Darwin Automotive Digital Retailing

Darwin Automotive Digital Retailing: Darwin Automotive describes its digital retailing offering as a set of solutions that put a dealer's inventory, deal builder and finance office online, with a company profile page that explains the business in the company's own words. Its Consumer Direct page describes a route by which a shopper deals with the dealership more directly online.

Darwin Automotive company profile Darwin Automotive official website

Darwin Automotive Digital Retailing: Digital Retail

Darwin's Darwin Online announcement, carried by Digital Dealer and Einpresswire, describes the company's patented digital retailing application. The company says it enables dealerships to process online transactions with an F&I department open at all hours, and that it works with dealership websites without requiring integration to the dealer's DMS.

The company says the shopping flow includes the F&I choices. So a customer can select products such as maintenance plans, vehicle service contracts and tire and wheel coverage online, with the dealership in control of disclosure and profit.

Guided digital retailing with a chat integration and the Documents on Demand feature add ways to complete more of the deal remotely.

Darwin's guided digital retailing announcement describes an integration with ActivEngage that lets a chat agent guide a shopper through the retail flow. Dealertrack separately lists an F&I eMenu powered by Darwin.

These are different connections: a shopper's chat handoff does not establish which deal data a Dealertrack configuration exchanges.

Darwin also runs a media page and a video category on its site that describe how dealers use the products, and SourceForge lists the product. These are places where a reader can see the company's demonstrations.

The digital retailing tool is a companion to Darwin's F&I menu, and the two can be bought together. A store using the menu in the finance office may find the retailing tool a natural extension.

A store using another menu vendor would look at whether the retailing tool can present the store's own product lineup.

This entry covers the listings and retailing side of the company.

For a dealer principal the questions are: which product providers can be presented, how the store controls pricing and disclosures, how credit applications are handled, how deals are handed to the store's system of record, what the store's website provider must do to install the tool, and how the compliance team reviews the flow. The category guide for digital retailing lists the checklist.

Ask about exit terms.

Darwin Online is the company's digital retailing application, described as letting a dealership run an F&I office online every hour of the year while keeping disclosures and profit controls. Darwin says its menus work in both the showroom and online with the same products and connect to more than 140 product providers, and that more than 7,700 dealers use its software.

One Volvo comparison it cites reports higher F&I profit for retailers that used a digital menu. Check how online selections carry into the deal, who controls rates and which provider disclosures a customer sees before agreeing.

Darwin Automotive Digital Retailing functions
Product or service	Function
Digital Retail	Online retailing product listed in its product finder.