Shifting gears: Supercar Blondie on life as an entrepreneur

Supercar Blondie needs no introduction. For years, Alex Hirschi has been travelling the world, tracking down the rarest and coolest cars for her massive social media following. But Hirschi isn’t just a content creator, she’s an entrepreneur at heart.

Here, she talks about co-founding her latest venture, SBX Cars, a new online auction platform designed specifically for high-end and speciality vehicles. She dives into the inspiration behind the new venture, how it’s di  erent from other auction platforms, and why it’s poised to change the game for collectors and dealers around the world.

What inspired you to start SBX Cars?

For the last seven years, I’ve been travelling around the world hunting down the rarest and coolest cars to film for our social media platforms. During that time, I developed relationships with collectors, dealers and original equipment manufacturers. The idea for launching this platform came about after these collectors and dealers around the world would reach out to me to ask if I knew where they could find a very rare car, or if I knew of a buyer for something they wanted to sell. It became clear to us that there was no centralised space for these collectors to find each other.

As my main gig was spent building my media business, I couldn’t find the time to pick up the phone and ring around to try and connect them. This platform addresses that issue. Now all car lovers and collectors can find the cars of their dreams no matter where they are in the world.

How is it different from other luxury car auction platforms?

Our platform stands out in many ways. We are the first platform to solely focus on highend cars and special vehicles. We are also a global platform, with cars listed from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. Other successful digital auction platforms only really cater to one market – either the US or Europe, and they focus more on the volume game, transacting hundreds of cars a week at an average price of $30,000.

The average value of the vehicles on our site are over $1m. Due to the volume on our platform being much lower and the calibre of vehicles being very high, we also have a focus on customer service. For some time, there was doubt cast on whether you could sell multi-million dollar cars on a digital auction platform.

This doubt has now gone, with many rare vehicles having successfully been sold online. This is the perfect time to create a global marketplace that only focuses on these vehicles, and create a space for them where the user experience feels and looks premium and your auction listing won’t get lost amongst hundreds of lower valued enthusiast cars.

Where do most of the lots originate from?

We have vehicles currently from many different countries including the US, Canada, Germany, Japan, Hungary, Switzerland, the UK, Denmark, Italy and the UAE.

Are you expecting a big response from buyers in the Middle East? Some of the rarest, most collectable vehicles currently listed on our platform are located in Dubai, so from the seller’s perspective, we’ve received an overwhelmingly positive response. Sellers are looking forward to having access to a whole new pool of buyers around the world. There are many incredible cars here in the country, but some of them end up sitting unsold for months, because they haven’t been seen by potential buyers in other countries.

We are honoured to have the world’s first auction of an AMG One, which is located in Dubai and is currently live and ready for bidders. This platform will also give buyers in the UAE an opportunity to find rare gems that might be stored in small private collections in other countries.

You have transitioned from an influencer to an entrepreneur – tell us about your journey.

Sure. I’ve never seen myself as an influencer, I’ve always been a content creator. I’ve spent years tracking down the coolest cars all over the world to film and make content on my social media platforms. At the beginning, it was just me and my husband flying around the world together.

For the first few years, we would travel about 300 days a year, so it was pretty hectic. We did all the roles, from sourcing, production, presenting, editing, data analysis and scheduling etc.

Then when Covid hit, we couldn’t travel anymore, so we had to reimagine how the business would work. We started hiring other producers, editors and presenters who would source incredible content from car lovers all around the world to feature on our channels. We also started an editorial news website with journalists covering cars, tech and luxury.

Now we have a team of 65 people, with our headquarters in London and offices in Manchester, Dubai, Prague and LA.

Last year, we also launched a boutique car design company with designers who help car manufacturers design their cars. For the last year, we have been working on building this platform from scratch with a team of highly-skilled developers.

After a lot of work by all, we finally launched last week. My goal with this business was to launch new business lines that would eventually not require me to be involved at all.

Being a content creator is not a sustainable business – if I’m not on camera, then the business doesn’t make money. Having built a media company, then a design studio, and now an auction platform, means that these businesses can have a life of their own without relying on me.

How does it feel to be a woman who has broken stereotypes when it comes to the world of fast cars?

It feels great! It was never something I really set out to do.

I, just like a lot of other women, love cars and I just wanted to be involved in this world. It was interesting to see just how masculine the car world still was when I joined in 2017, but it has since evolved and I see a lot more female car content creators and women in all spaces of the car world now.

You have achieved great things with the Supercar Blondie brand, what is your secret to success?

The first thing I had to do was take a risk. Without risk, there’s no reward. I had to choose to leave a successful career in radio with a stable paycheck and venture into a whole new industry. My advice would be to keep taking calculated risks. Yes, it was a risk to leave my career, but I knew if things didn’t work out in social media, I had the degree, I had the experience and I could always find another job in that field.

Throughout our growth, we’ve always been looking at new ways to expand and taking those risks. Some of them don’t work, but that’s fine, you go back to the drawing board and take another risk. Some of those decisions and risks will pay off. We also don’t live beyond our means.

We live well below our means, meaning if one of the risks we take doesn’t work out, we have a safety net of money we have kept to get us through the next period.