SEALED-BID

ONCE-IN-A-GENERATION OPPORTUNITY

The Client was building several new hangars at a high-demand, high volume airport in California — the first new hangar construction at the airport in over 30 years. The new space was expected to be in very high demand due to the extreme shortage of large aircraft hangars to accommodate today’s modern, significantly larger business jets.

How do you fairly allocate scarce, high-value hangar space to a select group of clients — many of whom are high-net worth individuals, family offices, and corporate flight departments — in a way that is fair, transparent, controlled, and abides by airport obligations?

A simple "first come, first served" approach wouldn't work. Neither would a traditional auction — this wasn't a fundraising event. The Client needed a sealed-bid process: private, invitation-only, with legal documentation baked in. Nothing like it existed in the private aviation industry.

The Client partnered with Handbid to design and build a purpose-built sealed-bid platform from the ground up. The system needed to handle a workflow that no off-the-shelf product could support:

1. Invitation-Only Access The Client loaded a curated list of qualified prospects into the system. Each received a branded, polished invitation with a unique link to a private registration page. No public access. No open registration. Complete audience control.

2. Aircraft-Aware Registration Upon clicking the invitation, each prospect was taken to a private registration page where they could enter their aircraft tail number or manually input aircraft specifications. The platform integrated with an external aviation web service to automatically calculate the total square footage of the aircraft — a critical data point, since hangar bid pricing was calculated per square foot.

3. Multi-Aircraft Support For individuals or companies that own more than one aircraft. The system allowed a single client to register multiple aircraft, each appearing in the backend as a separate bidder with its own unique square footage calculation. This meant a single owner could submit bids for hangar space for multiple aircraft simultaneously.

4. DocuSign Integration for Letter of Intent Before a prospect could bid, they needed to review and sign a Letter of Intent. Handbid built a direct integration with DocuSign: the system automatically populated an LOI template with the prospect's submitted data — aircraft details, contact information, and interest in additional services — then sent it to the prospect for electronic signature. Once signed, DocuSign notified Handbid, which automatically updated the bidder record and authorized them to enter the bidding phase. No manual intervention required.

5. Document Library The Client needed prospects to review supporting materials — draft hangar agreements, FAQs, bid instructions, and Q&A responses published during the open period. The platform provided a document library within the web interface, allowing the Client to upload and update materials at any time, with prospects able to download and review them on demand.

6. Configurable Bid Calculation & Deposits Prospects could bid on either corner hangar space or standard space. Upon submitting a bid, the system automatically calculated the appropriate deposit using a configurable formula:

(Aircraft Square Footage × Bid Rate) + $400 CAM + 10% Deposit

The prospect was then prompted to pay the deposit to secure their bid — all within the same interface.

7. Sealed-Bid Adjudication When the bidding window closed, the Client received all submitted bids awarded the space per the bid process guidelines. The sealed-bid format preserved fairness and confidentiality throughout.

WHITE-GLOVE SUPPORT FOR A WHITE GLOVE CLIENT

This was not a self-service deployment.Handbid provided hands-on partnership throughout:

• Weekly status meetings with the Client and the Client's Advisors for over six months of active development
• Multiple run-throughs of the entire bidding process with the Client's team before launch
• Direct end-user support — Handbid team members got on the phone and provided on-to-one user support for the Client, guiding them through the registration and bidding process
• Real-time bug fixes — issues identified during the final Dec 31 test were resolved within days, before the Jan 5 launch
• Admin training — The Client's team was trained on the backend; managing bidder records, uploading documents, monitoring LOI status and tracking bid submissions

When Technology Meets High-Net Worth Behavior

The platform worked. The workflow — from invitation to registration to LOI to bid — performed as designed. But the response rate was lower than the Client had hoped.

The Client’s project lead, offered a candid assessment of why:

"Asking high-net worth individuals to respond within our pre-defined timeline was simply too much to ask. There is always an expectation that special exceptions can be made for wealthy clients"

The challenges were entirely about the audience, not the technology:

• High-net-worth aircraft owners don't operate on anyone else's schedule. Reaching the right person, explaining a process that had never existed in their industry, and getting timely action was the core friction.Decision-makers were unreachable on a fixed timeline. High-net-worth aircraft owners don't operate on anyone else'sschedule. Reaching the right person, explaining a process that had neverexisted in their industry, and getting timely action was the core friction.
• Middlemen absorbed the urgency. CFOs, executive assistants, pilots, and family office managers often intercepted the communication. Many never relayed the opportunity to the actual decision-maker.
• A novel process required hand-holding. Despite clear documentation, virtually no one read the FAQ or bid instructions. Every serious prospect needed to be walked through the process verbally. The three-step flow (Register → LOI → Bid) —streamlined by technology standards — was too many steps for this audience.
• Minor technical friction compounded the problem. Some corporate email servers blocked the invitations. A few users experienced stale browser sessions that required a simple page refresh. These were not platform failures, but in an audience with zero tolerance for friction, they created perception issues.

The result: While the sealed-bid process didn't generate the volume of bids the Client had targeted, the project surfaced the serious prospects early. As of the project leader’s debrief, approximately 50% of the new hangar space was already committed — many from current tenants who engaged directly — and the Client expressed confidence the space would be fully allocated by opening.