How PartsBase Runs a $2 Billion Aviation Network on One Platform

When an aircraft is grounded, every hour of downtime costs the operator thousands of dollars. The mechanic needs a part — confirmed, purchased, and in transit fast. PartsBase sits at the center of that transaction: 90 million line items, $2 billion in annual transactions, customers across aviation, aerospace, and defense.

The Stack That Couldn’t Keep Up

Their old architecture worked against the urgency the business runs on. A legacy gated platform for members. A separate WooCommerce store for public sales. No connection between the two. Onboarding a new customer took days — the wrong speed for an AOG situation.

One System for the Whole Commercial Layer

OroCommerce now runs subscriptions, entitlements, account provisioning, and eCommerce in a single environment. Rodrigo Garcia, COO at PartsBase, doesn’t describe it as just a helpful tool:

“OroCommerce is the brain of everything that we do. It handles the marketplace, the subscriptions, and the account provisioning. For us, OroCommerce is as mission-critical as it gets.”

What That Foundation Made Possible

Connecting private and public sales. A feature called the Departure Envelope handles the handoff: when a logged-in member finds a part in the private database and clicks Buy Now, OroCommerce transfers their identity, billing info, and shipping credentials directly to the public PartStore checkout. Part eligibility, tax calculation via Avalara, and payment splitting via Stripe all run behind the scenes. The buyer never logs in twice.

• 130% YoY PartStore revenue growth
• 33% increase in average order value

Cutting onboarding from days to minutes. A self-serve portal called PBExpress replaced the manual new account workflow. A mechanic pays a $300 subscription fee, signs digital terms, and OroCommerce provisions the account automatically.

• Onboarding time dropped from days to five minutes
• 153 new accounts activated in 2025 with no sales rep involved

Digitizing trade show booth sales. PBExpo booth sales used to run on paper contracts and chased checks. Now vendors pick a booth on an interactive floor plan, configure add-ons, and pay by credit card on the spot — with reps closing renewals on tablets on the show floor. In the first five weeks, the self-serve portal brought in nearly $100,000, entirely from new customers.