duPont Registry launches live auction platform with 100% sell-through guarantee and 14-day returns, backed by $34M raise

Shop over 26,500 luxury watches. Fully authenticated inhouse by bezel's team of experts. Our next guest is the CEO of DuPont Registry Group. Uh we I believe he's in the reream waiting room now. We will bring him into the TV penulture. Welcome back. Back in the garage. Thank you so much for joining the show.

Hello. How are you?

Great to have you back.

Fantastic. What are you in front of today? Uh, it's a 575M from Ferrari.

Very nice little roof scoop on there. Uh, I love that. Uh, what else is new in your world? Give us the latest update. What news is going on in your world?

So, the big news that, um, we've been working on for a while is that we launched Dupon Registry Live, which is the Dupon Registry online auction platform. Completely different value proposition. We are the only uh online auction platform offering 100% sell through. So if you come and you want to sell your car with us, we guarantee that the car will sell at the price that you decide.

And the second thing is that for the buyers, we are giving 14-day return policy.

Mhm.

So it removes buyers remorse. You can buy that car, you can drive it, you can return it, we'll take it back.

That's crazy. Is that extremely capital intensive? Do you have to raise a bunch of money to make sure that you're guaranteeing liquidity?

Yeah, we did. We did raise capital. We have a we have a bank partner at the moment. We raise $34 million in working capital.

We're working on extending that line by the end of the year

and it allows us to acquire the cars. Most of the cars today are own inventory but we believe that a lot of dealers are going to sign up as well as private.

So I mean I imagine that there has to be a rigorous vetting process on the way in in that case, right? You don't you can't just take any any old Nissan Morano C Cross Cabriolet and throw it on the site. Uh there's a bar. How do you think about setting that bar for what can make it onto the DuPont Registry?

So, so we do have a big location in Nashville. We're actually uh moving into the location next week. It's a bigger location, 65,000 square foot.

So, we take ownership of the car. We're going to ship the car to that location. We're going to do an inspection that will bring the Dupon registry certification to the car and then we are taking nice picture of the car. We're pushing it online.

Mhm.

And then we uh we make sure that our

So, have you have you guys been specifically acquiring inventory in order to launch the platform or were you historically holding inventory? cuz I I always have leveraged the platform just as a as a buyer and enthusiast to just browse cars and and know that you guys are sourcing from a ton of different dealerships.

Yeah, we're sourcing from our dealership partners. We're sourcing from private sellers. This has been going on for the past 18 months. Uh we're now transacting close to a thousand cars every month. Mhm.

Uh and part of those now cars is the new omni channel strategy

to be able to uh sell those cars to the potential buyers. We do have dealers today on our platform that are bidding for cars. We do have clients as well. This is the power of the Dupont Registry Group ecosystem.

Mhm. What's the most underrated car on Dupont Registry today?

Right now, the only one that I would build on

for me personally, yeah,

I have my eyes on that target singer by Singer. That's the one.

Beautiful car. It's olive green. It's taga. It's just amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. It looks remarkable.

It's stunning. [laughter]

What What do you like how how is the uh I can understand, you know, having the having the guarantees, having that return policy, having the certification, that all makes a lot of sense. It's nicely counterpositioned against other auction platforms uh both both new and old that are kind of relying on you know kind of winging it. Uh but uh what what are am I missing anything around like the other ways in which the platform is opinionated or differentiated?

No, it's exactly that. Those are the two main differentiator. Um this is our secret ingredients. This is where how we are differentiating from platforms that are also doing online auction. It's it's very disruptive. A lot of people are asking us how do you do it? Uh this is our secret source. We have the platform and we have the ecosystem to uh uh making us able to do these kind of things.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's a great great uh value prop. Makes a ton of sense.

Uh what are you what are you most excited about uh for 2026 uh in the industry broadly? uh how did you react to uh some of the regulatory changes here in the US? Are you expecting to be selling a bunch of mini mini Toyota trucks on [laughter] I don't know if those will meet the bar, but yeah, what's most exciting to you broadly in

Yeah, for me the most exciting things there is a there is a report coming on Friday. It was a it's a report done by Boston Consulting Group and they they used our data and our audience to run the report. It's estimating the luxury car market in the US to be $ 110 billion. And it's a market that in the next 10 year is going to double.

We actually see that in the transaction we run now. There is a lot of potential. All the tariffs etc are actually fueling the luxury used car market at the moment. There's a lot of demand for those cars and our buyers are really really looking to have convenience to be able to transact online. And this is what we're building over the next 18 months. You will see a massive technology transformation in Dupon registry group and we will start enabling transactions online with the capacity for any buyer to buy the car from your phone, get it delivered.

Love it. Uh question from the chat. Uh how are you thinking about Chinese electric vehicles? We've talked about BYD on the show and Xiaomi. Uh do you think that there that there's promise there? opportunity there. Do you understand how your business might integrate with them because they're not being sold in the US yet? But do you have any predictions for where that market might go?

I mean, electric cars, some of them are amazing electric cars and we've seen one of them beat the world record for the fastest cars on the road.

Yeah.

To me, 30 years from now, everyone is in a robo taxi. No one is driving for their day-to-day, daily driver.

Yep.

And they're going to drive on weekends to have fun.

Yep. Would you drive a Chinese electric car or would you drive a manual Ferrari? Right. [laughter]

So, our business, the business we're in, I think we're fine.

You think we're fine? I love it.

Do you think do you think there'll actually be a resurgence in kind of like track and and racing culture? I know there's uh some change of uh I don't know if this is public, but there's a a uh uh real estate developer that's currently buying uh uh a racetrack here in California. Uh I think there could be some renewed and and if if people no longer uh have to drive on their commute, I think there will be more excitement around track days and things like that. But uh does that align?

Of course, it's completely aligned with our strategy. We have a lot of experiences today where we get people on the road where we are making sure that they can drive their cars in a very safe condition but in the best condition. It includes track days, it includes rallies in the best places around the world. Uh and I do believe that there will be more and more of that in the in the future.

Yeah. Maybe maybe that's the next filter that you add on. I'm looking at DuPont registry and I see, you know, you can filter by price, mileage, year, you know, transmission, drivetrain. Uh track only. You got to give us a track only uh a filter, but hopefully soon. Uh I I know the product's continually iterating, but thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.

Yeah, great to get the update. Congrats on on all the all the progress. Always a great time.

Excited to uh start bidding myself.

We'll talk to you soon. [laughter]

Great to see you.

Thank you everyone.

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