For most of my career as an office administrator, I vetted chemical suppliers the same way I vetted any vendor: I called them, asked for a price sheet, requested samples, and checked a couple of references. That process shows you what a supplier wants you to see.
It doesn't tell you whether they'll still exist next year. Whether their leadership is paying attention to compliance. Whether their invoicing will survive an audit.
That changed in 2023, when a supplier we'd used for two years—nice people, competitive prices—got acquired. Contracts changed. My rep left. Delivery windows stretched from three weeks to six. And our finance team spent three months chasing reissued invoices. Nobody at that company could explain what was happening. They just said "it's being handled."
I stopped vetting suppliers by handshake after that. I started comparing what I now think of as the document versus the handshake: what a supplier's official filings and governance structure say, versus what the sales rep tells you in a call. The gap between the two is where the truth hides.
The Financial Dimension: The 10-K Test
The first thing I compare is financial structure.
For public companies, this is straightforward. When we evaluated Eastman Chemical for construction-grade materials—coatings, adhesives, and sealants—I pulled their 2024 Form 10-K. I don't have the exact figure in front of me, but net sales were on the order of $9.2 billion for 2024. Don't hold me to that number; verify it at the source if you're quoting it anywhere official. But the scale is right, and the scale tells you things a sales pitch can't: the company has diversified revenue, audited reporting, and presumably the capacity to ride out supply-side disruptions.
Now, a 10-K is not a quality certificate. It's a baseline. It tells you the company is solvent enough to be worth your time. It does not tell you whether their customer service team returns emails. I've dealt with large suppliers that were financially stable and operationally mediocre.
But compare that to the alternative: a small chemical distributor with friendly reps and appealing pricing. When I asked one such distributor for financial documentation, the best they could provide was a bank reference letter. That is not the same as an audited financial statement. And when their upstream supplier declared force majeure in early 2024, there was no contingency plan. We were left scrambling for an alternative source at short notice.
To be fair, small suppliers are sometimes the right call. But the decision should be made knowing what you don't know. The 10-K test is really a transparency test. The document is the floor.
Governance: Why the Board of Directors Matters to a Buyer
I used to think a company's board was an investor concern, not a customer concern. I don't think that anymore.
Seeing a mid-sized supplier's leadership change hands twice in one year changed my view. Their product focus shifted because new leadership had different priorities. We weren't consulted; we were informed. A functioning board doesn't prevent every strategic shift, but it adds a layer of accountability that informal ownership structures simply don't have.
Eastman Chemical's board of directors, for instance, is disclosed in their proxy filings. You can see who sits on it, what their backgrounds are, how they're compensated, and which committees oversee audit and compliance. That visibility matters. When a board with that profile approves a strategic decision, there's a paper trail. Votes, minutes, records. That's not bureaucracy for its own sake—it's predictability. I can plan purchasing around it.
With private suppliers, governance is invisible. The owner might be an excellent chemist and a mediocre succession planner. If something happens to them, who maintains compliance? Who approves new product lines? With a public company, those questions have documented answers.
Granted, public companies face their own pressures—shareholder expectations, quarterly earnings, stock-based incentives. I've seen those pressures lead to short-term decisions that weren't in customers' long-term interest. But at least the structure is visible. You can see how decisions get made and by whom.
Operational Efficiency: The Surprising Comparison
This is the dimension that upended my assumptions.
I expected a large chemical manufacturer to be bureaucratic and slow. It turns out that's only half right. Eastman's digital purchasing and invoicing systems were, honestly, more efficient than the smaller suppliers we'd used. Purchase orders went through their portal without the email back-and-forth I'd accepted as normal. Invoices arrived in formats our accounting system could ingest directly. We'd been spending hours per order reconciling manual invoices; that work simply disappeared.
Smaller suppliers often take pride in flexibility—which often means manual processes. One supplier in 2024 sent us invoices in four different formats over the course of the year. We kept a spreadsheet just to track which format we'd received last time. That's not agility; that's inconsistency.
That said, the larger company's systems had a real learning curve. Their portal required setup, approval chains, and specific accounts-payable configurations. It took about four weeks—or rather, closer to six with our own internal delays—to get everything working. The small suppliers? We could call, email a PO, and be done by the afternoon.
So the real comparison isn't "big is efficient, small is flexible." It's that large manufacturers invest in systemic efficiency, while small suppliers offer transactional flexibility. If you order once, flexibility wins. If you order regularly, systems win.
When to Choose Which
If you're weighing a major chemical manufacturer against a smaller distributor, here's how I've learned to think about it:
Choose the larger, document-backed manufacturer when:
- You need consistent product quality over a multi-year horizon
- Supply chain reliability matters more than the lowest quote
- Your finance department requires proper documentation and audit trails
- You're buying standard materials—like construction-grade coatings, adhesives, or sealants—where specification stability is key
Choose a smaller supplier when:
- You need a custom formulation that a large manufacturer won't bother with
- You need a one-time or very low-volume order
- Speed of response matters more than institutional stability
One caveat: smaller suppliers aren't inherently less reliable. I've worked with some that ran rings around larger companies. But with the smaller ones, you're taking an information risk—you don't know what you don't know. The smart move is to ask for the same kind of documentation a public company would produce: financials, compliance records, ownership structure. See whether the supplier can provide them. Some can. Some genuinely can't.
What I'd Tell a Buyer Starting From Scratch
Looking back, I should have adopted this two-track vetting process years ago. At the time, I thought asking for financial documents would insult suppliers—like I didn't trust them. The reality is the opposite. Strong suppliers, especially public manufacturers, publish these documents precisely so customers and partners can review them. The good ones expect due diligence; the weak ones are threatened by it.
We didn't have a formal supplier due-diligence process at our company until 2023. That gap cost us during the acquisition mess. The third time we had a supplier crisis, I finally built a documentation checklist. Should have done it after the first time. It's not complicated: legal entity name, registration number, audited or reviewed financials, ownership structure, compliance certifications. If a supplier can't provide those, you proceed at your own risk—with your eyes open.
A final thought. Supplier vetting isn't about finding the biggest name or the best-known brand. For our construction materials spend, Eastman Chemical has worked well, in no small part because I could verify their financial position before committing and track it over time through public filings. But I'd hold any supplier—large or small—to the same standard. Documents tell you what a relationship can't: whether the company behind the sales pitch is actually stable, accountable, and transparent.
