PSA Group has announced that Peugeot Citroën Racing Shop will combine forces with PSA Retail and PSA Motorsport to pursue an ambitious production racing strategy.
The announcement follows moves earlier this year to combine Citroën Racing, Peugeot Sport and DS Performance under a single operation dubbed PSA Motorsport – housed at PSA's Motorsports Centre of Excellence.
Peugeot Citroën Racing Shop will combine forces with PSA Retail and PSA Motorsport to pursue an ambitious production racing strategy
The purpose of this strategic partnership is to provide a premium service to motorsport customers of PSA Group brands.
- Production racing covers four broad areas of activity:
- Vehicle design and development;
- Supply, storage and distribution of production racing products;
- Technical support for vehicle marketing and operation;
- Racing promotion.
Under the partnership, PSA Motorsport will concentrate on vehicle design and development, focusing its know-how squarely on the core business of winning or enabling customers to win all the motorsports events they enter. It will also focus on promotion.
PSA Retail will contribute its skills in trade and spare parts business and in pan-European logistics in order to support the other three areas of production racing.
Synergies to generate operational efficiency and benefit end-customers
The partnership has pinpointed synergies that will make the motorsports business more operationally efficient, thus benefiting end-customers in several ways:
- Production racing spare parts activities will be brought together at the same facility. At the operational level, this should make it possible to share and rationalise inventory and to make purchasing more competitive through bulk procurement. For customers, the expected payoff will be higher service levels and greater satisfaction.
- The marketing department will be enlarged to strengthen the three brands' presence in sporting events and to boost sales volumes.
- Technical assistance teams will be amalgamated, thus pooling know-know and centralising direct feedback in order to respond faster to product development requests.
- The other inherent benefit will be easier access to after-sales service, thereby increasing customer satisfaction during competition weekends.
Blending the very best expertise of two complementary entities to serve demanding customers
The recently formed PSA Motorsport division blends the expertise and know-how of PSA's three motorsports entities: Peugeot Sport, Citroën Racing and DS Performances.
Citroën Racing has been winning top-level competition titles since 1919, and Peugeot Sport since 1895. DS Performances is now directing the DS brand's future in motorsports through the participation of DS Virgin Racing in the World Formula E Championship.
In addition to their motorsports programmes, Peugeot Sport and Citroën Racing develop and sell vehicles for production racing.
PSA Retail, the retail sales arm of PSA, is the Group's first point of customer contact.
With cutting edge know-how in four business areas – new vehicles, second-hand vehicles, aftersales and spare parts – PSA Retail sold more than half a million vehicles in 2015. It operates in 11 European countries, with some 300 end-customer outlets.
A plan to expand the business is being rolled out, with a view to creating 40 spare-part distribution hubs across Europe.
The fit between PSA Motorsport and PSA Retail for developing production racing was apparent from the start, prompting the formation of Peugeot Citroën Racing Shop.
PSA Motorsport housed at the Motorsport Centre for Excellence
Citroën Racing, Peugeot Sport and DS Performance were recently combined to form PSA Motorsport, which will capitalise on synergies among PSA Peugeot Citroën's three brands to strengthen their motorsports programmes.
Charged with enhancing PSA groups retail motorsport portfolio, Peugeot Citroën Retail will lend the full weight of its expertise in automotive and replacement parts retailing to Citroën Racing, Peugeot Sport and DS Performance to help promote production racing.
Peugeot Citroën Retail will be responsible for marketing and retailing the racing car kit and all motorsports parts from Peugeot and Citroën brands' catalogues, as well as motorsports merchandise worldwide.
Between them, the three marques design, engineer, support and make available for sale vehicles eligible for circuit and rally use.
The activity will be based in Peugeot Citroën Retail's Paris platform in Gonesse, on the premises of Société Commerciale de Distribution des Pièces de Rechange (SCDPR).
Fully renovated in 2008, this site offers the space needed to develop the activity and is ideally located in terms of logistics, with easy access to the A86, A1, A3 and A104 motorways and close proximity to Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Jean-Philippe Imparato, Vice President of Peugeot Citroën Retail, said: "This partnership harnesses the full firepower of our retail network so that the Motorsports Centre of Excellence and Peugeot, Citroën and DS motorsports customers can benefit from Peugeot Citroën Retail's expertise in marketing and retailing replacement parts. The teams at Peugeot Citroën Retail are excited about taking on this new challenge, which will help to raise the standards of service quality excellence."
Inherent qualities of the Gonesse facility
The Peugeot Citroën Racing Shop facility at Gonesse comprises 4,695 square metres of warehouses and 680 sq.m. of office space. As well as replacing the two spare parts storage sites currently used for production racing, Peugeot Sport facility at Vélizy and Citroën Racing site at Satory – Gonesse will have a residual storage capacity commensurate with the ambitious underlying strategy to develop production racing.
The new facility is ideally located at the heart of a logistics platform close to Paris's Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport and to one of Europe's largest road transport hubs. Supplies can thus be shipped quickly anywhere across the globe. This is an obvious advantage for a business with broad international ambitions.
In addition, the facility will have 10 loading and unloading bays to enable smooth turnover and rapid transit of the 10,000-plus parts that it will handle when fully operational.
Jean-Philippe Imparato, Vice-President of PSA Retail, said: "PSA Retail is delighted about the partnership with PSA Motorsport. Peugeot Citroën Racing Shop will set the operating standard in terms of service quality and supply for private motorsports customers. The demands inherent in motorsports will help raise PSA Retail's operating standards, generating indirect benefits for customers at our 300 sites".
Jean-Marc Finot, Vice-President of PSA Motorsport, said: "This partnership is very important for developing our brands' production racing activity. It will allow PSA Motorsport to focus totally on its core business and winning culture, while offering higher levels of service to a great many private customers".