By Mark Kennedy
Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) This article takes a look at 26 year old Ruby Davis who is trying to feminize the car-buying experience with her new website ChickDriven.com.
Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.
Some women think car dealerships are essentially man caves.
If you don’t have the vocabulary of an auto mechanic or the negotiation skills of a horse trader, they say, car buying can feel like a testosterone-fueled experience.
Enter Ruby Davis, a 26-year-old Australia-born fashion designer and online entrepreneur, whose new venture is ChickDriven.com, a website that seeks to feminize the car-buying experience. Davis, who lives in California, says that ChickDriven.com is unlike most car websites that are geared to male customers who are most interested in engineering specs and performance notes.
Instead of sorting car reviews purely by vehicle type — cars, trucks, SUVS, etc. — ChickDriven.com has a web menu that includes such subcategories as, “cars for moms,” “safe cars” and “cute cars.”
It also aggregates articles about cars that might appeal to women. Recent posts include a piece on Fast and Fabulous, a line of purses, a report on rapper 50 Cent angling to host the BBC television show “Top Gear” and an article about a VW dealership offering to give customers test drives while they play Pokemon Go!
Davis, an auto enthusiast and budding journalist, said she decided to start ChickDriven.com after feeling patronized at a California car dealership.
“I think that car salesmen — [often] men — see a women and they assume it’ll be easy to take advantage of her,” Davis says. “ChickDriven.com empowers women like me to make an informed decision about what car to buy and how much they should pay for it.”
Like most automotive sites, ChickDriven.com contains auto reviews and videos — Davis writes and edits the pieces herself — and also serves as a car-buying portal to match potential car buyers with offers from participating dealerships.
The site presupposes that women and men come at the car-buying experience from different perspectives. While men — and some women — may be interested in a car’s zero-to-60 mph times, other women see their automobiles as fashion accessories that must fit their sense of style.
“I liken buying a car to buying a handbag,” she said. “I look at body style and color. You choose it to fit your personality. If you are not towing a boat, do you really need to know about torque?
“Cars are a lifestyle. It’s about fun. It’s about putting women in the driver’s seat.”
Women may also look for practical features in their vehicles that may not be front-of-mind for male buyers, Davis says, “like whether a stroller will fit inside.”
Davis says about 80 percent of car-buying decisions are made directly or indirectly by women, while more marketing is still directed at men. She bills her site as the No. 1 automotive site for women, which may simply be a side benefit of being first-to-market with the idea.
Davis said most of her marketing, so far, is being done through social media. ChickDriven.com has about 16,000 followers on Instagram, she said.
Her best advice for women braving the modern showroom: “Don’t rush into [a purchase]. Go to a dealership, but be willing to walk away and sleep on ]a deal]. If you go back the next day and the car is not there, it wasn’t meant to be. It’s too easy to get caught up in buying something.”
Actually, that’s solid advice no matter your gender.
