For Dow Chemical, boosting digital sales through its B2B ecommerce and transformation strategy is not an isolated and siloed channel experiment.

Dow already does over one-third of sales through digital channels and has ambitious plans to scale up for more.

Dow Chemical’s next steps for digital sales

“We are scaling several of our digital solutions,” Dow chief financial officer Jeff Tate told analysts and other attendees at the company’s recent investor’s day meeting. “In fact, at the end of 2023, almost 40% of our sales occurred through digital channels, which is double where we were during the last time of our Investor Day in 2021.”

“With this, we have reduced our order touches by over 20%,” Tate stated. “Importantly, everything you see here is an example of structural improvements. They are intended to be sustainable, long-term benefits that give us the flexibility to invest for the future.”

Dow Chemical Co. is a chemical and plastics manufacturer and one of the world’s biggest suppliers of chemicals, plastics, synthetic fibers and agricultural products. In 2023, Dow generated total sales of $44.6 billion, a decrease of 22% from $56.9 billion in 2022.

Digital sales totals for Dow Chemical

Dow reported total annual sales of $44.6 billion. Of that sum, 40% of all sales completed were done electronically. Based on these numbers, Digital Commerce 360 projects Dow’s digital sales in 2023 totaled $17.84 billion.

In addition, Dow also says that 70% of sales for its consumer solutions business is electronic. The business alone generated $5.16 billion for Dow in 2023. Based on these figures, Digital Commerce 360 projects Dow’s consumer solutions digital sales in 2023 totaled $3.61 billion.

“Digital is huge from a productivity standpoint for us, so we have done cost-cutting over time but what we’re trying to do is speed to market, speed to innovation, and growth without having to add resources, and more digital capabilities so customers can order online, track online (with)  less human touches,” CEO Jim Fitterling told attendees.

Going forward, the company said Dow will continue to invest and develop more diverse forms of artificial intelligence.

“We have 20 years of deep AI technology and making catalysts for plastics and so many times before we ever go into a lab, we can computer model what we need to make before we ever try to make anything and we can make it a micro pilot scale and make it a mini plant scale for our customers,” Fitterling stated. “Those are the kinds of productivity we’re focused on.”

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