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From a university internship to his current position on ChemQuest’s global business development team, Philip Marsh’s career seems to have come full circle. He has built on the extensive capabilities he garnered in managing external channel distributor networks to drive successes in new product development, production startups, M&A, and global business leadership.
A UK native and current resident of the Netherlands, Philip also utilizes his expertise in support of client projects around the world. I recently had the chance to chat with him about his experiences and pick his brain regarding current trends impacting the specialty chemicals sector.
What are some highlights of your career path?
As the application process for one of my first jobs, an internship at university, I had to do voice of industry work. I basically contacted different people in the UK that were customers and contacts of a chemical distributor where I wanted to do my internship, as part of the application process. I then put the key pieces of information into an Excel file and PowerPoint and then reported that back to the distributor. Looking back, it’s funny, because that’s pretty much a mirror of the voice of customer work we do here at ChemQuest.
After I completed that internship, the company invited me back over the holidays, and that holiday job was actually extended to a year while I was still at university. After I finished my degree at Imperial College, I went back to that same company in the chemical distribution space for a few years. I enjoyed the diversity of activities because it helped me build experience in a number of areas.
I was then hired by one of the principal suppliers, Hexion, to take up a position as their distributor manager. That meant moving from the UK to the Netherlands, where I still live, which was a real highlight of that job. The role began with just one product line in acrylic chemistry, and then it was extended to include epoxy product lines as well.
I think the reason they hired me was to get a fresh perspective. The company had acquired a number of businesses, and there were people in those acquisitions that had been doing things the same way for a number of years. With me, they wanted to bring in someone fresh to closely look at their distribution business and make recommendations on how to improve things moving forward. I worked on eliminating the non-value-adding complexity, really simplifying that business down and driving the change that was needed. Ultimately, the crux of that role involved breaking that mindset of doing things simply because they’ve always been done that way.
Based on that success, I was then asked to lead the coating dispersions business. I knew this business from years earlier when I was work for their distributor, and they tended to be very good at describing chemical properties but not so good at matching them to customer needs. One of the distributors summed it up really well when he said, “I don’t care about the properties of these products. What I really care about is how they can make money. How can they be profitable, and what can they do in applications for the customers?”
Again, another shift in mindset. I really moved the technical team away from just reporting properties of the products to focusing on the application areas and what they can do for customers. I also focused on changing the sales team for the business as well. The sales team tended to concentrate more on looking after existing customers and were not as proactive at hunting for new business. We made some changes to the team and also shifted the coatings business more toward performance coatings, which can command a higher value.
Because it’s truly a global business, we had production in Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain, France, the U.S., and Thailand. One of the projects that I really enjoyed in leading that business was relocating one of the plants. That initiative involved building a new plant in Thailand for water- and solvent-based resins, so I spent quite some time in Southeast Asia during that process. And obviously once the plant was opened, I worked to get the business through to fully load up the new plant. That was a very rewarding and enjoyable process.
Then in 2016, I worked through the process of selling the business. This was my first significant exposure to M&A activity on the sell-side, and I found it fascinating. The process involves not just thinking about selling the business but also exploring the synergy and the fit with the different potential buyer options. I worked on the sale of that business to Synthomer in 2016.
I then joined Emerald in a business development role. A key element of that role was working with a toller in Italy to ultimately develop and then launch with commercial sales a new product offering that was in a new market as well. I enjoyed working with the new customers throughout that process, understanding what was important from their perspectives and then tailoring the product offering accordingly.
I suppose a key discovery point during that project was that whilst the outcome could be achieved, it took longer than I would have liked. With the benefit of hindsight, had we had external consultancy support, we could have done things a lot more quickly. But nevertheless, I was pleased to see the product launch, and I understand from colleagues that the sales of that product range have since grown further.
Why did you decide to join ChemQuest, and how do your past experiences help inform the work you do with our clients today?
It was in the early part of 2023 that I decided to join ChemQuest. What attracted me to ChemQuest was their outstanding reputation. I knew of the company before, of course, from my Hexion, Emerald, and Lanxess times, and I was also drawn to the type of work I would be able to do there.
I really wanted to work in two areas, which I’m now able to do. One is in business development, bringing on new projects — particularly on the M&A and strategy development side. The second area is actually working on the projects themselves. I like that the role I have at ChemQuest allows me to do all of those activities.
Though it was quite some time ago, the work I did at university on collecting input for voice of industry — or customer, here at ChemQuest — is a skillset I use all the time on various client projects. I think a focus on constant improvement and innovation has also served me well and continues to do so. One of the additional skills I was trained on and really developed during my time with Hexion was the Six Sigma methodology. I adopt the elements of that Six Sigma methodology in the projects that I work on in ChemQuest now.
What have been some of your most engaging projects so far?
One of the projects that I’ve particularly enjoyed working on, and it really is just an illustration of the type of things we can do at ChemQuest, involved a client that makes raw materials that are used by personal care formulators. The client had seen a number of market studies which they felt were overestimating the size of the market.
For my part in the project, I looked at defining — in a more credible way — the actual size of the market. I first took a top-down approach, which involves basically looking at the size of the end-use application, personal care in this case, and making certain educated assumptions and extrapolations based on my experience in this area to get an estimated projection on the size of the market for that particular raw material.
I also took a bottom-up approach. China is certainly a big player and represents a competing entity in supplying that raw material. I reconnected with one of my contacts who actually now owns a leading distributor in China for that raw material, and I was able to get his perspective on the size of the market. I also spoke with other companies that I know in the industry as well to get a bottom-up estimation of the market size. This just illustrates the kind of capabilities and ways of working that we have at ChemQuest. Together, we have a huge network that we can call on to help gather detailed information.
I’m really enjoying a strategy project I’m currently working on in the coating space. We started off by looking at the organization, in what’s known as a framing session, to better understand the business. The client has since acted on some recommendations which we made in relation to the organizational structure. We’re now at the point of making some further recommendations for them.
We’ve identified specific market segments for them to focus on, and this comes back to what I said about my Six Sigma background. An important aspect of Six Sigma is the control phase, which is the latter part of any project where you basically set up systems and tools for tracking the long-term success of the project. That’s where the sustainable success of the projects comes into play. I’ve been working on this with the client in the last week or two, with a view to structurally tracking and measuring future performance. I want to make sure the result of this project isn’t just a folder that goes in a desk drawer, but instead a way of working through the next several years to drive continued success.
What are some of the trends you’re seeing, and how can they impact our clients?
One of the big themes or trends happening in Europe is the unfavorable base chemical sourcing from Europe, which is throwing up new supply chain challenges. Because of this, along with increasing competition on price coming in from Asia, companies need to be very strong with their customer interface. It’s really important for companies to communicate closely with their customers and give consistently good service to their customers in Europe. For customers to stay loyal to their suppliers, particularly suppliers of raw materials and formulated products, suppliers need to be quite strong on service or they will lose to the competition.
Another issue related to that increased Asian competition involves selling to the optimal markets for your business. Target those markets where it really is possible to differentiate, to do a bit more customization, and where it’s more important to have that strong technical service and support. Involvement in more markets is also key.
A final trend I’ve seen as well is that things are just faster today, so the cycles are shorter. Economics and industry dynamics are driven by events and shocks, so companies need to be quicker to adapt and respond to changing circumstances.
Reach out to Philip at pmarsh@chemquest.com.
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