E-commerce development at Tehran Chemie

Tehran Chemie worked in a market that was both traditional and crowded. There were many competitors and the routes all looked alike: the same suppliers, the same intermediaries, the same channels.

Two questions were open, and both were commercial rather than technical.

Which supplier is the right one? Supplier choice in this market was habit, not analysis — based on an old relationship and on availability, not on a criterion anyone could defend.

How do you reach the end user? Several layers of intermediaries sat between the company and the person who actually used the product. The company did not know what its buyer wanted; it only knew what the distributor had ordered.

The organisation was traditional. Its decision-making structure was built for known routes; a new route had neither a budget line nor a place on the chart.

Head of e-commerce development, from 2020 to 2025.

My job was not to build a website. It was to read the company's commercial route, show where it could not be defended, and propose an alternative the organisation could actually carry out. Technical and IT knowledge was the instrument, not the subject.

I did not have a team reporting to me; my work ran across the company. I worked with most units at Tehran Chemie and brought proposals into each of them — far enough into the business that it reached product design itself: the QR code on the product was my addition.

I studied the traditional market — who sells to whom, where the margin stays, and which link adds no value.

I studied the online market and the platforms already operating — which ones have real buyers and which are only shop windows.

I mapped how decisions were made inside the company. I understood later that this was the most important step: a sound strategy that meets the wrong decision path is never carried out.

I reviewed marketing — which channel the budget went to, and what that channel returned.

I presented several options rather than one, each with its cost and its risk, so the choice stayed with management.

I revised the organisational chart so that the new route had an owner.

The company's commercial approach changed in three places — as at handover.

Supplier selection moved from relationship and habit to a criterion that could be defended.

The channel mix changed; reaching the end user went from an aspiration to a defined route.

Budget. Inside a traditional organisation I was able to define an independent budget line for the projects on the new route. That mattered more than any strategy on paper.

Under the same route, a pharmaceutical reference base was built which, at handover, held more than 8,000 drug entries (generic and brand) and more than 7,000 disease entries.