Sandicliffe celebrate their 21st Swopshop Sale

When it comes to Sandicliffe’s longest running sales event, Swopshop, it’s hard to miss the hype. As you will see from the TV, local radio, and press adverts - and from the signage covering our ten East Midlands locations - the message is always clear: This is the chance for you to come down and ‘swop’ your car for a better one. Including the forthcoming event – from Friday 12 to Sunday 14 April – we will have run our now famous ‘sale with a twist’ no fewer than 21 times since taking on the brand in 2007. With almost 3,000 new and used cars sold using the Swopshop process after trialling it in Loughborough, it has proven to be one of the UK’s most popular car retail events. “We run various events that are well liked by our customers but when we run Swopshop, around four times more people attend,” said Nigel Falkiner, Head of Marketing at Sandicliffe, one of the East Midlands’ most trusted car experts. “We find that there are a range of people who clearly prefer the quick process and the whitewashed prices on all our new and used cars. “We also find one or two other retailers try to copy it but our customers tell us they prefer the real deal.

Apart from abiding by the Swopshop buyers guarantee - where at least 80 per cent of all stock has to be reduced and in the sale and where we promise to give an immediate valuation before anything else happens - if the customer doesn’t buy from us, we will still promise to buy their car from them,” he added. The original name was created in 1976 by the BBC for their Saturday morning show hosted by Noel Edmonds. With the show running for six years, the word ‘Swopshop’ quickly became a household name and it was then registered as a trademark sale event and assigned to Sandicliffe for us to operate. Mr Falkiner from Sandicliffe, the used car experts, explained: “Because the event is so successful, we needed to have the logo trademark registered so we could protect it from being copied elsewhere. Since 2007, only a few other similar events have taken place, and this has meant the customer can continue to visit Sandicliffe knowing they will get the real Swopshop deal”.