Clean Ops Blog

Hello, and thanks for taking the time to check out the Clean Ops Blog. This blog was born from DrivingSales Founder and CEO Jared Hamilton’s vision that DrivingSales be - not just a community for auto industry people - but one of auto industry people who are for the community. He wanted to highlight all the great things that various automotive organizations, from dealerships to vendors to the OEMs, are doing in their own communities, and to make it easier for them to make a difference. When Jared floated the idea to me of a blog for “greening the dealership,” I jumped on it.

Special thanks goes to Lindsey Lewis, a new member of the DrivingSales Community Development Team, who is responsible for the great research and regular posts to the CleanOps Blog. A close friend of The Hamilton Family, Lindsey has been absorbing knowledge about running dealerships through sheer osmosis and natural smarts, and she has taken the lead in gathering tactical green principles and practices and that can be easily applied to help dealerships do better for themselves, their communities, and the environment.

Here’s a bit on my background (Kristen Stanton), and why these principles are so important to me. I’vebeen working in the online automotive space since my days at Cobalt’s Dealix Division, where I was director of marketing, and helped to create a new marketing department with then Vice President (and untiring mentor) Dean Evans, when Dealix was just a startup. After Dealix, I served as director of business development for Edmunds.com, then as a marketing consultant for Dealer.com, and now as community developer for DrivingSales. During this time, I also served as the marketing communications and grant development chairs for a non-profit called the Clean Tech Open (CTO). The CTO organizes an annual business plan competition to accelerate the development of “clean tech,” or environmentally sustainable technologies. Through the CTO, I’vemet an amazing group of people who share a common vision of using innovation in technology to solve our most pressing environmental problems. The competition has a Transportation Category Prize, which has been generously sponsored by Lexus since the CTO’s inaugural year in 2006. Other prize categories include Air, Water & Waste; Energy Efficiency, Green Building, Renewables; and Smart Power.

Innovation in clean tech can bring enormous benefits to our society, the environment, and businesses and this includes auto dealerships. Many of the innovations coming from these distinct categories will play a role in the dealership of the future, and many are taking root today. In this blog, we’ll do our best to provide as many relevant ideas and innovations that can benefit dealers, and we welcome feedback and ideas from the DrivingSales community.