Well, here it goes: our first blog post. Ever.
There is so much we’d like to share about our experience developing Kemgo so far, but, rather than try and put it all in one entry, we’ll spread it out over the next few weeks (this will be helpful in case we run out of things to blog about!).
Before getting into the details of what Kemgo was created to do, or how we came about it, we would like to talk about the passion that created it.
Not long ago, we were in many of your shoes, working for major companies that dealt in petrochemicals, wondering how we could improve our processes to make our lives better, and at the end of the day, let’s face it, impress our bosses. When we first came up with the idea for Kemgo, we loved it! We didn’t necessarily love it because it was ours, but we loved it for two main reasons:
1. What it would do to help those in our industry:
This idea, by no means new, has been tried before by the likes of ChemConnect and Omnexus. In speaking with some of the founding members of both these companies, we quickly came to the realization that their demise came down to a few things, and we were going to address those things and make it work with Kemgo:
Lack of industry knowledge: Not only does our executive team have experience in petrochemicals, from marketing to supply chain to developing an $8 billion company from scratch! But, our board and advisors are made of industry executives (not on behalf of their respective companies) because of their passion for the industry and their will to continuously improve it and help bring it into the age of eBay, LinkedIn or Alibaba.
Right concept, wrong timing: The timing of the technology was a little off. While the business to consumer market (B2C) was booming, the business-to-business (B2B) market was always lagging a little behind. Folks were not ready to place orders through their mobile devices (frankly, the technology was not entirely there yet!). We whole-heartedly believe that now is the time for Kemgo – time to get petrochemicals into the modern technology age (well, from a Marketing, Sales and Distribution perspective, at least!).
Independence: Major suppliers were sponsoring the companies that had come before us. Our question: how could you create an independent market place in that type of environment? Kemgo was created by the market for the market, a perfect capitalistic and non-corporatist model.
2. The scalability of the concept:
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Dreaming of the way Kemgo would be able to re-shape the industry was fantastic enough, but, then thinking about how to expand our value in the market, for example supporting supply chains and finance departments, and potentially expanding this into other industries (in the not so short term future), really got our flames burning. What if this was just the beginning of improving the way business was done in many industries around the world forever? Yes, this would be just the beginning of doing something that would help so many and that’s what drives our passion.
We’ve never stopped looking forward and continue to be driven by our passion to potentially making business more efficient in petrochemicals and beyond.
We hope you stay tuned for many more amazing things to come. Let us know how you liked this first post!
Sincerely,
Joe Naaman & Ralph de Haan
(Kemgo Co-Founders and Co-CEOs)