INTERVIEW: Chem digital marketplace creates valuable data for suppliers – Knowde

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (ICIS)–Knowde’s digital marketplace is not just providing chemical companies with storefronts for their products but giving them access to valuable data about who is interested in each of their plastics and chemicals and how much of that interest is turning into sales, the CEO said.

Knowde develops and maintains digital store fronts for companies that make plastics, chemicals and food ingredients, said Ali Amin-Javaheri, CEO of Knowde. He made his comments on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

The company has 7,000 suppliers in its marketplace, up from 4,000 seven months ago, he said. Knowde is gaining about six suppliers each day.

Typically, small and medium companies move their entire product portfolios to their storefronts, while large chemical producer move those of single business-units at a time, he said.

Knowde does not own the data generated by the storefronts. But it does organise it and create filters for it.

This is no small undertaking.

Chemical companies provide technical details about their materials in hundreds of thousands of PDFs and technical datasheets filled with unstructured data, Amin-Javaheri said. He estimates that Knowde has more than a million PDFs.

Knowde imposes structure and order on that data. It puts tags on the materials. These tags could be end-markets, industry, application, end use, brand name and product family.

These tags make it easier for potential customers to find a product that they need for their applications. Those customers can make inquiries about the products from an expert provided by the supplier.

The storefront also creates a digital trail for the supplier. They can learn about new or unexpected applications for their products based on the digital trails of people visiting their storefronts. They can also learn about conversion rates and what type of visitors are looking up individual products.

In all, the storefront can provide suppliers with hard, quantifiable data about the interests of their customers, Amin-Javaheri said.

For the digital marketplace itself, the reopening of the economy after the COVID pandemic has not lowered interest in Knowde, he said. Instead, it increased it.

Sales representatives are less eager to go out on the field, Amin-Javaheri said. Customers are preferring to buy materials online.

The ACC Annual Meeting runs through Wednesday.

Interview article by Al Greenwood