It has been a big year for business-to-business ecommerce in the chemicals industry. And that beehive of activity includes one of the industry’s biggest companies: Dow Chemical Co.

Based in Midland, Michigan, Dow is a chemical manufacturing behemoth. Dow manufactures plastics, chemicals, and agricultural products. With a presence in about 160 countries, it employs 54,000 people worldwide; across its global network of 106 manufacturing facilities, it generated annual sales of $39.0 billion in 2020.

In the first half of 2021, Dow generated digital commerce sales of about $4.5 billion, an increase of 30% from digital sales of about $3.55 billion in the first half of 2020, Dow executives told attendees at its recent investor’s day conference.

Overall, Digital Commerce 360 projects that digital commerce accounted for about 18% of Dow’s total sales of $25.76 billion from January through June of this year, compared with 19.6% of all sales of $18.12 billion for the first six months of 2020. “We’re accelerating all of that with digitalization, not only for commerce, but also for innovation,” Mauro Gregorio president of Dow’s Performance Materials & Coating business, told analysts and investors. “Dow is ready for growth and for a sustainable future.”

During various presentations, Dow gave analysts and attendees different glimpses of how the company’s ecommerce acceleration and digital transformation are taking shape. “We’re becoming more customer-centric through digitalization, through ecommerce capabilities and the launch of our MobilityScience platform,” chairman and CEO James Fitterling told attendees. MobilityScience is a customer-experience technology and innovations platform Dow rolled out for the transportation industry in July 2020.

As of now, Dow across its various business division has a virtual inventory of about 10,000 products, chief financial officer Howard Ungerleider told attendees. Dow’s digital investments “are already delivering results, including digital sales which have increased more than 30% year-over-year,” he said. “In fact, we now have more than 10,000 products on our Dow.com product catalog.”

Going forward, Dow will continue to invest in more digital applications and services as it continues to deal with global challenges from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain disruption, chief commercial officer Daniel Futter told investors and analysts.

“We’ve had to make our business more digital, make ourselves more accessible to our customers through a digital and virtual means, and make sure that those experiences in the on- and off-ramps between people and digital still work; and if we get that right, our customers reward us with more share of current pocket,” he said.

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