Built Here, Sold Here

Greater Lansing Business Monthly, Jun 01, 2006 by Kammerer, Ann

They are two women who will be selling locally made products in an area that put the world on wheels.

What's more, they're setting a new pace for automotive retail, despite the occasional roadblocks of a maledominated industry.

"Twenty years ago, the world wasn't as women-friendly in business operations," said Coeta Holloway, dealer principal and owner of Lansing's Story Buick Pontiac, of the time when she started in the business. "But today, we're widely accepted."

Sherrill Freeborough confirmed this.

"When I first started, women had to work a little harder than everyone else because there was so much competition," said the retailer of Saturn of Grand Ledge and Okemos. "But that's been true for women just about everywhere you go."

Story Buick Pontiac

Long hours and hard work were never obstacles for Holloway; they were just part of her passion.

I simply loved what I was doing," said Holloway, who got her start in rental car operations in the Detroit market in the early 1980s. "I went into retail sales by accident, by being a troubleshooter for other departments, employees and customers in the business."

Holloway confessed she didn't just wake up one day and decide to be a car dealer-it just happened through experience.

Over 21 years, Holloway has evolved into a career employee with the Story Automotive Group. Her path has taken her through General Motors Dealer School, through management and executive ranks, and led to her being the first person to pass GM's Women's Retail Initiative in March 2001.

"Everyone wanted the new Buick store," she smiled, as she talked about the newest dealership in Lansing that she opened in July 2004. "So it was very nice when I got top consideration and was awarded the opportunity."

Holloway committed to the community and moved to Lansing the month she opened the dealership on Lansing's west side. Since then, she described herself as being "just a little bit busy," but having a lot of fun.

Part of that, she said, is the general nature of the business. The other, she said, is the nature of her dealership.

"We're what the automotive industry refers to as a greenfield store," she explained. "That means we opened without a single customer, employee, process or vehicle inventory-and that we're working to build the business from the ground up - the old fashioned way, one customer at a time."

In just two years, Story Buick Pontiac has become enmeshed in community activities, ranging from support of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the Children's Miracle Network and the Capital Area Humane Society to seats on advisory boards for Northwood University automotive studies. The excitement of her new store might only be surpassed by that surrounding the new GM Delta Township Plant.

As a dealer in the full line of Buick and Pontiac, Holloway's showroom will soon host the Buick Enclave, one of the main makes and models that will roll off the Delta line for 2007.

"There's a real pride of the products being built there," said Holloway of the team members at the Delta Plant. "I'm convinced this will be the best plant in the United States, and that Lansing will be building the best cars."

Rich with promise, Lansing's own Enclave is among many Buick and Pontiac models to be retailed through Story Buick Pontiac in the coming year. Other models include the Buick Lucerne and LaCrosse, and the popular Pontiac Solstice, G6 and Grand Prix.

The best sellers are on display seven days a week in a well-appointed showroom. Adjacent to the showroom is a full-service maintenance and repair facility, and a parts department stocked with more than a quarter million dollars' worth of GM automotive inventory.

"It's important to understand that a customer's buying experience has to be above and beyond what they've ever experienced," said Holloway, citing that women purchase 45 percent of all vehicles sold. "When you walk into my showroom, you can tell it's a great group of people-people who care about making the customer feel comfortable."

Saturn of Grand Ledge and Okemos

At the end of a busy day, Sherrill Freeborough said her husband still laughs that he thought she was just going to sell cars.

"That was my goal years ago," said Freeborough of the days when she entered the field of automotive retail on the advice of a friend. "It was a good way for me to have a great career and be successful, and take great care of my son. That was my goal. I just got hooked on it."

Since that first job as a sales consultant in Plymouth in 1991, Freeborough has wound her way through the GM product line, and landed in mid-Michigan to work with two Saturn dealerships on the east and west edges of Lansing.

Freeborough was the executive manager of Saturn of Grand Ledge and Okemos for six years before purchasing the two stores in December 2002.

Throughout that time, she's done a lot of celebrating.

"I'm so proud of my employees," said Freeborough of her Grand Ledge staff who recently received Saturn's Summit Award. In turn, her Okemos store has won the award for market penetration, profitability, community involvement, training and relationship with the plant for six straight years. "We were outside celebrating and blowing bubbles when I announced we had won."