With a now de rigueur lower-case name for all things digital, heyworld is a Lufthansa Cargo spin-off aimed at the e-commerce market.
Managing director Timo Schamber comes not from the traditional air cargo industry but with 12 years of e-commerce experience, either with e-tailers or a software provider for e-commerce companies.
Schamber says that heyworld has been created to focus strongly on e-commerce and will take its place by existing Lufthansa Cargo products but with a business extending beyond the airport to airport services of its parent.
“What we offer is the first mile logistics from warehouse to airport, export customs, handling on the airport, the airport to airport transport, the import customs and then of course the last mile delivery.
“Our customers will be the small to medium companies but also the larger ones, the e-commerce marketplaces and the players that provide cross-border e-commerce.”
He adds: “For the airport to airport logistics part and also for the handling we will use the Lufthansa Cargo network, but not exclusively because we are able to use every airline and that is one of the reasons for being a spin-off.
“The other reason is that we are tackling a completely new market with a new product and those steps on the first to last mile are not the competence of the Lufthansa Cargo and will not be in future. We are not looking at containers or bigger units, we deal with the individual parcel, at piece-level.”
Asked about possible confusion with time:matters, another Lufthansa Cargo spin-off, Schamber explains: “Time:matters is an express provider but we are on e-commerce which has different needs in terms of transport and logistics. We are focusing on the whole process, end to end from warehouse to the end-customer.”
Heyworld has existing business in Europe, using the bellyhold capacity of Lufthansa, but also Germany to South Korea that was the launch international trade lane.
Heyworld is taking up the digitalisation gauntlet thrown down to air cargo by e-commerce and is working to meet the demands of its customer base by using Application Programming Interface (API), the technology standard to exchange data that powers all those business apps on the typical office desktop computer.
This has allowed heyworld to build a transport management system, making it more than a logistics provider, but also “a digital company focusing on digitalisation of the whole process”.
Says Schamber: “Our challenge is to combine data from express and postal services with the airfreight business. We use partners like postal services to deliver the last mile. We will not provide it by ourselves. It would not make any sense because you cannot scale that.
Which companies is heyworld using for last mile partners?
“That depends on the countries we will look for partners in each country but what we’re not doing, we do not build up a whole network for the whole of the world, we are looking at the customer and the customer’s special needs and the lanes he or she requires.”
