Private company

Inventory Locator Service

Inventory Locator Service, LLC (ILS) is an American company that started the first e-Marketplace for aviation, marine, and defense industries. ILS has its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, United States of America, with relationships globally, especially in North America, through its parent company CAMP Systems, Inc., a subsidiary of Hearst Corporation. Inventory Locator Service was started in May 1979 by John Williams, founder of The Memphis Group, an aircraft parts dealer.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 20, 2026.

Overview

1979Founded1

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Inventory Locator Service, LLC (ILS) is an American company that started the first e-Marketplace for aviation, marine, and defense industries. ILS has its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, United States of America, with relationships globally, especially in North America, through its parent company CAMP Systems, Inc., a subsidiary of Hearst Corporation. Inventory Locator Service was started in May 1979 by John Williams, founder of The Memphis Group, an aircraft parts dealer. ILS provided a business-to-business marketplace for its subscribers to search among millions of parts and negotiate orders.2

How it started

History

In 1985, Williams and his three partners became concerned that ILS might be vulnerable to competition and urged selling the company while it was profitable. The other partners agreed to sell and Ryder System, Inc purchased ILS. Ryder was a major player in the aircraft parts and service business, but kept ILS operations separate.

In 1988, ILS moved to a new location in Memphis, Tennessee. A switch in business conduct occurred due to the introduction of DOS software to PC users. Its first Windows software followed in 1994.

ILS introduced Internet access to its database in 1999-2000. In 2001, ILS was changed from a Tennessee corporation to a Delaware limited liability company. It was seeing record usage while other dot-coms folded in the collapse of the Internet bubble. It had about 6,000 subscribers at the time, and was succeeding in the face of new competition from start-ups, airlines, and OEMs.

On September 16, 2019, Hearst’s Camp Systems International acquired Inventory Locator Service (ILS) from the Boeing Company. The announcement was made by CAMP President and CEO Vibby Gottemukkala and ILS, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, became part of CAMP.

From Wikipedia’s article on Inventory Locator Service, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Subsidiaries and ownership

Owners

From Wikidata.1

Timeline

  1. 1979Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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