Ekho puts the DMV behind the Buy button

LiveWire had solved the obvious problem. People would buy its electric motorcycles online. Starting in 2021, customers could put down deposits, and an internal team carried them through the sale. Then, in early 2023, the company closed that channel. According to Ekho’s account of the project, the trouble was the work behind each purchase: registration, titles, signatures, lender coordination. The shop window worked. The shop behind it consumed the staff.

That is a wonderfully inconvenient starting point for a technology company. The customer does not need convincing that the internet exists. The customer needs somebody to deal with what happens when the internet sells a motorcycle to a person in another state.

A sale that worked, a channel that closed

LiveWire’s earlier system required four sales specialists, a closing and registration specialist, and engineering support. Its new Ekho-powered channel routes completed purchases to dealers for delivery and the continuing customer relationship. Ekho reports hundreds of orders from 31 states and 99 cities. Those are company-published results, but the mechanism is plain: share the transaction machinery instead of rebuilding an entire national back office inside one motorcycle brand.

Ekho sits between the appealing product photograph and the legally finished transaction. A shopper sees a checkout. The seller gets a coordinated set of financial and administrative processes. The dealer still has a vehicle to deliver and a rider to serve.

The machinery beneath the button

Its Transaction Engine joins payments, financing, insurance verification, fraud screening, taxes, signatures, titling and registration. Sellers can embed checkout, send purchase links or integrate through an API. A manufacturer can connect a brand website to dealer fulfillment. A retailer can use the same infrastructure for a customer standing in the showroom.

The detail to notice is signatures. Ekho’s product descriptions distinguish electronic signatures, wet signatures, notarization and power of attorney. “Online” cannot simply mean replacing every pen with a touchscreen. It means sending each requirement down the appropriate path. Bureaucracy has preferences. Software must remember them.

Insurance provides another example. In September 2026, Ekho announced Progressive quoting inside checkout. Previously, a buyer needing a policy could leave the purchase to find coverage, then return with proof. Bringing quotes into the flow removes a detour; verifying that coverage satisfies the lender and jurisdiction remains a separate job.

Two founders, fifty rulebooks

Rowan Mockler and Christopher Howard met while studying computer science at Stanford. Mockler later worked in product at Duolingo; Howard worked in machine learning at Meta. They founded Ekho in 2022. Their early market included powersports and golf carts, where the transaction burden resembled automotive retail but the available technology left room for a specialist.

The founders describe roughly eighteen months spent assembling the legal and compliance foundation. Later, dealers asked to process transactions across multiple brands, online and in-store. That demand widened the ambition. In July 2025, Ekho announced $17.3 million in total funding, including a $15 million Series A led by Activant, with JPMorgan Payments, Winnebago Industries and Y Combinator participating.

The useful distinction is where the software lives. A retailer with its own inventory can build an online operation around itself. Ekho supplies infrastructure to other sellers. Its commercial promise depends on making their operations work, including their existing lenders, inventory feeds and dealer relationships.

Mick takes the night shift

The other current product, an AI Sales Agent, handles web chat and SMS. Dealers supply inventory, policies and answers; the agent qualifies inquiries, schedules appointments and hands questions to people when needed. That makes the quality of the dealership’s information part of the product’s performance.

At Triumph Cleveland, the agent is called Mick. The previous after-hours reply was one long message attempting to cover several possible questions. A rider asking about parts got the same wall of text as everybody else. Mick can respond to the question actually asked.

Ekho’s August 2026 case study says 75% of conversations needed no human handoff and 37% became identified leads. It estimates about 2,080 annual staff hours saved at the observed run rate. These are projections from one store, rather than a universal return. Still, the after-hours mix explains why answering faster matters.

Who pays for fewer loose ends?

Public pricing uses custom quotes by product and dealership location, with a per-sale fee for the Transaction Engine. There is no single sticker price to compare against those staff hours. Manufacturers can also subsidize dealer adoption through network programs. The relevant calculation is whether fees buy more completed deals, less administrative work, or both.

Maeving offers a different test. The British electric motorcycle maker needed U.S. transaction operations while keeping its team lean. Ekho’s case study describes one month between signing and the first processed sale. The benefit was access to an existing operating system for a new market, including financing relationships, rather than staffing every unfamiliar workflow itself.

Copy the sequence, count the finished deals

EuroCycle supplies the caution and the encouragement. Its principal, Chris Clovis, had pursued complete online transactions for years. Ekho’s July 2026 account says an earlier internal feasibility effort ended after six months, while the Ekho integration took ninety days. It reports more than $1 million in placed orders with roughly 30% of inventory enabled for online purchase. Placed orders deserve their own column; they are not Ekho revenue.

“I never stopped chasing that holy grail.”

Chris Clovis, EuroCycle dealer principal

The copyable lesson is to audit the journey after “yes”: lender conditions, missing forms, transport quotes, unanswered questions. Accurate inventory and clear store policies come first. Automation then needs somewhere to send exceptions. Ekho’s September Action items inbox makes that explicit, asking staff for information the agent cannot supply. A working Buy button still depends on people who can finish their part.