My Journey into the Global Aerospace Industry

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I would like to share my entrepreneurial story with those of you who are interested as all the success I have had up till now is thanks to the great friends, colleagues, business partners, and family that have stood by my side. What follows is the long version of the 40 Under Forty special Aviation Week was kind enough to run earlier this Summer…Happy Thanksgiving!

My initiation to the aerospace industry began when my father and brother, who had recently acquired a South Florida-based, electromechanical components distributor called Wings Electro, came to China to explore opportunities and open new markets. They wanted someone they could trust and who spoke the local language to accompany them, so they asked me to join a week of meetings around the country. Those initial contacts showed so much promise and the prospects of working in aviation were all extremely exciting --- there was no looking back.

For the next couple years, I would handle sales and business development in the region for the family business. This primarily involved opening up greenfield accounts, establishing long-term cooperative agreements, and maintaining strong relationships with our customers and partners across the Asia Pacific region in both the MRO and OEM segments. Working in distribution allowed me to not only appreciate the differences in customer demands between industry segments, but also to experience first-hand the vast differences in business culture across this diverse geography. What would work for a landing gear shop in Singapore or an engine MRO in Hong Kong is vastly different from an interiors factory in Thailand or an AVIC subsidiary in Shenyang.

As fate would have it, in 2009, it was at a conference in Shenyang that I would meet both my future industry mentor, Olivier Laroche, and business partner, Matthieu Devoisselle. Courtesy of the Shenyang government, we had all been invited to fly up and participate in a conference promoting the commercial aerospace industry in Liaoning. Few aviation professionals are as well-connected and knowledgeable about the opaque dynamics of the Chinese aerospace market as Olivier. So, the importance of France and Europe to the early success of what would become Avia-Tek was set in motion here.

In late 2009, I began thinking about how could I leverage the experience and relationships I had developed in these markets to capitalize on two major trends that were unfolding before us: a rapidly growing APAC Airline/MRO market and the emergence of new OEM players, namely COMAC and AVIC. Matthieu and I had already been meeting for several months on a regular basis to share information, contacts, and the occasional bit of Shanghai nightlife competitive intelligence. We then decided to pitch the idea of a consulting company to potential clients when we would jointly attend the next couple industry conferences --- this is when we got our first lucky break (but would later learn a valuable lesson).

We were invited to meet with a privately-owned Chinese industrial conglomerate based in Hangzhou. It turned out they desperately wanted to get into the booming commercial aerospace industry and were ready to enlist outside help to achieve some strategic objectives. It is ironic looking back that our very first client was a Chinese firm. If you enjoy hearing consultants whine, ask them what they think about selling consultancy services in China. God help you should you actually win a contract! This was an advantage of being young – you don’t know what isn’t possible. It was also our downfall on this particular client account as I painfully remember during a round of intense negotiations pushing for a multi-million dollar follow-on contract that was probably beyond our means to execute at the time when we could have settled for what still would have been an excellent deal. Ego in check, that was an expensive lesson from entrepreneurship’s school of hard knocks. Nevertheless, Avia-Tek Limited was officially launched in the first quarter of 2010 with an initial contribution of 900 US Dollars from each of the two founders to our Hong Kong account.

At the 2010 Singapore Airshow, the company began to gain more traction and we signed up new clients from the more established aerospace hubs in the United States and Europe. To this day, we still represent a Connecticut-based manufacturer of flight control cables called Loos & Co. Their VP of Sales and Marketing, Michael Wallace, casually asked us if we could provide some market intelligence that would determine the potential for his products on a new platform being developed in the region. He was pleasantly surprised when we showed up the next day with a detailed answer above and beyond his expectations. We would go on to play key role in the strong growth of their Asia sales over the coming years.

However, while Avia-Tek was born in sales and marketing, our future would lie in strategy and finance. As I grew more comfortable with our ability to deliver on complex projects and assemble teams of high-level industry experts, we would pursue more engagements such as identification and evaluation of strategic alliance and joint-venture partners, and other projects that were more strategic in nature. Furthermore, our client roster was expanding to include well-known industry names like GE, SAFRAN, Pratt & Whitney, MTU, Rockwell Collins, and COMAC.

In the Winter of 2011, we signed the lease to what is still Avia-Tek headquarters today in Shangai’s Jing’an CBD and made plans to move out of our shared office in Caohejing Development Zone. In order to save money on the renovations, we hired our own minggong (migrant workers) to do the construction and hauled a good amount of the materials ourselves by hand from the local market to our office. Did I mentioned this was during the Shanghai Winter? There was no heating!

This was a crucial step in the evolution of Avia-Tek as it legally enabled us to finally launch our Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise (WFOE) subsidiary --- a big step and a big gamble for any SME as unlike today, registered capital was required to be tied up in a capital account before granting of the full business license was possible. I think many international would-be entrepreneurs in China fail to take this leap, but it was the right decision and in my opinion instrumental to winning business from the local players. With the liberalizing economic climate in China today, more entrepreneurs should take advantage of the new company law policies.

One of the first contracts to run through the WFOE was Custom Sensors & Technologies (CST), a Franco-American subsidiary of the Schneider Electric group. I can still remember Claude Maison, Managing Director, Crouzet and VP of International Strategy, CST joining us for the first client meeting to be held in the new Avia-Tek office. At the time, we had no furniture except for a glass table in the meeting room and a handful of office chairs. It was clients like Claude of CST (and I should also mention Stefan Dirsch of DAHER-NCS) who put their trust in us in the early days, without which none of what we have achieved so far would be possible.

In fact, when we first started Avia-Tek, I never would have expected to be leading the execution of strategic consulting projects for major aerospace players known as yangqi (enterprises directly managed by the Central Government of China). In 2013, it was an accomplishment we could be proud of because few other “international” or “foreign”, depending on your point of view, firms had successfully landed strategic consulting projects in this space, let alone an emerging player like Avia-Tek.

From initial introductions, to needs analysis sessions, to back and forth discussions on proposals, to negotiations, and finally execution --- nearly all of it had to be done in Chinese. A true test of our ability to be not only a Western firm, but a truly international team of Americans, Europeans, and Chinese all working together to achieve a common goal. I have a great memory chatting with the client as we made our way to an off-site meeting a couple hours drive by car when they taught me a new Chinese chengyu (four character idiom) that they used to describe my personality – bamianlinglong. Literally, this means something like eight-sided piece of jewelry, but in Chinese culture this references a historical anecdote and carries the meaning of “one who is smooth and slick in social relations”. Like many Chinese expressions, I do not think it was a 100% complement, but I liked it nevertheless as I believe it describes aptly how one needs to be when dealing with international business and multiple cultures.

Later in 2013, Matthieu would leave the firm and eventually join GE Aviation to pursue a new challenge. At that time, I decided to move the company in a new direction that would focus on becoming more involved and gaining more experience in deals, transactions, and finance. We still continue our traditional business of market analysis and strategic advisory, but this is a step towards realizing my long-term vision to scale up the impact I could have on global innovation and adoption of future technologies.

My key areas of interest are the integration of cutting edge high tech systems with IT, private equity, cross-border investments, and how these three specializations intersect with one another. Consider that today investors in China allocate billions of Renminbis in capital to a factory who will then import 3D printing equipment from Germany to use super alloy powder metals made in America to manufacture engine parts that will be exported to France to be installed on an aircraft priced and financed in US dollars that will be operated in Africa. Having the power to allocate large amounts of capital to daring projects that challenge the limits of technology, cultural barriers, and require innovative business models is where I would like to be within the next five to ten years.

This is really the domain of the Googles, Facebooks, and Teslas of our world and capital with the stomach for such ventures may come from Silicon Valley, the Middle East, or Asia instead of traditional sources. A strategy of incrementalism and one-upsmanship has taken over our conservative industry and while it is suitable and reasonable for airlines and the shareholders of The Boeing Company and Airbus Group, they are not likely to disrupt old paradigms like the B707 and Concorde once did. However, I do believe the OEMs have started to notice Big Data moving into UAVs and other adjacent industries.

To conclude, the path I have taken so far choosing to run my own business as opposed to working at one of the big groups can probably be compared to flying. If working in a big group is like flying in a jumbo, where you hardly notice that you are hurtling through the air at 500 miles per hour, then running
your own start-up is like flying in an LSA where the shocks of turbulent air jostle you around. It’s not always the most comfortable ride, you usually fly by dead reckoning, and you may wonder if the pilot-in-command has enough hours on his license or a couple screws loose in his head, but you really do know you are flying and the experience is beautiful.

I could never have reached this point on my entrepreneurial journey without the strong support of my family, friends, and our amazing team. I am especially thankful for the unwavering support of my Father and Mother, John and Kathy Siena.