After 50 years as a polymer engineer and a plastics industry veteran and three decades running plastics internet sites, Greg Koski is retiring.
Koski is selling the domain name plastics.com and other assets in an upcoming auction.
After graduating from University of Massachusetts Lowell in 1976, Koski worked for molding companies in structural foam, gaining the experience to eventually start his own molding company. He went on to own two molding companies and a compounding company.
While running his compounding company in 1994, Koski's venture capital partner "ran out of money," leaving Koski with "nothing to do," he told Plastics News at NPE2024.
"You can only rewrite your business plan so many times," Koski said. "I didn't have anything to sell because our capacity was sold out. So I started playing around on the internet."
In the mid-1990s, there wasn't a lot of plastics marketing on the internet. Seeing an opportunity, he decided to found his own plastics marketing company, amicably parting ways with his former partner, who took over the compounding plant.
"I kept the office and the office people," he said. "I walked in and said, 'You're now a web marketing company.'"
It started out with clients in venture capital and plastics. Koski bought his first plastics-related domain name, polylinks.com. In 2000, during the "dot-com bust," Koski bought the domain name polymers.com and switched strictly to plastics marketing.
Polymers.com was a web portal for plastics engineers, Koski said, featuring forums, press releases and other resources.
Later he switched the domain yet again, to plastics.com, which "brought in all the plastics web development we ever wanted," he said. Plastics.com was one of the first websites to sell search engine-optimized content marketing, Koski said.
In 2019, after running the website for nearly two decades, Koski received a medical diagnosis that required all of his attention.
Koski had stage five cancer, including a brain tumor, 30 tumors in his lungs and cancer in much of his liver. "Every organ in my body had cancer," he said. "I had no symptoms until I had a dry spot in my eye."
Needless to say, plastics.com "was no longer my highest priority," he added. Now, 100 percent cancer-free after a chemotherapy infusion, among other treatments, Koski decided "it's time to relax."
Although the website went dormant while Koski underwent treatment, Wayne Pelletier, Koski's stepson and web developer, helped to course correct and saved the website.
"Now that it's stable, we're looking to transition some of the assets," Pelletier said. "Even though there was a dormant spell when he was recovering … it's been historically such a strong digital asset."
Plastics.com has a diverse global audience and as attracted as many as 40,000 unique monthly visitors. Koski will also sell other domain names that he has acquired, including polymers.com.