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CJ Chemical

CJ Chemicals: Redefining Industry Benchmarks through Exemplary Customer Service

It would be quite obvious to state that customer service must be at the heart of any business. The key to flourishing and furthering any business is listening to the customer’s concerns and needs with patience and empathy, and genuinely caring about efficiently finding a solution to suit their needs.

Excellent customer service is the number one job in any company! It is the personality of the company and the reason customers come back. Without customers, there is no company!” – Connie Edler

As rightfully highlighted in the quote above, the number one job in any company is to provide excellent customer service, and CJ Chemicals is a company that functions on the exact same foundation of values.

Founded in the year 2010, with strong roots in the Midwest, CJ Chemicals is redefining the industry standards for excellent customer service. The company has an extensive experience of regularly working with Fortune 100 and 500 firms, as well as a large variety of medium to small businesses across North America.

Being nationally certified by both the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) as a Women-Owned Business, CJ Chemicals guarantees consistent high standard of personalized services.

CJ Chemicals is the Midwest’s premiere women-owned chemical distributor and is quickly expanding across the United States as well as exporting across the globe. As a top choice of some of the largest domestic and import suppliers and customers in the chemical industry, the company utilizes decades of experience, a broad chemical repository of more than 350 different chemicals and determined resourcefulness in building one of the best reputations for quality, integrity, and service in the industry.

Delivering Exemplary Services

What sets CJ Chemicals apart from its competitors is its commitment to outstanding customer service. The company develops strong partnerships with both its customers and provides them with the highest quality products at competitive prices, with one of the fastest turnaround times in the industry.

CJ Chemicals has also established long-term partnerships with its suppliers both domestically and overseas. It is a member of the National Association of Chemicals Distributors, which adheres to strict standards for responsible distribution. The company’s mission statement is to be the safest, best served, most efficient, and on-time chemical distributor in the country.

An Ambitious Leader

Serving as President, Catherine Lee is a 34-year veteran in the chemical business. She brings an impressive educational and professional background to CJ Chemicals. Cathy is an ambitious entrepreneur who is constantly driving her business towards better service and greater success.

She is known as one of the best in the business in customer relations, competitive pricing, and reliable service. She values her relationships with both her suppliers and customers and views them all as partnerships. CJ Chemicals has been named one of the 50 fastest-growing women-owned companies in the country in 2018 and 2019. In 2021, the it was also recognized as one of the fastest growing companies.

When asked about what advice she’d impart to the budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the chemical industry, Cathy had these two lessons:

“Relationships are key. Build strong relationships with suppliers and customers.”

“Establish good credit and make sure you have a good banking firm by your side.”

Overcoming Challenges

When asked about how the company faced the initial challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Catherine said, “Since we are in the chemical industry, many of the products we sell were in high demand; the first step was securing products such as isopropyl alcohol and Ethanol, which are the main ingredients in the hand sanitizer.”

“Many of the raw materials went on allocation because of the high demand. CJ Chemicals procurement team secured as much product as we possibly could to keep supplying to our customers. On the reverse side, since we were selling our customers their raw material for the hand sanitizer, we decided to start selling their hand sanitizer, which worked out very well for us. CJ Chemicals has established many new relationships, and we have become the diverse supplier, as well as the diverse vendor for many in our industry.”

“Secondly, we hired more staff to aid in the surplus of orders and help with the logistics. We hired a full-time logistics team to accommodate all of the hurdles with logistics these days. Having strong relationships with our suppliers and reliable carriers is how we are able to continue to get our customer’s orders to them.” Cathy added.

Leveraging Technology

Upon being asked about her opinion on why the adoption of modern technologies is necessary for the chemical industry, Cathy said, “The pandemic made it impossible for face-to-face interactions. Many of our new/current customers we have never met in person. Zoom is essential to make the relationships last both with customers, suppliers, and staff.”

“With hiring new staff, having constant communication with them is essential, we utilized platforms such as Zoom for ‘face-to-face’ interactions and will continue to do so.. WhatsApp was also extremely beneficial to help keep everyone in the company informed, especially when a new opportunity arose.”

The Way Ahead

Talking about the future prospects for scaling the company’s operations and offerings, Cathy expressed, “We plan to expand into importing and exporting more products. Inventories have been very tight for many products due to covid, the several natural disasters we’ve had, and other unexpected shutdowns. Being able to import and export has given us much better resources.”