Ling Time – TarMag (or Tar Mag) – Track and Road Magazine
Posted on | August 28, 2008 | Comments Off
Visit http://www.tarmag.co.uk. The Tar Mag is online and subscription is free!
LING TIME
Ling, can you please tell me a bit about your business, and your personal history.
I’m Ling, I’m a self-made car-leasing magnate. Actually, I’m an immigrant, female, Chinese female millionaire nutcase who runs LINGsCARS.com, the biggest and best car contract hire website in the UK. To give you an idea of the scale of my business, this year I will rent in excess of £40million of brand-new cars. All that business is done from my website.
Why should people lease a car rather than buy?
Leasing, or contract hire, simply means “renting over a fixed term”. The term is usually 2 or 3 years.
The great thing about renting is that it fixes your costs, you know exactly how much the car will cost you, over that period, including the road tax. If you get a car by any other method, you usually take the residual risk… and as anyone with a big 4×4 has found out over the past few months, values have dropped by up to 25%, leaving many people with an overpriced lemon to sell.
Many people think they can buy and sell cars cheaper than renting them. Well, good luck to them. All my cars are brand-new, and I defy anyone to buy and then re-sell a new car in 2-years whilst spending less money than they would on my rentals.
Sure, you can run an old banger cheaper, but who wants an old banger? Er… me, I guess. I own a 1970 Zil 7.0 litre V8 6×6 nuclear missile truck, and a 1966 Routemaster bus as well as an old Beijing Jeep.
And why should people go to Lingscars.com?
For the experience! My site is the best website in the UK, I think. It has been voted Top 100 in the world in FHM, Top 10 in Car, as well as being voted one of the 10 worst in the world. I guess that depends in you are an anal Mac developer or a normal human. I have won many awards, including Best Car Industry Website.
I really take my webpage seriously, even though it is completely nutty with more films and multimedia than YouTube. I even have a LingTube page, and completely blow Top Gear out of the water with my spoof “Chop Gear”. You take off in whatever direction interests you, from the starting point of my 800-car long index page.
I take the ‘spider web’ concept quite seriously, too. Once you’re entangled, it takes a desperate effort of will to escape the cerebral attraction of uncharted territory. It’s like having an IV heroin drip via your computer monitor. Every page contains some ‘sticky’ feature that threatens to get you hooked. It’s fun. Why can’t selling or business be fun? Behind the scenes, I have a built an industry-leading customer management system, where customers are walked through the supply process in a similarly crazy website, with a full conversation log, free noodles, cash bribes and a free toy car. On a serious note, I am the only UK car business to conduct all my business online, and all on a 256 bit secure server. I give the highest data security in the industry, everyone else relies on unprotected emails and fax, for the most sensitive personal of information.
Your website is very informative with lots of customer referrals, how many cars do you lease out a month? And year?
I lease about 2000 new cars a year, but it’s a moving target. My business grows between 50% and 100% every year, so managing the growth is difficult. I have 1,000 attributed customer letters and an interactive customer map. Even the power of Google Maps is not enough to display all my push-pins on my map. My customers just love my service. There has to be meat and potatoes behind the scenes.
Has featuring on bbc1 Dragons Den affected you and your business?
Yes, Dragons’ Den was tremendously important to me. I gained loads of publicity, but more importantly two of the Dragons (Bannatyne and Farleigh) offered investment. They saw my business potential. I immediately turned them down and they came back with a better offer! That is almost unheard of in Dragons’ Den. I turned down the second offer too.
Is the credit crunch affecting you and your business?
The credit crunch is not affecting me one bit. I think a lot of this is self-induced paranoia by weak-willed people and businesses. Every single month this year has been significantly up on 2007, and at the end of July I was about £90,000 in revenue ahead, year on year. One reason for this is that term-rental is like a fixed mortgage rate – it is very attractive to have fixed costs when the world around you is in turmoil. Another good reason is that providing the best service in the industry helps, too, along with the highest efficiency and lowest overheads which mean that I can offer the lowest prices in the market, more profitably than any other company.
Lingsmobiles.com your latest venture, can you tell us more about it?
I have taken the opportunity to set up an affiliate mobile phone site, as it is a great fit with my car site. Unlike LINGsCARS, LINGsMOBILES is unmanned and operates automatically. The cars will always be my main business, but the mobile side is pure profit and gives me some opportunity to cross-sell. I have many more ideas in the pot, just ready to unleash on the UK.
How do you answer critcisms about your “crazy” website?
So many other websites follow strict unwritten rules about layout. They say, “It must be clear!” Really?
Subheadings like; “Home” “Contact Us” are almost uniformly boring, but really human beings and the human mind do not operate in that way. Look at your own web-surfing habits. The human mind wants stimulation, not communist-era conformity plus a logo.
I aim to polarise visitors, some love my site, some hate it, so what? Better than being boring. My latest adventure becoming the sponsor of Fulchester United in VIZ magazine and playing on the “Kung Fu Panda” film with my own version based on my free noodle brand – “FUKU Panda” is a very good illustration. I hold the Billy-The-Fish team to ransom with a Chinese nuclear missile. Why not? Buy VIZ and read it! Gotta have fun!
Visit http://www.tarmag.co.uk The magazine is online and subscription is free!
TarMag is the latest completely free online digital monthly magazine. TarMag aims to set new standards in automotive journalism with an editorial style unique to TarMag. Our car reviews cover everything you would expect from a car magazine with much more! We put the cars through our rigorous road test and report on the practical elements that our readers want to read about!
Bringing you the latest news and reviews from the motoring world including general motoring, modified, 4×4 and Super cars. Topped with gadget reviews and manufacturer news. TarMag covers everything from the latest super cars to GPS satellite navigation systems. Being an online digital magazine, they will also be including video reviews.
Whether you work within the motoring industry, sales person, or a consumer, their news has got it covered. The mix of information provided combined with the talents of our editors and their drivers, make TarMag a worthwhile read!
Whilst sharing their enjoyment for all things motor related, TarMag aims to please. TarMag also likes to get involved with their reader’s with several sections devoted to “Reader’s cars”, “Reader’s Letters”, and “Spotted Pictures.”
With a friendly and yet unique style which their readers can relate to TarMag gives readers the latest industry news and reviews including new technologies, worldwide motoring events, concept-vehicles and much more. TarMag aims in the near future to include Video reviews of motoring events and the latest vehicles to hit the roads from all across the world!
TarMag will be available on some UK Magazine Subscription websites, various enthusiast forums and popular social networking websites. TarMag will be attending events throughout the year to promote the magazine even further!
So what are you waiting for? A free monthly motoring magazine….. Sign up now!
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About
I am Ling Valentine as seen on Dragons' Den I lease cheap cars in the UK!. Have a look at my Cheap car leasing website
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