to reliable information is vital for first-time buyers, who are unfamiliar with the process of changing their plates, and frequently anticipate the process being far more hassle than it actually is.
Even if you're using our free Sell a Plate service, we have staff on hand to talk you through anything you're not sure about. With NetPlates, free does not mean high and dry.
BRING ON THE NEXT SIXTEEN YEARS
As you can see, success for NetPlates did not come at the stroke of a magic wand. It's taken an enormous amount of hard work, doing things the right way - not the easy way. NetPlates was built on an instinctive understanding that the public know a good deal; that they need to be well informed; that they need unprecedented choice, along with the means to browse great matches.
Having celebrated sixteen years of growth, we're ready for the next chapter. Expect to see more of the same, but even better, obviously.