- June 20, 2021
- Posted by: Stratford Team
- Category: Business
Your dad founded Bob Saks car dealers — talk to me about that.
My dad founded it in 1969. I started selling cars when I was 16 and began working my way up the family business right out of college in 1988. We had eight franchises at the peak. I took over for my father around 2004-2005. Then in 2008-2009 when the Great Recession hit, everything changed. We had just built a brand-new building in Lyon Township, and then General Motors went bankrupt and Chrysler went bankrupt. GM canceled the Pontiac brand, so we lost our franchise, which was 70 percent of our business. We sold our Farmington Hills (Buick) franchises to build out the big dealership and were a year into the build when everything went haywire.
How did you go from selling cars to selling CBD?
It’s a funny thing, huh. A few years ago the “green rush” started and everyone was just running at it. I was already running a few other companies, like a property management company and an auto…
