Creative and innovative, Tom Jaconelli has pioneered Romans International use of social media and video, setting the industry standard for modern automotive content.
Amanda Stretton and Darren Selig visited the new Romans international showroom on Episode 15 of the Fund Your Passion podcast to learn more about the Romans International business and hear about their plans.
What does Romans International do and why Romans?
We are known as a supercar dealership, and so we buy and sell supercars, as well as performance cars and luxury SUVs. We are an independent dealership and so we sell anything from a Bugatti to a Tesla. We operate from this one site; it was initially founded in 1994 by my father.
How have you seen Romans grow as the Head of Marketing and buying
We initially had only a couple hundred Twitter and Instagram followers. I saw social media as a great way to reach customers and help build the brand digitally. Today, we see lots of cars sold through social media, as it’s a great way to show our stock of cars. We did a survey, and 90% of our customers follow us on at least one of our social media platforms. We have also recently started Tik-Tok, as it also has a massive reach. We put out a video of an AMG series and 4 million people saw it!
Tell us more about your expansion?
Yes, so we took over from Ford, as they shut during lockdown. The old showroom is also being renovated next door and will be ready in a couple of months. The old showroom will have hyper cars and this site will have more ‘supercars.’
What have been the most memorable cars you’ve sold?
There was a Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse, the spec was insane. My father and I went to Hong Kong to buy it, and it had fully exposed carbon fibre, but the customer had requested a tiffany green accent all over it. The customer also had a plaque of his sons’ feet in the car, very niche. We left all these features on the car when we sold it on. We have also had a McLaren F1, Porsche GT1 and the Maserati MC12. We had two of them in the showroom at one time, and there was only 50 of them ever made. The rarest of them all was the CLK GTR, which is basically a race car but road legal.
Which upcoming car releases are you excited for?
The car I have personally got my eye on for stock is the Porsche Cayman GT4 RS.
All Episodes
Episode 23
Featuring
DK Engineering
Episode 22
Featuring
Duke of London
Episode 21
Featuring
Supercar Driver
Episode 20
Featuring
Chris McDermott & Chris Astle of Baytree Cars
Episode 19
Featuring
Shak Shah of Shaks Specialist Cars
Episode 18
Featuring
Dean Bartle - World of Collectible Car
Episode 17
Featuring
Joe Macari Performance Cars
Episode 16
Featuring
Mike Kerr & Engineer Ryan Worthington - Everrati
Episode 15
Featuring
Tom Jaconelli of
Romans International
Episode 14
Featuring
Chris Bucknall of
V-Management
Episode 13
Featuring
Tom Hartley JNR – Exquisite Classic and Performance Cars
Episode 12
Featuring
The Intercooler – Andrew Frankel & Dan Prosser
Episode 11
Featuring
Topaz Detailing – Nabil Naamo
Episode 10
Featuring
Shmee150 – British Car Vlogger and YouTuber
Episode 9
Featuring
Jonathan Palmer – British Racing Driver
Episode 8
Featuring
David Brabham – Racing Royalty
Episode 7
Featuring
Carl Hartley – Supercar Dealer
Episode 6
Featuring
Cici Muldoon - Classic Car Collector
Episode 5
Featuring
Tom Hartley – Luxury Car Dealer
Episode 4
Featuring
Darren Gibson - Car Finance Broker
Episode 3
Featuring
Dean Bartle – DMB collection
Episode 2
Featuring
Rich Clark – Premier Sports Solutions
Episode 1
Featuring
Jonathan Franklin – Jonathan Franklin Cars