Stratis 2nd ICO announcement: Beyond Global Trade

Stratis has announced their second ICO partner today: Beyond Global Trade, a company owned by Beyond Manufacturing which is a well established manufacturing company with a global distribution network.

BEYOND GLOBAL TRADE

I've never heard of this company before but after doing some research it seems like the company is aimed at being a middleman which you can hire to design products for you and create the production process through their network of manufacturing plants and such.

In essence if you have a good idea, you can go to them and they will design it in 3D for you. If you like it, you can then commit to an order and they will take care of the back-end production of it. You don't have to network with manufacturing plants and figure out the logistics and details - you simply get the end product as ordered. Beyond Global Trade has a presence in China, Singapore, Taiwan and the USA. They have won several awards and the Stratis announcement claims they have produced products for some of the world's largest brands.

Strangely enough the website for Beyond Global Trade looks pretty good, but if you look at Beyond Manufacturing which is supposed to be the parent company, it looks rather shabby! It appears they make pokerchips, banners and displays and other marketing knick-knacks. The website it self looks outdated.
Then again, I have worked in the distribution sector before and I know that many serious companies will sometimes have very old fashioned websites. These type of companies don't aquire new customers through the web, but rather by meeting them face to face at business events and faires.

MY THEORY

When I think about the type of company this is, I think they will try to use the blockchain for their supply-line and production process. As parts for products likely come from a large variety of factories and distributors, I imagine the blockchain can create a uniform tracking process for everybody involved. Much like projects such as WaltonChain or Vechain I suppose, but built on Stratis. From reading the announcement it seems it will be the Stratis team themselves doing most of the heavy lifting in building the Beyond Global Trade blockchain. Which is exactly what Stratis as a company wants - they are like IT consultants which you can hire to build a blockchain for you if you lack the expertise yourself, and they will build it on top of Stratis.

NOT SURE WHAT TO THINK

Firstly, of course it's great for Stratis that another ICO is coming to the platform! But I can't get too excited about this, for some reason. Maybe it's because Stratis failed to meet the deadline, even if by only a few days, but I am getting really impatient with the team not coming through on their promises.

Or maybe it's because the Beyond Manufacturing website looks amateurish (slogan: "We got COOL $#!+")? Sure, they can flaunt awards and 'products for major brands', but this could very well just be that they have once fulfilled an order for pens with a logo on it. On their website I can see poker chips with a BMW logo on it. Does that mean BMW is a customer...? In a way, I guess... I'd need more concrete information to get excited. The Beyond Global Trade website does show some projects they worked on - some look good like a Marvel statuette but others look more like 'generic marketing item with logo slapped on it'. Other big names on there are Microsoft, Disney, Tencent, Blizzard, LucasFilm, NFL, and so on. Impressive names, I must admit that. But again... what? pens? baseball caps with a logo?

Also logistically, they would have to have a very large amount of orders and production in order to make this a blockchain project with heavy usage. Sure it may make tracking easy, but that doesn't mean they need to track something a million times a day. It seems like a 'minor' blockchain project, for now anyway. Considering the hype that the Stratis team tried to build in january regarding their 'two flagship ICO's' I fail to see what is so flagship about this ICO (or the Gluon one, for that matter, where they felt the need to emphasize that it's a silicon valley company to try and impress..).

I guess I'm still hodling on with my STRAT, despite my everlasting disgruntlement with holding it. I'm just too damn stubborn to sell. And on top of that, with the current price drop to $9-ish I'm too close to my buy in price from almost three quarters of a year ago.. Too stubborn to sell for small profits. The moon, I demand!!!

Maybe I'm just holding a grudge against STRAT though... then again, what else do you expect as a HODLer?!! Of course I hodl grudges too!!

(Art by Roy Lichtenstein)