What chemicals do all plating shops have in common?

A. Hi Doug. I doubt that there is any chemical that all plating shops use, but some very common ones would be alkaline cleaners and acid dips. As in any other industry, the general needs are obviously already met and you will need to deliver some advantages to wrest away that business.

Oftentimes the chemicals are somewhat linked together -- a supplier of plating chemistry for example may push plating shops towards using their proprietary cleaning &prep processes, or a metallizing process for plastic pretreatment may effectively require a single vendor for 3 or 4 steps in the process ... so private labeling to plating process suppliers or distributors might be easier.

Another possibility might be wastewater treatment chemicals, as most shops use them.

This forum is for technical discussion rather than acquiring business, so the discussion must be kept generic. Good luck.

Regards,