Expanding to China: How We Built Souche Now (JiPing) and Transformed the Chinese Auto Trade Market
Taking eDealer’s Success Global: The Opportunity in China
With eDealer powering automotive websites across Canada, we had built deep expertise in automotive marketplaces, dealer technology, and lead generation. This success led to an unexpected and massive opportunity—bringing our know-how to China.
At the time, the Chinese auto market was still in its infancy compared to North America. While car ownership was rising rapidly, the infrastructure around used vehicle trade-ins and new car purchasing was completely different. Unlike in Canada or the U.S., where dealers could take trade-ins directly, Chinese dealers had no legal way to keep used cars on their lots.
This created a major gap in the customer journey:
🚗 Customers looking for a new car had to sell their old one first.
🚗 Dealers had no way to take a trade-in, so they had to send customers away.
🚗 Wholesalers operated in large auction houses, creating a disconnected system.
🚗 Dealers often lost potential customers in the process of directing them elsewhere.
Our clients in Beijing had a vision to build a digital marketplace where consumers could list their used vehicles and dealerships could help facilitate the process. But as we studied the problem, we saw a more immediate opportunity—leveraging our expertise to build a solution that kept customers engaged inside the showroom instead of sending them away.
Building the Solution: Souche Now (JiPing)
Rather than just creating a marketplace, we built a mobile app that revolutionized the way new car dealers handled trade-ins in China.
How It Worked:
✅ Data Collection in the Showroom – Dealers could instantly collect all trade-in data using a mobile device, including:
Vehicle details
Photos (including damage photos)
Condition reports
✅ Instant Trade Bidding System – Instead of sending customers away, dealers could:
Push trade-in data to multiple wholesalers & auctions simultaneously
Receive real-time bids from buyers while the customer was still in the showroom
Secure an offer on the trade-in before negotiating the new car sale
✅ Closing the Sale Without Losing the Customer – This allowed dealers to:
Provide a guaranteed trade-in value immediately
Keep customers engaged in the new car sales process
Eliminate the risk of losing customers to competitors during the trade-in process
How This Changed the Chinese Auto Industry
📈 New Car Dealers Retained More Customers – Instead of sending customers away to sell their used cars, dealers now had control over the entire process.
📊 Wholesalers & Auctions Got Faster Access to Inventory – By digitizing trade-ins, they could bid remotely without needing the vehicle physically present.
💡 China’s Trade-In Process Became More Efficient – This model bridged the gap between new car sales and the used car market, changing how business was done across mainland China.
Lessons Learned from Expanding into China
🌎 Adapting to New Markets Requires Deep Local Insights – What worked in Canada wouldn’t work in China. We had to understand the local regulatory, business, and cultural challenges before building the right product.
🔄 Technology Built for One Market Can Be Repurposed for Another – Much of what we built for eDealer became the foundation for Souche Now (JiPing), but we had to adjust the model to fit China’s unique market structure.
🚀 Speed & Execution Matter in Emerging Markets – The Chinese auto market was evolving rapidly, and we had to move fast to establish the model before competitors caught on.
Final Thoughts: The Power of Market Adaptation
Souche Now (JiPing) wasn’t just another automotive tech product—it was a market-shaping innovation that solved a real pain point in a way that hadn’t been done before.
This experience reinforced my approach to product strategy, go-to-market execution, and business expansion into new markets—principles I now apply when helping startups scale their own businesses.
👉 If you’re a founder navigating product expansion or market adaptation, let’s connect.