Dear All,
The team and I would like to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation for those of you who attended the US Retailer Roadshow. There’s no way to describe the immense value of these sessions where dialogue dominates and common understanding and alignment prevails.
As I returned home to my family Friday evening, I must admit that exhaustion caught up with me as I looked back at the nine separate sessions, covering close to 300 retailers, squeezed into six working days. The interesting thing is that despite the fatigue I was elated and felt an even greater surge of motivation. As I’ve already shared with you, I thrive when facing the prospect of tackling challenges and overcoming obstacles. I think that you will all agree with me when I say that we have just as many opportunities as there are challenges. What was clear to me is that we all love the brand and feel immense excitement about the array of new product, both current and in the pipeline. We also concluded that we are standing on a solid base from which we can build towards a more profitable business alongside a more prominent brand.
Looking ahead, we have ample amount of impressions, take-outs, and ideas to digest and reflect upon in the coming weeks. This will be the basis of the next phase of the process which you will, of course, be an integral part. Having done that we will be in a much better position to address the detail matters, challenges and of course opportunities head-on, taking informed and calculated decisions, together.
As I hopefully conveyed clearly during our session, I am a strong advocate of working with mutual trust. I live by the principles of openness, transparency, and consideration of opinion. I truly enjoyed meeting you all was pleased to establish a base for an open dialogue on how we jointly move our brand and business forward.
I also mentioned during the meetings that the pace of announcements at Volvo Cars would not slow down. Today we are announcing the next phase of our strategic partnership with Uber. Volvo Cars has signed a framework agreement with Uber to sell tens of thousands of autonomous driving compatible base vehicles between 2019 and 2021. This will not impact availability of cars to U.S. retailers. A copy of the press release is attached for your information.
The team and I will be reaching out to you soon with further details and input, in the meantime, take great care and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Kind Regards,
Anders