From the back of a Facebook page to a fifteen-person team
Some of you will remember when I announced I was leaving Steve Marshall Ford to open my own dealership. That was 2017. What most people didn’t see was the two years before it.
I’d stepped back from my role as finance manager to run a department of my own — just me, handling sales and financing start to finish for every customer. I met people through Facebook, mostly, and I drove. A lot. On a good day I’d deliver a vehicle to Port Hardy in the morning and another to Tofino by evening.
Nobody was doing car sales that way at the time. I wasn’t sure it would work either. What made it work was that people kept saying yes — customers in communities all over the Island who had no particular reason to trust a guy showing up in their driveway with a set of keys, and did anyway.
That’s how Pacific Nations came to exist, and it’s where the name comes from. Being accepted and trusted by the First Nations communities of this coast, these Pacific nations, was a real honour, and the name is our homage to them.
In May 2017 my wife Nicole and I opened the doors, with Karl Ebdrup of the Steve Marshall Auto Group as our partner. We started small and did every job in the building ourselves.
What’s been built since has been built by the people who came to work here. We’re a team of fifteen now, and honestly, most of what customers tell us they appreciate comes down to them rather than to me. Our growth has come from one thing: a genuine commitment to five-star service, and a team who care about it as much as I do. The more of them there are, the more people we can look after properly.
Thank you for giving us the chance to earn your business. I don’t take it for granted, and I’m grateful to be part of so many of your families.
— Aron Welsh
General Manager & Co-Founder
