Welcome to aerospace , unplugged.
Speaker 2Hello and welcome to aerospace unplugged, the podcast about all things aerospace. I'm your host, Carrie Sinclair , and today's episode is about uptime. So today we'll be learning a little bit about go direct trade and the technologies they're using. And joining me in the studio today is special guest and general, manager for go direct trade. Lisa butters . Lisa, I'm so excited to have you here on the podcast.
Speaker 3Yeah, this is actually a really exciting time. I love being on this podcast. This is awesome.
Speaker 2Well, I get the benefit of getting to interview people across aerospace and I'm so lucky to interview you today because you're one of our outstanding general managers with this cool concept of go direct trade. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how you became the general manager of go direct trade and how you started at Honeywell?
Speaker 3All right. Well I have actually been working for Honeywell for about 15 years, almost 15 years. Um, when I came out of college, I started out as a programmer. So I used to do web programming and then moved into database architecture and analytics. So really a tech Geek at heart. Um, and then as I started work at Honeywell, I progressed into other functional areas like customer product support, supporting the airlines team. I was in demand management for a little bit, kind of like on the outskirts where you look at all the functional support type roles. Um, and then when this position became available, which was the general manager for go direct trade, it was something that was very interesting to me. And I think that it was for a number of reasons. For one, it was a true garage style startup, which Honeywell has this concept of a greenhouse and it's the , um , idea that they want to take these incubation type ideas and they want to be able to run with them quickly. And so they allow these self-contained teams. I'm in the greenhouse to , uh , try to launch very quickly, nimbly be really agile, just like you would see in silicon valley. So that was really interesting to me. The other interesting thing is the startup concept was a market place . So go direct trade is an online marketplace for buyers and sellers can come together for used aerospace parts. And so this concept of ecommerce in a very antiquated industry, which I'm sure we'll get into was appealing to me. And the reason why is because me personally, I consider myself a true professional online shopper. I know that sounds psychotically crazy and I know that people probably think, oh, I'm a really good online shopper too. But I mean I really consider that something that I fully understand. I mean, I could probably run down a list of, you know, 20 to 30 sites that I'm always on. I could tell you what their checkout screens look like. I could tell you how they calculate tax. I can tell you what their tiles look and how, you know, what is great about, you know, the way in which they showcase their products and what kind of models they use if they use models at all. But anyway, it's something that, you know, you wouldn't think that that's a really important thing to have. But in the case where you have , um, a marketplace in trying to build a customer experience that is really an experience disrupter in the used parts industry. It's probably the number one thing that I use every day. It's my experience with online shopping.
Speaker 2So you heard it here first resume builder right there . Professional online shopping .
Speaker 3Yes . Got It. Just so you know, I always , um, make sure I'm up to date on that certification. So I am always shopping online and practicing and making sure I'm fresh and I know all the latest , um, sites to visit.
Speaker 2Well, I see you as a business problem solver. So what kind of problems are you solving through go direct trade for our customers?
Speaker 3That's a great question. GoDirect trade, if you look at the used airspace industry today, it's a $4 billion a year industry and less than 2% of those transactions are done online, which is crazy. If you think about just in today's terms, how much we buy online, either through Amazon or target or Walmart. Most everything is online. But for some reason, this industry, which is big $4 billion, nobody checks out and nobody buys anything online. Um, and so I think that when you look at an industry that you feel is antiquated, well we really are trying to solve is to bring them into modern times. So if go direct trade we always say it's a blend between Amazon and Etsy. If Amazon and Etsy had a baby that would be good direct trade, it's like Amazon in that it's a really easy experience. It's an experience that you and I would expect when we're checking out on Amazon and it's like Etsy and that you can build your own customized storefront within minutes. So a million, billion dollar enterprise, you can launch your own storefront literally within minutes. Um, and so if you think about that, okay, our marketplace really isn't this big technology disruptor, right? It's a marketplace with a great customer experience. And so we consider our marketplace an experience disruptor in this industry. They don't expect price and they don't expect product images or quality documents. And so this marketplace, it leverages technology that you see everyday through Amazon. And target and Walmart and all these ecommerce stores, but we're bringing that experience into an industry that doesn't expect it.
Speaker 2So tell me what the benefit is for someone to start their own store . So what I'm hearing from you is that it's not just Honeywell parts that you can get on this marketplace. Really anybody in the industry can start a store and start selling parts, but what do they have to be qualified in or what rules do they have to maintain?
Speaker 3So to become a seller on go direct trade , um, you pay a yearly subscription fee. And right now as we're launching, we're offering a lot of really cool promotions and free trials to bring the seller base on. Um , because we firmly believe that we have a product and an experience that people will love. And so once sellers are on, they're gonna love it and they're going to keep going on with us. Um, but really to become a seller, you have to just take the four minutes to launch, load your logo, load your image, you can upload your listings and with a spreadsheet, and then they can launch right away. For a lot of sellers , I would say, if not all, they're just not used to e commerce . And so for many of them, they've never launched an ecommerce store. They've never participated in you know, email campaigns or digitizing their listings and their inventory. So it's a really new space for all sellers. And I think that it's important to bring up because you know, a lot of people when they look at go direct trade and they think, well, that just seems crazy. Why hasn't anyone invented this marketplace before? Right? I mean, the need is obvious. People are operating in antiquated times. Why wouldn't somebody build a marketplace like this? And the answer is that the sellers just are not used to having a digital business yet. And it's exactly what happened. You know, at the end of the late nineties and you had the beginning of Amazon and you started to have these brick and mortar stores start to say, okay, maybe we do need an ecommerce presence. But then by 2010 that's when most all sellers feel completely compelled to go online. Because if you're not online, you're basically completely left behind. Um , and so that's what we're dealing with right now with GoDirect trade. We have sellers that are just not used to being online. They're very brick and mortar, very email and phone call base and we need to try to move them into modern times. So it's not going to happen overnight. But I firmly believe it definitely will happen and go direct trade is going to be the platform of choice when you have critical mass and everyone moves over.
Okay, so GoDirect trade has a few benefits that are kind of unlike its competitors and one of those, you mentioned the documentation and the images and things like that. So can you kind of walk me through why that's important? Yeah, so it's important to note that in this space today there's about 20 competitors. So there's 20 competitors out there where they have some type of parts listing service.
Speaker 3And interestingly enough, the queen of the castle is ILS , it's called the inventory locator service. And they have been the leader for almost 25 years. And if you picture this service, all they are are they're craigslist but without price and pictures. If you can even imagine craigslist without pricing pictures and that is the winner in this space, which is crazy because it just signals how low of an expectation consumers have in the use parts industry go direct trade. Out of all 20 competitors, we are the only marketplace that requires price, product, images and quality documents in order to list a product which is unheard of. And you know, you think, well that seems like a no brainer for the consumer. Right? But again, it comes back to if you provide, if you make it harder for the seller right to list, then it's just going to be harder for them to launch a storefront. But what we did at GoDirect Trade is we really drew a firm line in the sand that said, we are in this for the consumer, right? We're trying to bring transparency to the consumer in this process so that we could create a fantastic experience for the customer. And to do that, you have to force the seller. I know that's a really strong word, but sellers have, they must digitize their backend . They have to provide price. The product images in the quality documents. So that's all available for that consumer upfront. Otherwise you will never have a consumer great experience.
Speaker 2So just give me an idea how many parts or companies you have online right now?
Speaker 3Yeah, so right now we have almost a half a billion dollars in active inventory, which is crazy considering the fact that all of those parts have to have price. They have to have quality documents. So we're really proud of the fact that we have quality listings on our site. Um, many competitors out there today, they will say, oh, we have $2 billion worth of inventory. But if you look at their inventory, all they have as a part number and a quantity, right? There's no price on there. There's no product image, there's no documents. So it's, it's really worthless. Like to the consumer, it'll force the consumer to, you basically call the seller [inaudible] have to pick up the phone. You can't transact. So anyway, I think it's just something that GoDirect trade. It sets us apart. Um, and I think our mentality is we're obsessed with the customer and to be obsessed with the customer, it's, it will be hard, right? In order to give them that great experience, it's going to be hard, but it'll be worth it. So what are customers saying? The customers themselves, I think they're a little bit just shocked at the amount of transparency that we're providing. They love it. Like from a consumer perspective, over 50% of our transactions are clicking buy, which means that a consumer will go online, they'll look at the product and they'll put it in their car and checkout. When we first deployed back in December of 2018 if you were to ask me then what percentage that I think would be negotiated, I would have said 100%. Meaning if a consumer sees something on the site, they would probably ask the seller question, negotiate the price down , um, and then negotiate a final price, then check out . But what we found and we've processed over $2 million in orders already over a five month period, 60% people are just looking at the listing and checking out. And so for us that was shocking because we thought most everything would be negotiated, but it's a pleasant and delightful signal to us that people in this space are ready for ecommerce and they're ready for efficiency and they're just sick of emails and phone calls and just wasting time.
Speaker 2So walk me through it. Uh , they go on, they look at an engine for example, that they need and or a part and they just click and order it and it gets shipped to them directly. Yeah, go direct trade
Speaker 3we're the institution that sits between the buyer and the seller. Um , so once the, the consumer find something online, they have all the quality documents if they want to review them, there's an ask to seller button, which we have a really dynamic way in which a buyer and seller can interact together and have a very fluid conversation online. Kind of like almost like chat. Um, but they can, from there they can either get quoted, if they want to negotiate the price down, the seller can quote the buyer or the buyer can just simply put it in their cart and checkout. Um, what's really cool is that the consumer, they can still pay with the antiquated ways that the B2B space still operates in like paying with a purchase order , right ? But they can also pay with more modern means like paypal or credit card , um , or a wire transfer. And what's really cool about that, and really what I think is innovative in this B2B space is that we have sellers that including Honeywell aerospace trading, that even though we want to offer consumer grade experience, you still need to offer the antiquated ways of payment. So for example, we have one seller storefront, it's WG henchmen , their local new parts, aerospace distributor and Scottsdale and be wanted to launch a storefront and on Amazon. And they're perfect for it cause it's all new parts . It's , it's not complicated by any means. And what they did is they launched on Amazon and they quickly found that it just didn't work for them. And the reason why is because they couldn't load technical documents and their customers paid with a purchase order . Still an [inaudible] expect to see it on Amazon. Yeah. But it was just something where you have a B2B business trying to be consumer like and trying to launch on Amazon. But because Amazon still doesn't offer kind of the antiquated ways of doing business, like paying with a purchase order , um, they couldn't do it. And so go direct trade. It's a , it's this amazing marketplace where B2B companies can launch within minutes, right? You could be a billion dollar enterprise and have an ecommerce store front within minutes and you can still enable your consumers or your customers to have a consumer great experience and you can check out with a purchase order or more modern ways like a credit card or paypal. Cool. So speaking of transparency, tell me what blockchain technology means to you. Yeah, blockchain is, I think it's a really exciting space for Honeywell in general, especially from an aerospace perspective. And you know, I continue to go and socialize. You know, what Honeywell has done in the blockchain space. And it's exciting because even though highwall has really barely kind of what I would say scratched the surface on blockchain technology when it comes to comparing ourselves to our peers with an aerospace, we've actually come a very long way. So for those on the podcast, if you don't know what blockchain technology is, I like to explain it as um, a decentralized type database. So you have multiple copies of the same database that people crowdsource and people populate through crowdsourcing . It's kind of like into, if you are at a football game and you're sitting in the bleachers and you see a scoreboard, everyone knows the score because everyone can see the score on the scoreboard. It's the same exact thing with blockchain. Everyone knows the score at all times because everyone has a copy of the database. Um, and so it's a decentralized way to populate the data and for everyone to have access to that same data. The purpose of block chain. If you really think about the core of what blockchain does, it helps manufacture trust between two parties. And in our case we're using it to manufacture trust between a buyer and a seller. So how does it manufacture trust? Well, not only is watching decentralized where the data's like crowd source , so to speak, but it's immutable so it can't be changed and it's highly secure. So what happens? You can't ever go back and change a record. You can create a record that says, hey, the record that I previously just wrote is incorrect, but you can never delete a record. So it's immutable . So it's a technology that um , one is highly secure and two , it's very much um , built upon the fact that it's for everyone. It's open source and everyone will know the score at the same time. And so people really like that technology. The way that we use it within the go direct trade marketplace is we use it to manufacture trust between a buyer and a seller. And why is that important? And go direct trade? Well, going back to it's a $4 billion industry. And nobody transacts online. You have to ask yourself why, right? I mean, why is this industry not moving into modern times? And one of our theories is that it has to do with trust. These are really high dollar parts. The average order on gooder trade is about $10,000. And if you think about it, you and I, we would probably rarely even put like a $2,500 couch like in our shopping cart and checkout. So a $10,000 part, it's a lot of money. And secondly , um, you know, these parts have to go back into an aircraft, they have to be really safe and you have to really trust that the person who's selling you the part, it has the right paperwork and that this isn't a counterfeit part. You know, it's not something that is being sold and it's not going to be what you expect it to be because people's lives depend on it. Um, the way that we use blockchain is we use it to show the part pedigree or the partial part pedigree for apart, it's exactly like what you'd see on Carfax if you've ever bought a used vehicle. Yeah. So carfax will give you previous owners if the car has ever been in an accident, maybe the car was owned in a cold weather state and you don't want the snow corroding the engine. We use a blockchain in the same exact way. What we do is we try to provide as much information about that part as possible for the consumer so they can make a more efficient decision. Um , the way that we collect the part pedigree is through that blockchain technology. What we do is we take serialized parts that are listed for sale and go direct trade and we try to capture events that happen to that part. And we store on the ledger, for example, every time a seller, a storefront, list a part for sale, we capture that as an event and we load that as um , a record on the ledger for the blockchain, for that serialized part. Every time that part goes through a repair and overhaul shop. If that Arno shop is participating on the blockchain, we will load that event and the repair event that went with it onto the ledger and we have dismantlers that we're partnering up with. So dismantlers will take aircraft and they will completely disassemble the whole aircraft and a lot of those parts will go straight into listing people. We'll sell those parts for sale. So we are partnerships with the dismantler out of Wales. They're called EEQ. As soon as the parts come off the plane, they get rid of the ledger and they get listed for sale on go direct trade. Anytime a part a sale is made. So we have an order that gets transacted through go direct trade. That bill of sale transfer of ownership gets listed on the ledger. So our blockchain technology depends on this whole ecosystem of players. And it really depends on us being able to expand that ecosystem, bring on more repair and overhaul shops, bring on more dismantlers, bring on more sellers so that as these parts, the serialized parts start to filter through and come in and out of the marketplace. We capture those events, we load it to the ledger and then we display it for the consumer. So they , they know
Speaker 2to the best of their ability what has happened with that part. So one of the things we wanted to talk about was really how people can keep their aircraft up like more uptime. And I feel like go direct trade would be an enabler for that because here they can grab parts as they need them pretty quickly and have some confidence in their history. Have you seen a lot of that happening in the industry or, yeah, absolutely. What are some typical use cases? Yeah ,
Speaker 3so one interesting use case that just happened, it was a little over three weeks ago, is we had our first turbo fan jet engine sale that came through go direct trade. Um , which if you think about it, I mean a real jet engine is what keeps the plane flying, right? There's no other, you know, component or part that's more important than the actual engine itself. And we had somebody with a g Gmail account, find the TFE engine on, go direct trade, ask a couple of questions to the seller and then put it in their car and checkout . And that transaction kept in 1984 I aircraft running from individual owner operator.
Speaker 2That's great. Yeah , that's great. Okay. So what is next for go direct trade and the blockchain journey? Yeah, go to a trade we have, we have a very aggressive roadmap and everything on our road .
Speaker 3The road map is really focused on being obsessive with the customer experience and making sure that we continue to increase our adoption rates. So we currently have a little over 2000 users today and the whole space in general is about 15,000 users. So we're trying to get at least 30% user penetration by the end of the year and we're on target to meet that. So when we look at, you know, short term roadmap, everything we do is about the customer experience and increasing the adoption rate. So how do we bring traffic to the site, make sure that people are transacting, making sure people are coming back, that we're providing the right experience, longterm roadmap. Um, some of the big features that are coming online , um, our repair and overhaul services. So if you think about if you are on Amazon and you buy a ceiling fan , um , you put it in your cart, the next question that Amazon will ask you is, do you want to hire an installer for that? Um , it's the same thing on GoDirect Trade. You buy used parts and go to our trade. Some of them are in as removed condition, so they're not overhaul, they're repaired, are ready to put into the aircraft. So when you put it into your cart, the next question that'll pop up on GoDirect trade is do you want to find a repair service center , um , to repair this part? And so RNO services is a natural compliment and it's a natural part of our roadmap , um, in as early as probably this fall of this year. Other things that we're looking at , um, our ultimate vision is to really become the A to z of aerospace, the Amazon of aerospace, where in three, five, 10 years when anyone has anything aerospace related that they want to purchase or find out about, we want to be the marketplace that offers all of it. So while Amazon started with used parts or used books, I'm sorry, or books , um , go direct trade. We're starting with used parts, we're moving into our services. And very quickly you'll probably see us getting into data streaming, data storage , um, app downloading really to become that place that people go to for anything and everything. Aerospace, true marketplace. A true marketplace. Yeah. Okay. Well I've noticed that too . Your group is a little bit different than the rest of Honeywell and you guys have a lot of fun with your brand. So can you kind of explain your philosophy around go direct trade? Yeah, I think so. I think we firmly believe that. We want our team culture right and the tone of our team to really come out in our brand. And that tone is one of teamwork. It's one of fun and it's one of innovation and creativity. And so yes, I would say our garage sales startup is a garage style startup in every sense of the word. We sit together every day. Um, you know, it's all about, it's all about, you know, we have a lot of fun but we get a lot of work done, work hard, play hard, you work hard, play hard. But yeah , you know, in order to really have a startup that is going to survive creativity is, it's almost number one. You know, I say it's almost number one because number one is being obsessed with the customer and having the right customer experience. But in order to get there, you have to have a hell of a lot of creativity to get there. Um, and so I think that our team, we spend a lot of time trying to, you know, look at other sites, brainstorm, do mock ups . It just, it's a day of innovation really. Our Day is getting stuff done, but at the same time, spending a significant amount of that time innovating so that we can bring the right experience to the table. Okay, so where could our listeners learn more about go direct trade? Um , so you could go to www.godirecttrade.com and you can join the marketplace for free. It's free to sign up. Um , another cool thing is we have a blog that we have a blog entry post . I do those blogs every couple of weeks or so, and it has our startup journey and a lot of what we go through every day. And that's a great way to kind of stay in touch us and what we're , what we're going through, our headaches, our pains, our, you know, our delights and our successes. A lot of that's captured within that blog. All right, well thanks Lisa. I really appreciate you coming on the show. I always wrap up because this is aerospace. I'm plugged with asking you how you unplug at the end of the day. A , it's funny, she's giving me the eye like, do you really relax? You know, I love reading. I'm an avid reader. Um, and I mean I love all kinds of books, but I especially love, love, love, just like sitting and relaxing with a nice romance book. I love romantic comedies. Um, I think for sure you were going to say business, but I was going to call your bluff. No way. I Love Romance novels. Actually, when I retire, I aspire to be a romance novel, Romance, novelists writing fiction . But that's something that I've always loved and I always enjoy. I'll keep writing those blog posts. Good practice. Okay, everyone. Once again, my name's Carrie Sinclair and thank you for listening to aerospace unplugged. To learn more about go direct trade, visit us at go direct trade.com for more information and safe travels and we'll see you next time. Thanks, Lisa. Thank you.
Speaker 4[inaudible] this
Speaker 3episode was produced by Katie Carney and edited by Chloe Dake .