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Search a technical catalog of plastics grades, compare them on real property data, and send a request without leaving the site. Suppliers publish into that same catalog, price it, and work the requests that come back.

Quickstart

Sign in, find your first material, and send your first request.

Integrations

The Outlook Add-in, Microsoft 365 Mail, and Herman on your own website.

Support

Common questions, and what the platform does and does not do.
The site you sign in to may carry a supplier’s own branding instead of the plastics.com name. It is the same product with a different brand applied, and everything in these docs applies either way.

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What you can do depends on your organization

Every account belongs to an organization, and that organization is either buying or selling (merchant). Everyone gets the catalog, projects, quotes, and the assistant. The merchant workspace and the Integrations page are role-gated, so a user without a merchant role who opens either one is redirected away.
  • Explore Materials. Filter by polymer family, manufacturer, application, process method, certification, flame rating, color, and property ranges. Branded storefronts call this Product Catalog.
  • Compare and find alternatives. Put grades side by side on their property values, units, and test conditions, or ask for substitutes for a grade you already use.
  • Projects. A shared workspace where you collect materials for a job and invite teammates, each with their own level of access to that project.
  • Request a quote. Submit an RFQ with supporting files attached, then accept it, reject it, message the supplier about it, or reorder from it later. Orders lists them all.
Roles are member and advisor-admin in a buying organization, merchant-member and merchant-admin in a selling organization; some merchant actions are admin-only. See Account Setup.

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Herman, the assistant

Herman AI, or just Herman, is the assistant built into plastics.com. Describe what you need in plain language, and Herman searches the catalog, explains properties, suggests alternatives, reads datasheets, and shows you what it drew on. Typing / offers five shortcuts: find, datasheet, alternatives, compare, and spec. Answers arrive with actions attached, so you can add a grade to a project or a comparison, or start a quote request, straight from the reply. Merchants control two things that genuinely change Herman’s answers: which discovery tools buyers get (comparison, alternatives, datasheet analysis, image upload), and whether Herman answers only from your organization’s own uploaded knowledge instead of the wider platform knowledge base.