Digitalization is a very important topic not only in the chemical industry as a whole, but also in chemical distribution. 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 be more successful today than CheMatch, ChemSystems, ChemConnect et. al. were 20 years ago?

Christopher Erbslöh: If success is defined by the share of transactions involving chemicals and the turnover generated, the new generation of e-commerce platforms and individual e-commerce solutions will surely be more successful in the years to come, than they have been in the past. However, for a real transformation of our industry to happen there is still a lack of differentiation and segment-specific solutions. E-commerce for our industry needs to mature and evolve from being a price comparison tool where spot business takes place, to become a solution provider for innovation, supply chain issues and costly manual work, today performed by the workforce of manufacturers, customers and distributors. C.H. Erbslöh and the LEL Alliance are addressing these issues and will be offering more digital services over the coming years. Nevertheless, we believe that in order to make real achievements our industry as a whole will have to come together to define technical standards and give regulatory guidance to the governing bodies.

"Chemical e-Commerce Needs to
Mature and Evolve"
Christopher Erbslöh, Managing director, C.H. Erbslöh

As long as manufacturers, distributors, platforms, associations and government agencies continue to look for their own individual solutions, the road ahead is going to be a long and bumpy one, as the lack of standards make it difficult to provide differentiation and segment-specific solutions that are easy to use and offer seamless integration into existing processes, systems and tools.