Tesla To Use Portable Flatbed Stores To Increase Sales

Tesla Motors is literally rolling out a new storefront idea on a flatbed truck. Tesla has debuted its pop-up store concept. Essentially the store, made up to two shipping containers, is trucked to a location where it is built to expand to 20 feet deep and 34.5 feet wide in a few hours. Once expanded and set-up the store showcases Model S sedans for Tesla customers in an area where there isn’t a Tesla Motors gallery store. Granted, this doesn’t mean that Tesla will be able to sell using this concept in any state; however, it does mean that they are more location-flexible than a typical brick and mortar store. A similar mobile store initiative is already underway in Europe.

The first Tesla mobile store in the U.S. showed up in Santa Barbara, California over Memorial Day weekend with the next planned stop being the Hamptons in New York. Alexis Georgeson, a Tesla spokeswoman, told Fortune magazine that the strategy is to deploy these stores in high-class parts of the U.S where its customer base vacations. This gives Tesla the chance to educate potential new clients on their product, provide test drives and direct them to purchase online.

The expandable mobile stores were created in house. Besides the pop-up stores, Tesla Moors spends zero on traditional forms of advertising. They rely on creating a buzz being the constant media darling. That makes this mobile store concept critical to a company trying to sell off a lot of produced inventory. Tesla is expected to build 12,500 Model S sedans in the second quarter and would like to deliver 10,000 to 11,000 of them.

This mobile store initiative was likely the topic discussed on 2014 fourth quarter earnings calls. In that call Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk noted that his company had “a secret weapon on the demand side that we’ll probably start to deploy later this year for demand generation.” It’s believed that this mobile store concept is the secret weapon. A store on wheels, which requires a fraction of the price and manpower of a retail location, could be a strong weapon. Musk continued on the call that whatever this thing was, it would be, “a good weapon against the dealers.”

Tesla is taking their show on the road. What do you think of their mobile stores? Will pop-up galleries prove to be a valuable asset to Tesla Motors? Finally, what do you make of Elon Musk talking about having a secret weapon against dealers? Is he ever going to work with dealers?