Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
'Dow will be Amazon of chemical firms'
By Nam Hyun-woo
Dow Chemical Korea Commercial Director Min Sun-hee speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at the company's office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Courtesy of Dow Chemical Korea
By Nam Hyun-woo
Dow Chemical Silicones Korea Commercial Director Min Sun-hee said the new Dow, after its scheduled spinoff, will be a digital-friendly and customer-centric firm, and its clients will be able to say, “buying products from Dow is as easy as shopping on Amazon.”
“As one of the goals of the new Dow, the companys seek to transform itself as a customer-centric firm,” Min said during a recent interview with The Korea Times.
“The first step toward that is the digitization of our services. So far, we've neglected the importance of the web. Even if we sell chemicals to other companies, the process of buying should be seamless and easy like purchasing general goods at Amazon,” she said.
Dow Korea's headquarters, DowDuPont, was established in 2017 as a merged holding firm between global giants Dow Chemical and DuPont. The company will split into three separate firms of Dow, DuPont and Corteva to list them on bourses respectively.
Of them, Dow will spin off first on April 1 and will be in charge of material chemicals, coatings, silicones, and other industrial intermediates. The other two will split on June 1. DuPont will take care of specialty chemicals such as products for electronics, imaging, automotive materials, and Corteva will be in charge of agriculture.
These will affect Dow's existing Korea businesses the same, with DuPont Korea receiving several businesses held previously by Dow Korea.
Min said the headquarters has been stressing the importance of digitization during the spinoff process, and set online sales as the agenda the company will be pursuing for years to come.
Similar to other business-to-business (B2B) companies, accessibility to Dow's products through the internet has not been very good for both customer companies and its own sales agents, because key information of products had been available only at company offices until just a few years ago.
“In a survey we did last year, 60 percent of our customer companies said improving Dow's digital environment is very important for their own businesses, because that will help them to track their order and shipping status,” Min said. “Whether it is a B2B company or business-to-customer companies, digital-based sales is not just a matter of choice.”
Based on that belief, Min has been putting the sales system, vast chemical product data and regulations affecting them online along with 1,000 other Dow employees across the world since 2016. Following the effort, Dow opened a consumer website in February last year, allowing customers to purchase chemical products online. The website is available in six languages including Korean.
Min said purchasing chemical products on the website is almost the same as purchasing goods on internet shopping malls, with the Dow website even providing a shopping cart system.
“Through the website, we logged $2.7 billion in sales, which accounts for 50 percent of the entire Dow consumer solution department's sales,” she said. “Currently we are expanding the website to cover industrial products, polyurethane and other Dow products.”
She said the efforts for digitization will continue. Since chemical products cannot demonstrate their performance before their actual use, she said she seeks to develop technologies that demonstrate products in a digital environment, so sales agent can show a “live catalogue” to customer companies.
“In terms of that, the headquarters has high expectations for Dow Korea after the spinoff,” she said. “Also, the headquarters is looking forward to having synergy in Korean customer companies as they achieve innovations in multiple industries including electronics, automotive and cosmetics.”