Jan Richardson says she has grown accustomed to going against the grain with her career decisions.


Richardson, who owns and is the general manager of the combined Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo auto dealerships here, chose to work in an industry dominated by men. Whats more, she picked an elite market segment in the auto industry. Her Jaguar dealership is one of only 170 in the U.S., compared with the some 5,000 Ford brand dealerships nationwide, she says.


I got in this business to be a Jaguar dealer, and thats part of my desire to be on the bleeding edge of an industry, Richardson says.


Armed with ambition and a strong desire to run a Jaguar dealership, Richardson says she was the first graduate of whats called the Ford Dealer Development Program to land a Jaguar business as her first dealership. Ford Motor Co. owns the Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo lines as part of its premier automotive group.


I liked that Ford was looking at where the market was going, where import brands at both the high end and low end had a promising foundation for revenue stream in the auto industry, Richardson says.


Through a company she formed here called Spokane Motor Cars Inc. Richardson bought the assets of both the Jaguar Land Rover Spokane and Lithia Volvo dealerships here in March of 2004. The new company leased the established Jaguar Land Rover dealership buildings in the automotive sales district just southwest of downtown and moved the Volvo operation there from Lithia Camp Automotive Inc.s campus in North Spokane.


In its first year of operation, Spokane Motor Cars doubled the revenues the separate dealerships had made in the year before they were combined, Richardson says. Business has been strong since then, she says, but declines to disclose exact revenue figures.


Meanwhile, Spokane Motor Cars has more than doubled its work force in the last three years; it now employs 28 people compared with the 12 it employed initially. Richardson says shes looking to hire five to eight more employees this year.


Spokane Motor Cars also has leased a third building, located northwest of the building, at 1310 W. Third, which houses the showroom and sales department for Jaguar and Land Rover. That new facility, used as a detail center, has added 3,500 square feet of floor space to the dealerships now three-building campus, which previously had a total of 40,000 square feet of space.


Richardsons desire to own a Jaguar dealership led her to Spokane and away from Texas where she had spent most of her life. Richardson was born in San Francisco in 1955, and moved to Dallas 13 years later. She graduated from high school there in 1973, and started working at AT&T while taking evening classes at the University of Texas at Dallas. She graduated from college in 1979 with a bachelors degree in business and public administration.


Richardson spent 25 years working for AT&T, primarily in Dallas. During that time, she held positions that included human resources manager, account executive, and managing director in business and consumer sales for the companys southern and southwestern regions of the U.S. Some of the positions Richardson held involved developing new products and strategies.


I stayed so long with AT&T because I was able to do a lot of different things within the company, she says. I like developing something newthe good, the bad, and the ugly of it.


After Richardson retired from AT&T in 1998 at age 43, a friend who worked in the auto industry suggested that she consider owning a Ford dealership. The idea appealed to Richardson, partly because she wanted to work in a consumer-focused business, a change of pace from her focus on business clients at AT&T. While the risks associated with investing in a dealership were significantly higher than those of Richardsons other career options, the potential of return on investment also was much higher, she says.


Richardson enrolled in Fords two-year dealer development program in 1999. As part of the program, she worked at two different dealerships in Texas in both employee and management positions. She quickly found the auto sales business suited her.


I liked the fast-pace, day-to-day focus of it, that every day youre affecting the bottom line, she says.


Richardson says she wanted to sell Jaguars both because she likes that brand of car and because during her time at AT&T she had worked with clients who saw the value of investing in luxury brands. As a result of her experience with those clients, she knew she could relate to the customers whom Jaguar attracts.


Richardson heard about an opportunity to buy a Jaguar dealership here while she was general manager at a Jaguar dealership in the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas. When she pitched her business plan to the executives who oversee Jaguar dealerships in the western U.S., she advised combining the Jaguar dealership here with the Land Rover brand, due to the popularity of sport-utility vehicles in the Spokane market. In addition, she said Volvo should be included in the dealerships product line because while it still is considered a luxury vehicle, it has lower price points than the other two brands she wanted to combine, and would sell in higher volumes. At the time, few dealerships in the U.S. carried all three lines.


I saw that it couldnt just be a Jaguar store here, so my case was for all three brands, she says. That concept had to be sold to all three manufacturers, though, and fortunately, they saw my vision.


Richardson also was interested in the dealership here because she wanted to move back to the West.


When I move for work, it has to be someplace where I could live, and Spokane was that kind of place, Richardson says.


So, in the spring of 2004, Richardson packed her bags and headed northwest. For the first few months here, she lived out of a hotel room in the Hotel Lusso, although most of her time was spent at the office. During those first few months, she says her most difficult adjustment was to the long daylight hours in the Pacific Northwest during the spring and summer.


The sun would come up at 4 a.m., and I thought, Where have I moved to? Alaska? she quips.


Richardson didnt have much time to bemoan the early morning sunlight, though. She was too busy trying to reach the goals she had set for the business. Richardson aimed to double the dealerships revenues in the first year, and says she did so. She also wanted to ramp up hiring, and did that, too.


Business has been healthy largely because of the options that the multi-brand dealership provides consumers, she says.


One of the main challenges Richardson is facing is boosting sales of pre-owned cars. Finding qualified employees also has been a challenge, because of the high-end niche market that the dealership serves, she says.


Motivation is what its about, she says. People have to care about it to do a good job.


Richardson says part of her motivation for owning a business was to provide people with good jobs, including family members. Her son is the dealerships general sales manager and her nephew works in the service department. She says she wants to keep it a family-oriented business so that she knows when she leaves the dealership it will be in good hands.


When shes not at the dealership, Richardson often is working in her garden or with one of the community organizations she supports. She serves on the boards of Greater Spokane Incorporated, the Girl Scouts Inland Empire Council, the Spokane Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture. She also is on the deans advisory board for Eastern Washington Universitys school of business.


Jan is thoughtful, strategic in her thinking, and very committed to providing good programs for girls, says Lindy Cater, executive director of the Spokane-based Girl Scouts Inland Empire Council.


Cater adds, We need to have more visible women leaders in the business community here, and I think Spokane is fortunate that shes one of them.


Richardson says being a woman in the business world has presented her with unique challenges, but that she doesnt believe anyone has tried to lessen her value because of her gender.


You have to be who you are when youre putting your heart into something; otherwise youll never get through it, because theres too much in the way of your mission, she says. You just have to regroup and get going.


Contact Emily Brandler at (509) 344-1265 or via e-mail at emilyb@spokanejournal.com.