Bryzos with Shep Hickey | E242

Fintech solutions for industrial steel.

On today's Fintech Impact episode, Jason Pereira will talk to Shep Hickey, founder, and CEO of Bryzos. It is an online steel marketplace. Any kind of marketplaces are financial solution, and Shep incorporated Fintech solutions into the platform itself.

Episode Highlights

  • 1.03: Bryzos is an online steel marketplace that has Fintech features that allow a buyer or seller to go all the way with procure to pay.

  • 1.25: With Fintech enables we have Buy Now, Pay Later option and a lot of the feature comforts that traditional transactional parties are used to, says Shep.

  • 2.17: Bryzos absolute origin is really about creating a solution for the daily grind of sourcing, bringing and getting sales down the road.

  • 4.28: The mill distributor who are making some materials are primarily on the sell side and on the buy side you also have distribution like there have an offline customer that needs something.

  • 5.00: The mechanics for Shep remain unchanged even if someone needs a couple foot of steel or few miles of pipe.

  • 6.40: Shep is reducing the opportunity for human error by reducing the amount of time. They have a structured way for buyers to enter what they need versus what Bryzos makes for them.

  • 8.11: For every single seller you have as a buyer, you have one to one relationship, which is an enormous amount of administrative, says Shep. 

  • 9.02: When Shep and his team were sitting down to solve and create a real end to end solution, it was always known that they had to create a buy now, pay later solution.

  • 10.51: Buy now pay later, Shep offered primarily through the vendors. He discusses whether they offer another facility for those vendors who are willing to do that?

  • 11.30: Someone who is really understanding working capital, they are outsourcing their credit risk at no cost, says Shep.

  • 13.51: Energy related steel is one of the most complicated things to trade online because it is so heavily specific and there's also sort of subjective piece, says Shep. 

  • 14.11: Bryzos has effectively proven the ability to move products that people didn't believe could probably be sold online.

  • 16.45: Shep would want the world to settle down and people can sort of drop their shoulders and feel good about what they're doing every day.

  • 17.50: There is no way that industrial products are not bought and sold online. Buyer has no clue who seller is and the reason that was able to occur is because we removed all the financial risk and that's exciting, says Shep. 

3 Key Points

  1. Traditional process is that buyers come in, they create a bill material, they get sent out to the sellers, the sellers will quote it, and deal be created. It's really the buyers creating the demand, says Shep.

  2. Shep talks about how they facilitate the financial transaction deal side.

  3. Shep talks about where he sees the steel industry, whether it is going beyond just the steel side at this point or not.

Tweetable Quotes

  • "I don't believe in the end that Bryzos is just a steel platform. This is an industrial goods trading platform." – Shep

  • "You felt pain in existing market and saw that there were transactions being facilitated and said there is got to be ways that can kind of essentially facilitating the entire value chain of delivery." – Jason

  • "We have completely allowed the seller to outsource any credit risk when it comes to selling their products." - Shep

  • "We have a whole module that manages and neutralizes the risk of the movement of goods and money. It allows reconciling inline versus what happens traditionally when you ship something." - Shep

Resources Mentioned

Fintech ImpactJason PereiraFintech