As Wolfgang Falter states in his article: Customers increasingly search online and initiate digital contacts via websites, social networks, search engines and commercial platforms. Those distributors that they do not find online are no longer present in the relevant markets.

This development has led to many discussions within the chemical distribution industry on how best to address the issue of digitalization.

CHEManager asked executives and industry experts familiar with the development of e-commerce in chemical distribution to share their opinion on what needs to be done in order to survive in an increasingly competitive environment and how to deal with a possible disruption caused by new digital developments. We wanted to know:

Will e-commerce platforms in chemical distribution are more successful today than CheMatch, ChemSystems, ChemConnect et. al. were 20 years ago?

Christian Bürger: The world that created the dot-com bubble 20 years ago has transformed into a world in which an online presence is required to succeed, also as a chemical company today. The number of internet users has grown enormously since then, dial-up internet made room for broadband technology, and mobile devices that are more capable than entire computers from 20 years ago appeared. Today’s e-commerce technologies are more efficient and cheaper to implement than ever before. Instead of worrying about the failures from 20 years ago, industry professionals should turn their attention to the success stories of today. In China for example, the use of chemical business platforms is already widespread. Chemical B2B marketplaces have reached more than CNY 200 billion (about $30 billion) revenue in 2017, and we are also seeing strong growth in the number of successful platforms in other regions of the world. E-commerce platforms in chemical distribution are already more successful today than they were 20 years ago and will be more successful in the future.

Who in the chemical supply chain from principal to distributor, logistics provider, online retailer, start-up to customer will be winners/losers in online distribution?

Christian Bürger: I believe that in the future it will be less about where in the chemical supply chain a company is, but rather how much it is able to build a strong brand and brand experience via different digital environments. In today‘s and much more in the future web business, it is necessary to pursue multi-channel strategies in order to remain visible and thus relevant. We are now entering an age in which “distributed content” — information promoted in different environments through various channels — is more important than ever. Only in this way can the customers, who are predominantly digital natives, be reached at various relevant touchpoints and strong brands can be built up.

3) We are operating a global metasearch engine for chemicals and plastics, making more than 2 million offers from a wide selection of marketplaces and webshops comparable for buyers. Suppliers can outsource online business activities with chembid and save both financial and personnel resources for e-commerce and digital marketing.