| May 20, 2000 -- LKD Aerospace announced today the
launch of their new B2B E-commerce website for the aerospace aftermarket
at www.Lkdaerospace.com.
LKD's new e-commerce website offers customers the ability to securely
search, price and buy online for more than 2,000,000 aircraft parts. The
site is entirely free and only requires users to register online and
select a password. After that, users have complete access to the website
and can check part availability and pricing as well as purchase parts
directly online. Inventory availability is real-time.
LKD Aerospace distributes factory new and surplus rotables and
expendables to more than 1500 existing customers around the world serving
five continents. Customers include airlines, repair & overhaul
facilities and aftermarket service companies. LKD's products are used on
Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Airbus, Embraer and Bombardier jet aircraft as
well as Fairchild, Beech and Bombardier turboprop aircraft. LKD has been
in business since 1983.
Mark Chamberlain, Vice-President of
Marketing and IT, commented, "Everyone at LKD is excited about the
launch of our new e-commerce system. We have been beta testing our site
for the last several months with a select group of customers, which has
enabled us to make many improvements. This has led us to improve page load
speeds, reorganized navigation to make it more intuitive and most
importantly made the e-commerce section easier to use and more
valuable for our customers. We now have a state-of-the-art
e-commerce front end to compliment our existing business
capabilities."
The e-commerce site utilizes a Microsoft solution and was designed
entirely in-house. Microsoft design tools include Visual Interdev and
FrontPage 2000. The primary e-commerce platform of the site is MS
Site Server which sits on a Microsoft Windows NT operating system. The web
server is Internet Information Server ( IIS) employing a SQL Server
database on the backend. Recently recruited from the Boeing company,
Manager of Information Systems, Candie Carpenter, stated, "We have
spent several months designing, building and testing the new e-commerce
system. We standardized on Microsoft solutions to speed the development of
the site and due to its cost effectiveness. We also have our scaling plan
in place, so as e-commerce drives future growth LKD's Information
Technology is already positioned to grow ahead of customer
demand." Mark added, "Our B2B e-commerce strategy is first and foremost about better serving our
customers! We are fundamentally a small business with
big aspirations. Without Microsoft products to support our E-commerce
efforts we would have spent considerably more time and money developing
this newly added service for our customers. This is just the first phase of our
Internet business development strategy. We intend to continue rolling out
new features and services in the second and third quarter of this year."
LKD's international clients have been especially excited about the new
website. Offering 24x7 access 365 days per year, customers from around the
world can find the parts they are looking for quickly and complete the
transaction entirely electronically. This will improve customer service
and substantially lower transaction costs. LKD believes their advanced
technology B2B site will greatly expand its global distribution channels and
lead to accelerated growth. Mark added, "Last year our sales growth
was 100% and that was without the added capabilities of the Internet. We
are excited about the future and plan to fully exploit the global
distribution capabilities of the Internet."
President Alan Dance added, "LKD is totally committed to
our strategic e-commerce and Internet initiative. Our
customers want it and we intend to provide a best-in-class e-commerce
solution for them. We anticipate that our already fast growth in
international markets will accelerate as our service capability is stepped
up."
LKD plans to continue investing heavily in Information Technology throughout
the rest of the year. LKD recently completed a trip to India to evaluate
opening a software development center there. Other growth
initiatives include the potential of opening its first overseas sales
office later this year.
LKD Aerospace is a global leader in aerospace aftermarket
distribution and information services. LKD provides factory new and
surplus products as well as consignment and information services. LKD
serves major and regional airlines, repair and overhaul and other members
of the aftermarket community throughout the world. |
