An open letter to our ‘Ohana from Auto/Mate President & CEO Mike Esposito:

I have been at Auto/Mate for over 21 years and the time has come, as they say in baseball, to “hang up my spikes.” I will be retiring as of August 31, 2020. It has been a great run. This is my decision. At 70 years old and with children and grandchildren in both NY and Hawaii, I determined that it’s time for me to enjoy, as they say, my “golden years.”

I want to thank you so much for being part of the Auto/Mate team and helping me grow the business from a small little DMS company to one of the leading suppliers of DMS within the automotive retail industry. I am very proud of what I have helped build and see Auto/Mate entering into a new phase with its acquisition by DealerSocket. DealerSocket is one of the premier software vendors to the automotive industry with products such as CRM, Digital Retail, Inventory Management, Equity Mining and Websites. Their product suite fits in perfectly with our DMS. But, as we all know, it’s not just all about the products.

One of the other major aspects of DealerSocket is that their culture and way of doing business is much the same as Auto/Mate’s, as they are also dealer-first and always focused on white-glove customer service. Over the last 5 months of transition, Sejal Pietrzak, the CEO of DealerSocket, has shown me that her style of management is so much like mine: caring about the employees and customers. I feel very comfortable and confident in “passing the torch” as it were to her.

Unlike other acquisitions that happen in the industry, DealerSocket has not swooped in and inserted their people and processes into Auto/Mate. In fact, it is a little bit of the opposite. Steve Zadoorian (who was Auto/Mate’s Chief Customer Officer) is now DealerSocket’s Senior VP of Operations and Customer Care for the entire DealerSocket and Auto/Mate businesses. In addition, Larry Colson (who was Auto/Mate’s Chief Technical Officer) is now Senior VP of Enterprise Product Strategy and is responsible for the product strategy across all of the DealerSocket and Auto/Mate products. I believe that the combining of the companies is truly synergistic and that you will continue to see great products and services coming forth.

Again, thank you so much for supporting Auto/Mate and helping us achieve what we have. You continue to be more than a customer to Auto/Mate and now DealerSocket. You are our friend and partner.

Mahalo,

Mike “Espo” Esposito