In the course of my forays into chemical sourcing or searching for data, I have begun to notice something about product entries in the online Sigma-Aldrich catalog. I’m finding that since the acquisition of Sigma Aldrich by Merck KGaA, MilliporeSigma as it is now known, many of the compounds that I find listed say the product has been discontinued. Is it just fortuitous, or is it not? Is the catalog collection being trimmed?
Have I been collecting data? Pffft! Of course not, silly. It’s just the subjective experience of having found few if any Aldrich catalog entries labeled as discontinued over the past few decades. Recently I’m landing on the pages of discontinued products. Hmmm.
Over the many years, buying reagents from Aldrich has saved countless chemist-days in lab productivity. In fact, the availability of their huge collection of chemicals has driven the direction of much research out there based simply on the availability of reagents for purchase.
I blame the MBA’s. This has the smell of overly smart weasels marketing people.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Aldrich was a chemist’s company. The owner was a chemist who had the mindset of helping other chemists. So they made needed reagents and he would scour to find academician’s collections to buy. They had a special huge collection from this, the Alfred Bader collection, of odd and hard-to-find compounds. Sigma bought Aldrich (I think years after others had bought the company from Bader). Now it has been acquired and merged again. Each change moves it away from being a specialty chemicals company toward just being a bulk chemicals seller. I do not know where all of those very special ones went to, but I doubt they keep warehouses full just in case.
Amen. The business model is turning away from “chemists helping chemists”. Inevitable, I suppose. But to over-dramatize, chemists shouldn’t go quietly into that dark night …
What ?
I whole-heartedly agree; the fact they are no longer offering print catalogs and most items of interest are either discontinued or overpriced for limited quantities is disheartening. Their recent GHS labeling is horrendous with cheap packaging. I wish they hadn’t merged….I feel as if my girlfriend cheated on me!
I can relate to your sense of feeling cheated on.