Dow Chemical shares plans to increase digital sales

For Dow Chemical, driving digital sales through an e-commerce and B2B transformation strategy is not an isolated and siled channel experiment.

Dow already makes more than a third of its sales through digital channels and has ambitious plans to scale up its sales.

Dow Chemical’s Next Steps in Digital Sales

“We are scaling several of our digital solutions,” Dow Chief Financial Officer Jeff Tate told analysts and others at the company’s recent Investor Day event. “In fact, at the end of 2023, almost 40% of our sales were through digital channels, which is twice as much as at the last Investor Day in 2021.”

“As a result, we have reduced the number of orders by over 20%,” Tate said. “Importantly, everything you see here is an example of structural improvements. They are intended to be sustainable, long-term benefits that will give us the flexibility to invest for the future.

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

Dow Chemical digital sales totals

Dow reported total annual sales of $44.6 billion. Of this amount, 40% of all sales were made electronically. Based on these numbers, Digital Commerce 360 estimates Dow’s 2023 digital sales at $17.84 billion.

Additionally, Dow also claims that 70% of its consumer solutions division’s sales are in electronics. This company alone generated $5.16 billion for Dow in 2023. Based on this data, the Digital Commerce 360 project projects Dow’s total digital sales in 2023 to be $3.61 billion.

“Digital technology is hugely important to us from a productivity perspective, so we have made cost cuts over time, but we are looking to accelerate time to market, innovation and development without having to add resources, and provide more digital capabilities so customers can order online and track online (with) fewer human touches,” CEO Jim Fitterling told attendees.

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

“We have 20 years of advanced AI technology and plastic catalyst production, and so many times before we get into the lab, we can computer model what we need to produce, before we even try to produce anything, and we can micro-pilot it and scale it up and make it a mini installation scale for our customers,” said Fitterling. “Those are the types of productivity we focus on.”

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