DuPont Registry hits unicorn status with new investment, plans live auction platform and online checkout

us? Uh corrected uh Tesla's not at an all-time high peaked last year. Uh but getting close. Getting close. Well, we have our next guest in the re room waiting room. We'll bring him in. Absolutely pumped for this. Oh, look at this. What's happening? Fantastic background. Great uh great setup for having me. How you doing?

We couldn't have said yes faster to having you on the show. I think I'm I'm I'm a I'm a daily active user. 100% registry of the products and uh yeah, super excited to to get the update from you. Thank you for having me guys.

Yes, please uh kick us off with an introduction on yourself and actually describe the company for anyone who might not know. Yeah, sure. So, uh I'm I joined the company two years ago as you will uh you will hear from my accent. I'm not from Paris, Texas. I was born and raised in France. I came to the US 16 years ago.

started my career with in the luxury and tech world with uh Louis Vuitton uh and moved two years ago to uh to lead registry group. Um we're going through a major transformation. We're disrupting the luxury automotive industry.

Uh the group has been building for the past 40 years amazing trust uh towards the audience of you know car enthusiasts and car collectors. Today we're the only one place where any car collector can find the product of their passion. Um, and we're transforming the industry.

We're building a brand new tech platform to have a for ecosystem of dealership and clients a way for them to transact online. Uh, we're very excited about it. The market opportunity is huge. Um, and the group is uh is moving in the right direction.

What uh what's the shape of the business now and then how much do you want to move to online platforms? Uh is is I want oneclick checkout. Yeah. Like like how far does this go? I want one click check out too and this is what we are working towards. Great.

So the group has been the foundation of the group is again 40 years of legacy and trust. Uh we have today amazing brand within our portfolio uh events that are gathering all the enthusiasts and car collectors some of them the uh the most uh affluent car collectors in the world.

Uh and we want to use that foundation and the data that we've been accumulated for years to uh to build really an omni channel tech platform that will allow anyone uh when they see a product and a car that they want to be able to purchase it online and get delivered at their home.

uh this is what we're building on right now. Uh and the recent investors that we announced today uh that brings capital to uh to the company uh we're going to use that capital to build that tech platform. So expect a lot of new uh changes in the in the next few years.

Um what uh any you know what is what I kind of you mentioned events more seamless transactions that all makes sense. Are you guys planning anything on the auction side or you feel like that is well served by the industry today? No, no, no. It's uh it's definitely something we have in mind.

Uh it's part also of our uh where where I came from in the luxury world, it's it's all about the omni channel and being being taking care of our clients wherever they want to buy and whenever they want to buy. Uh so if you look today in the car space, the uh the auction piece is quite important.

Um and we are launching in a in a few weeks uh uh our own Dupon Registry live auction platform uh that will support uh our audience and and allow us and our dealers to sell their cars. It's going to be a disruptive one. You will see a couple of announcements are coming in the next few weeks.

How do you think about defining uh the like the the the tone the vibe around what type of cars make it onto the platform? It feels like uh you know a dollar is a dollar. You could you could have every car on there, but you have to define the the brand somehow.

So, how do you think about what is an appropriate car to work with? And and how do you uh how do you let someone down if they bring something that's just not quite there, a little bit too not special enough? To me, we don't let anyone down because at the core of our audience is there is passion.

Uh so whether you're you're talking about uh and we had we had someone the other day from Eastern Europe that rebuilt the Dacia from his father. There was a strong passion about that Dacia and we actually talked about it and with Petrolicious one of our brand we we we did a movie about this this guy.

Uh so to me it's it's it's all about that passion component. Of course for the past 40 years we've been the leading marketplace and our positioning is luxury and highend luxury and we want to continue to go there. Uh but my job is not to say no to my clients.

It's to be able to welcome them in our ecosystem and serve them and make sure that they evolve with us throughout their their collector's journey. Give us uh a highle view of the current state of the automotive industry.

We obviously are we're car enthusiasts ourselves but uh cover uh tech about a thousand times more closely than the automotive world. But seems like we're at a very interesting time right now. You have pressure from on on the Chinese market. You have trade wars, you have forth on electrification.

Yeah, electri electrification that uh enthusiasts have certainly uh not, you know, overall not not been huge fans of. You've also seen, you know, the massive depreciation on that front.

If you're an automotive enthusiast, nobody wants to buy a car that uh that might look pretty and drive well, but if it's going to depreciate 40% in the first year, it's just not you're never going to really get that uh enthusiast love.

So, I'm curious, what kind of trends are you tracking most closely and and uh kind of um uh new activity over the next 12 months? Yeah, it's very good question. So, all you mentioned does not really affect us today.

We're in the used cars luxury space and uh and and we're in the business of our clients are looking for something they want, not something they need. So from a from a pure purchase funnel standpoint, they're not really affected today by tariffs and uh and otherwise.

Um you will see in the next few weeks we're partnering with Boston Consulting Group and we're going to release a luxury car market report. Oh, cool. We've seen first few thing in that in that report. We're talking about hundred billion dollar market. So it's going to be a uh it's quite interesting.

There is a huge market opportunity not at all digital today. Uh what's interesting too is that we see that electrification is not there. Uh there is nothing in if you're looking at the luxury car market. People are looking for performance. They're looking for fun. They're not looking at their daily drivers.

So they will look more for that car behind me. Yeah. A 2001 Ferrari 550 Marinelo than an electric car. Yeah. Yeah.

The other the other thing I think is worth calling out part of your guys's opportunities uh is like I have bought I've purchased a number of cars site unseen online and maybe that's just because I was born in the you know I was born in 1995. I grew up purchasing everything on the internet.

I have no problem seeing a video of a car. I might get a remote PPI done on it to have that confidence. But I continuously am happy to purchase cars out of state, you know, wherever. I don't need to see them.

Um, I've done that, I think, at least three or four times at this point, and I expect to do that many more times in my life.

Do you think that that is part of your guys' opportunity and that the the new generation of of car owners and enthusiasts are just willing again, it doesn't matter if the car if the spec you want is out of state, great. I have no, you know, no problem kind of purchasing. Yeah, it's actually very interesting.

Today we see that about 99% of the purchase decision starts online. Uh it takes couple of months for anyone to decide which cars they want to buy and there is a lot of online research yet less than 1% of those transactions are happening online.

Uh so there is there is a lot of potential to disrupt the market and disrupt the industry. Uh when you're talking about buying a car site unseen uh and this is the power of our brand and our ecosystem.

We have the trust from millions of people that have been, you know, looking at our brand and coming to our brand for the past 40 years and they trust the brand to show them the right product with the right condition and be transparent about the product.

And this is what we're offering at the national audience for the US. You'll be able to buy a car from uh California, get it delivered in New York uh and behind the scene, we will be the intermediate to facilitate that transaction and make sure that you trust the seller and the buyer and trust both parties.

How do you think about the the next generation getting into cars? What's different about Gen Z or millennial car collectors?

Uh, are are they going as are they going less far back into historical or retro cars or or does every generation just love the car that they had on the poster in their bedroom forever and you're kind of locked in a time capsule?

Or or is there something unique and different about the millennial generation or the Gen Z generation as opposed to the Gen Xers or the boomers? I think there is there is something unique is that they're discovering the they're discovering the luxury car market through experiences and and and community.

And that's what we're doing at the group. We're organizing many events every year uh to build that community to continue fostering the dream within the community.

Uh from a purchase standpoint, as any as any other car enthusiast, you will start with the car that was that you had as a poster in your in your bedroom when you were 14. uh and that will be your first car, but then you're going to evolve throughout your collection.

The good thing is that today we're seeing a transfer of wealth between generation. The passion is also transferring. So, we're actually seeing that our audience is getting younger. Yeah.

And definitely to your point, the audience is ready and they they're used to buy those products online and luxury products online and this is where we're going to offer them that ability. How are you thinking about marketing and content production? Uh I engage with DuPont registry on Axe actually.

I see every new auction and there's a lot of facts and interesting details in there. It's very interesting to me. Um but there's so much that you can do with cars when you're marketing a platform because the cars themselves are interesting. Like that car behind you, I could watch a 20-minute video about it.

Uh it's fascinating. I probably have uh by other creators. Have you how are you thinking about partnering with creators uh either sponsoring content or bringing people inhouse agencies like how do you think about the correct shape for just raising the awareness of DuPont? It's it's it's all about stories to me.

Uh we need to tell stories between a driver and his cars. That's what we're doing with one of our brand Petrolicious. Every Friday we have a new movie about a car story. Cool. Uh this is what we want to do. We want to make sure that we we tell the story of the enthusiast community.

We tell the story of the car collectors and how they build their collection from the first purchase until uh until their their latest investment. Uh and this is really how we're today how we're targeting our content strategy is really focusing on that. Very cool. Jordan, anything else? Amazing.

Uh we'll we'll send you some posts after this, but we've featured DuPont thousands of times. thousands of times in our in our early episodes. It was a a core part of the content. Please like never stop posting on X. It is the best little drip feed.

It just it just sprinkles itself in with all the other tech news and I see it and I love it and I usually tag a friend and I say you should get this car. Well, yeah. I can't I'm very excited you guys have again, you know, it's just a daily active user. I'm very happy that you guys will have more Yeah.

you know, investment and and uh let us know if we can help you recruit anybody in on on the technical side. Uh I'm sure the terms of the deal, how much was raised, anything like that? Do you have any numbers to share for us? No, unfortunately, we we don't disclose financial numbers.

What I can tell you is Francois is a is one of the top collectors in the world as well as a very well-known race car drivers. Uh he brings a lot of validation of our strategy. He's a big uh he's a big tech guy and he loves tech as well.

Uh he he sees what what we are building from a tech and AI standpoint with the data we have. Uh and we're very happy that that he's on board with this. But one number you guys reached unicorn status. That's correct, right? Yes. Yes. There we go. Hit that gong, John. Congratulations. There we go.

Uh you'll uh you'll appreciate this. We got we're waiting. We were getting waiting for the right car to put this on. So, this just came in the mail. Maybe it's the 599. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Not for sale, though. No. Yeah. Another one. They're they're rare these days. Awesome.

Uh, thank you so much for coming on and congratulations. We appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Bye. Uh, and if you're looking for a luxury