Ben NormanThe used aerospace parts industry is worth more than $4 billion, yet less than two percent of that comes from online sales. With most transactions done over the phone or email, the industry has severe inefficiencies, and Honeywell wants to fix that.
Earlier this year, Honeywell Aerospace launched GoDirect Trade, an online aerospace parts marketplace that utilizes blockchain technology to create an optimal transaction for both buyers and sellers.
“We are just like an Amazon in that GoDirect offers a very easy customer experience, so there’s no disruption there,” Lisa Butters, general manager of GoDirect Trade said. “What we are disrupting is the experience for this particular industry. For used aerospace parts, the expectation is not to do an online sale. They don’t expect to see price or product images or paperwork. So GoDirect trade, we see ourselves as a disruptor for this specific industry, bringing this online experience to them.”
Until now, no such marketplace has existed. Because many aerospace parts cost thousands of dollars and must comply with countless safety regulations, consumers have not been comfortable with online exchanges in the past. But with GoDirect Trade’s blockchain technology, these acquisitions provide full transparency for all parties involved.
“It manufactures trust between a buyer and a seller,” Butters said. “It’s kind of like if you and I were sitting in the stands at a football game, and you see the scoreboard, and you and I know what the score is at all times. Blockchain technology is very similar to the concept in that everybody knows the score at all times. It’s a decentralized-type database that’s crowdsourced by all the players that are participating in that network.”
GoDirect Trade has been live for just over five months, and it has already aggregated more than $2 million in sales and 3,000 active users across 850 different companies. In fact, these companies include the top airlines like Southwest, Delta, United, and more.
“From a consumer perspective, they are blown away with the transparency that GoDirect is bringing into the industry,” Butters explains. “In this aerospace industry, really transparency does not exist. So this concept where we have price, product images, quality documents, and even our blockchain part pedigree data, there’s 20 competitors in this space that try to do what GoDirect Trade does, and not a single one of them does any of that. There’s not a single platform that requires price and transparency.”
While some sellers are still wary about the technology, Butters notes, it won’t be long before GoDirect Trade takes over the industry the way that Amazon did.
“We built this marketplace to really change the industry — to move the industry into modern times and to bring this concept of online sales into used aerospace parts,” Butters said.
Photo courtesy of Honeywell Aerospace
Joseph Kavetsky
Noemi Santaella
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