Fred Fordin on Launching Deelr.io and AI-Driven Inventory Management

Dealership technology veteran Fred Fordin joins Driving Solutions to discuss launching Deelr.io alongside his son, Charles, and how AI-driven tools are reshaping inventory and recon management. Drawing on decades of retail and software experience—including leadership roles with Sonic Automotive, Hendrick Automotive Group, Dealertrack, and CDK Global—Fordin outlines a practical approach to improving dealership efficiency through data and automation.

Deelr.io’s platform focuses on recon workflow optimization and real-time inventory intelligence, with rapid onboarding and scalable integrations designed for modern dealer groups.

• How AI is improving recon inspections and workflow efficiency
• The role of business intelligence in inventory management
• Lessons from scaling software solutions across thousands of stores
• Integration capabilities with major DMS providers
• Strategic plans for expansion and dealer adoption

By combining operational expertise with AI-enhanced analytics, Fordin aims to help dealers make faster, more informed decisions across fixed ops and inventory management.

Driving Solutions is the go-to podcast for dealership professionals who want to stay sharp, informed, and ahead of the curve. Hosted by Jim Fitzpatrick and powered by CBT News, each episode brings you real strategies, smart tools, and expert insights to help you run a more profitable operation.

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Transcript

Meet Fred Fortin And Dealer.io

Announcer 0:01

This is Driving Solutions exclusively on CBTnews.com.

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:06

Hey everyone, Jeff, it's Patrick. Welcome into another edition of Driving Solutions right here at cbtnews.com. From repair shops to gaining first hand dealership experience and eventually pioneering software solutions. Fred Fortin has seen it all and been there and really shaped it in multiple areas of uh automotive uh retail. Now he's writing his next chapter as CEO of Dealer.io along with his son, Charles. And uh Fred, great to have you on with us. Really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

My pleasure, Jim. Always great to see you, buddy.

Family Roots And Early Shop Days

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:40

Well, you're making some waves out there because it's it's now starting to come back to me here at CBT News. Hey, have you heard about Dealer IO? What do you what do you know about that? What's going on? Fred's up to something, he's got something big here. So I'm so glad you you joined us on the show. So let's go over some of your history to start, because there's a whole generation of people in our industry that came in after the fact and don't know that they're working on software systems that you invented. So, so first, you know, you uh you were a journeyman in the automotive industry. You know, you and I both met when you were running high-volume stores and such, and you started in independent shops. Is that is that right?

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, my family, there's actually an article in the New York Times in 1933. Wow. Featuring my great-grandfather, um, who who was running the largest taxicab company in New York at the turn of the century back then. And so what he did was he pulled, he had 11 kids, and nine of them were boys, and they all ended up in the business. And so it turned into a chain of auto repair shops, you know, through the 30s, 40s, 50s, and uh, you know, and that's how I grew up. I grew up turning renters in my dad's shop.

Jim Fitzpatrick 1:52

That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. And then you got into the dealership world and had quite the education.

Rapid Rise In Dealership Roles

Inventing ASR Pro To Grow Service

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yeah, that was, you know, that was a very different thing. I I I had hit a point where I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was in my my early 40s, and uh I wandered into Hollywood Honda down in Florida. Yeah. And, you know, and that was at the time the second highest volume Honda dealership in America. Sure. And so uh, you know, I walk I wandered in there and um I didn't know what I was going to learn. I didn't know what I was going to uh face. And, you know, in a matter of 60 days, I I was in the FI office and running the leasing department. And, you know, a short time after that, I was a sales manager back here in North Carolina, and you know, it just I progressed very quickly, very rapidly through a few dealerships. Um, and the education was wonderful. You know, I mean, I I I worked for Sonic, uh, I worked for Hendrick, I worked for John Eagle. Everybody gave me the opportunity to learn something different, you know, and it was, you know, I I went to Dealer Academy while I was with Sonic. Um uh, you know, so the education was was phenomenal. And and, you know, from there it was just what what ideas do I have? And I I started tinkering with software in my dealership. And, you know, the the next thing we knew, um, here came ASR Pro. And I was just, you know, I was running my BMW store down in Florida trying to figure out how uh they had just, it was 2,000 and BMW had just included full maintenance up to 50,000 miles with all their new cars. And I'm looking and saying, how am I going to increase customer pay? What am I gonna do? And I had seen the old AtCon ASR system, and I thought, well, I built software for a catering hall. I certainly can build software for a car dealership. And uh, you know, and the rest is history. It's you know, now there's almost 8,000 stores using that system.

The Big-Company Education

Jim Fitzpatrick 3:53

That that is really, really cool. And uh so now here you are in the in the in the world of dealer.io. Tell us uh what you and your son Charles are doing there. And and I know it's some very exciting stuff, and you've gotten already some phenomenal feedback from industry executives that have seen uh the product.

The Spark For AI-Driven Inspections

Pivot To Recon And Inventory

Real-World Pilots And Market Aim

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yes. So you know, uh Charles Charles had an idea years ago, but AI didn't exist yet. And and so, you know, we built ASR Pro, it became CDK Service and X Time Inspect. Um, and we both, you know, journeyed through uh the major software providers in in the country. You know, Charles was with uh uh with Cox when we we sold our product to DealerTrack, and then Dealer Track got acquired by Cox, and Charles stayed with them. You know, I moved on to CDK. Uh well I was at Dealer Track for a while and then I moved on to CDK. And when you move into those public group levels, there's a whole different education that that you know doesn't doesn't happen in the dealership. No. And so um uh, you know, I'm very grateful for the time I had, uh particularly at at DealerTrack and CDK, because they really gave me something I I didn't have. Um and that was the ability to look at the bigger picture and figure out what had to happen next. Um and so uh Charles had this idea years ago that we could take one day, we could take the inspection process that is CDK service, the next time inspect. And and while that vastly improved the time that a technician spends doing his inspections and so on and and communicating with the customer, we felt like there was always going to be more. There was there was more we could do. You know, Joe Shaker came out with video that was a great enhancement to the inspection process. But now here comes AI. And and a couple of years ago, Charles writes this document. I don't know where he learned to write that long, that hard, and that far, but uh he wrote this document and it was a patentable uh process. And so we have a patent pending on on uh on dealer.io and uh well actually on on fixed eye, which is a a portion of the product. And um you know, and and we looked at who was out there, who was playing, you know. Um we certainly had a lot of experience with Hugh and and uh uh looked at what he was doing and and we said, you know what? We really are the masters of the inspection business. Why don't we look at recon? And so it it it started as uh you know, we're gonna do this this uh recon inspection uh uh AI process and it it morphed into a uh what is not yet but is about to be a full inventory management tool. Now who we get to go up against and and play against that that starts those names start to get very, very big. Yes. Yeah, and you know, when when you've got all the dealers using one major inventory tool, um, you know, and and and now there's there's some competition coming out, but um we know what we've built, and and we know that um we can more than compete with with everybody that's out there. And so um that's where we are.

Jim Fitzpatrick 7:20

We've got to you're in you're in uh in stores currently, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yes, we're in stores currently. Um we we've had a great partnership with a group in New England that has allowed us to utilize their chain as our testing ground for the last couple of years, right? And so uh and yes, so this is all you know, it's tried and true and proven uh proven product at this point. Um and so now we're you know we're we're actually thinking who's the right partner versus let's go out and start selling to dealerships one at a time.

Jim Fitzpatrick 7:52

Yeah, good point. Good point, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

And so that's that that's where the learning curve came in from dealer track and cdk, right? It's it's there's a bigger possibility here, and and we're gonna go after that bigger possibility.

Integrations And Data Strategy

Jim Fitzpatrick 8:03

Do you integrate currently with this the big systems that are out there?

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Everybody but Reynolds. We're not we're not integrated with Reynolds. Okay. Um they they we pull uh a general ledger file from all the other DMS companies, PDK, techie on, dealer track. Um and uh and Reynolds doesn't want to give that file up. And so so you know, we're we're we're having to go about things the old-fashioned way. So we'll we'll we'll build from behind back to Reynolds once we get where we want to be. But but right now, uh, you know, we're we're dealing with all the others.

Products: Pulse, Flow, And Flow Logic

Jim Fitzpatrick 8:38

So, what do you want the dealer community to know now about the product? Should they be reaching out to you at this point in time and saying, hey, they should. We want to we want to learn more, and how can this help us in our dealership?

Web-Based Setup And Fast Onboarding

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Yes. So uh so there are two products currently that that will will fully function in your source. Um one is actually a business intelligence tool. Because we're pulling all of the GL data in order to better support the inventory process, because we we get we gain a ton of data by pulling that GL file. Because we have it, we've built a BI tool. Now it's it it doesn't have um it doesn't have a lot of uh uh data visualization in it. We didn't, we didn't, it wasn't our main focus. Okay. But by the time we put everything together, it was a fully functional business intelligence tool that will give you all the answers. And so uh that product uh is called Pulse, Dealer Pulse. Uh and then our our recon tool is called Dealer Flow, F L O W. Um coming right behind that is Flow Logic, which is another AI-enhanced capability uh for inventory management that's not quite out there yet. It's actually up on the website, but you can't click on it yet to buy it.

Jim Fitzpatrick 9:57

Okay.

Scale, Data Pulls, And UX

SPEAKER_00 9:57

So yeah, and one of the things about this, Jim, is you know, we we went at this whole thing like a true web-based company. A dealer can sign his store up two pages about nine fields, and he's done. And two two days later, his data is flowing and he can start recon. And so it's you know, this this is where it's very different than when we did ASR Pro. You know, in those days, you you had to send a team of people into a service department and they had to stay there for a week. Right. This is very different. This is uh it's intuitive. Uh you look at the screens and you know exactly what to do. And of course, we we give you a training course beforehand. And we have uh, you know, we have a 24-7 um chat bot that goes to a live person as well.

Jim Fitzpatrick 10:48

And so there's always somebody there to, you know, to walk you through and and hold your hand during the process. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. What's the onboarding now if a dealer were to call you based on this conversation that we're having today? Excuse me, when are they up and running? Monday. Really? That quickly.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Yes.

Jim Fitzpatrick 11:05

Oh my god.

Why Car People Build Better Tools

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Now you couldn't do a whole group that quickly. Yeah, but but a store, two stores, yeah, you're done in a call in within 48 hours. Oh, that's nice, very nice. Yeah, because we're we're pulling data right now. We're pulling seven million cars a night. And so so when you go on our website and you start typing in the name of your store and you see it and you click on it, there's a sample of your data right there. Because we're already pulling the cars you have listed for sale. And so uh so it's it's really, you know, the the cutting edge is great, man. It's it's you know, it's a very different time than when we were running ads on a Sunday in my BMW store.

Jim Fitzpatrick 11:47

Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

It's come a long way.

Invite To Demo And Closing

Jim Fitzpatrick 11:48

Yes, yeah. Uh it's fair, it's funny because the generation Z that are in the industry today have no idea what what we were just doing 15, 20 years ago, right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's absolutely crazy. Well, dealers that are listening to us have this conversation. Uh, look into this. I mean, it this this is very exciting. Fred's got an incredible name in the industry, as many of you know that already. But check check this out at dealer uh that's D-E-E-L-R dot IO. We're showing it on the screen right here. And um, Fred is is a car guy. So this is this is uh this is a program built for car people by car people, which is usually the best programs that are out there because they get it, right, Fred?

SPEAKER_00 12:27

I mean that's that's absolutely you know it's true. And dealers have become more and more aware uh of all the capabilities that are out there. And look, I I'm not I'm not afraid to have any conversation with you about me versus my product versus anything else that you're you're utilizing currently or considering using. Um invest the the 30 minutes into seeing what our product does, and you will understand that from a cost factor and from a capability uh standpoint, uh we're gonna take you where you want to be.

Jim Fitzpatrick 13:00

Yeah, very good, very good. Uh, dealers, take him up on his offer. What do you what do you got to lose? It's 30, it's 30 minutes well spent of your time. So uh, as I said, we're showing all the information on the screen here. Fred Fortin, CEO of ddealer.io. Thank you so much for stopping by, CBT News. Very much appreciated. It's always great catching up with you. I only hear good things always coming out of your camp. So keep doing what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Thank you, Jim. I really appreciate you and the time. Great. Thanks.

Announcer 13:29

Thanks for watching Driving Solutions exclusively on cbtnews.com.