Ten years: many or few? It depends, of course. So let's consider the "top five" companies with the highest capitalization listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2007 the ranking consisted of, in order, Exxon, PetroChina, Walmart, China Mobile and Procter & Gamble. In 2017 the situation had changed radically: first Apple, followed by Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.

Here actually a period of ten years can be considered really huge. The transition from 2007 to 2017 seems to have marked an epochal transition: the decline of the "real" world and the affirmation of the "virtual" one. The big names of digital are competing for the title of richer societies. It is as if the market were "dematerialized": today those who bet on chips and data are the winner. Attention, however: it is a rule that is always valid, even when your core business is linked to the most traditional economy, such as those committed in the sale of physical goods.

Digitalization therefore concerns all companies: any size they have and any activity they carry out. It is opening up a probably unbridgeable gap between those who made the jump in the "new world" and those who, for fear or lack of knowledge, continue undaunted to remain anchored to the rules of the "old", opening little or - perhaps even worse - too slowly .

PlasticFinder, the first European marketplace dedicated to plastics, was born and grew up keeping in mind what it means to be on the market today. What it offers is a smart service, a complete service of SPD (Sales and Procurement Digitalization) in the field of B2B e-commerce. The goal is to develop the business every day to offer an increasingly complete service to its customers.

"PlasticFinder is growing exponentially, both as a turnover and as offered services - explains Stefano Chiaramondia, co-founder and president of the Milanese company - At the basic service for which the portal was created, through which the operators trade inventories, spot offers, "near to prime", we have added a new formula, that is the direct sale of commodities (PVC, PE, plasticizers) acquired by PlasticFinder directly from large world producers”.

The next step, realized thanks to the infinite possibilities offered by digital technology, was to offer producers, compounders and distributors the opportunity to open their own flagship store on the platform, through which they can offer their products online. "In this way - adds Chiaramondia - we make our expertise in software developers for digitizing and integrating sales processes in the web network available to the rubber-plastic sector".

A nice news for PlasticFinder, which demonstrates once more how digital technology today allows, and even imposes, a continuous development of its business.