How to become a Colgate-Palmolive supplier (and get into its Supplier Inclusion program)

Colgate-Palmolive spends billions a year on goods and services, from the resins and fragrances that go into Colgate toothpaste and Hill's pet food to the marketing agencies, logistics, IT, and temp labor that keep a $20-billion consumer products company running. A meaningful share of that spend is open to diverse, small, and local businesses through a program the company runs under the name Supplier Inclusion.

Most owners chasing a Colgate contract get the sequence wrong. They cold-email a buyer with a pitch deck before they've done the one thing the procurement team actually checks: registered in the system the buyers search. Here's the order that works.

Start with the name: it's "Supplier Inclusion," not "supplier diversity"

This matters more than it sounds. Colgate-Palmolive brands its program as Supplier Inclusion, and it has kept the program and its broader diversity commitments intact while a long list of peers quietly cut theirs in 2025. The National Legal and Policy Center has publicly called Colgate one of corporate America's last remaining DEI holdouts, and the company has said it will defend the use of diversity criteria in choosing board members. For a diverse supplier, that's a useful signal. The program isn't being wound down. It's a stated part of how Colgate buys.

The program's own framing is plain: help diverse, small, and local businesses access opportunities to compete for long-term partnerships supplying goods and services to Colgate-Palmolive. Note the word "compete." Inclusion gets you considered. It doesn't hand you a contract.

Which certifications Colgate accepts

Colgate's Supplier Inclusion page points to a specific set of certifying bodies. If you hold a current certification from one of these, you fit a recognized classification:

• National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) for minority-owned businesses (MBE), plus regional affiliates such as the NY/NJ Minority Supplier Development Council.
• Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) for women-owned businesses (WBE), plus affiliates like the Women's Business Enterprise Council Metro NY.
• National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) for LGBTQ+-owned businesses.
• Disability:IN for disability-owned businesses.
• WEConnect International for women-owned businesses outside the United States, which matters because Colgate operates in roughly 80 countries.
• U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) classifications for small businesses.

If you don't yet hold one of these, get certified before you register, or register and add the certification as soon as it lands. A claim of "minority-owned" with no third-party certificate behind it carries little weight inside a corporate procurement team. The certificate is what lets a buyer filter for you and trust the classification without doing their own diligence. If you're weighing which one to pursue, our corporate program directory shows which certifications open doors at which companies, so you certify for the buyers you actually want.

How registration actually works: SupplierGateway

Colgate-Palmolive runs its supplier registration through SupplierGateway, a third-party platform at colgatepalmolive.suppliergateway.com. This is the database the procurement team taps when a category manager needs a capability and wants to see which diverse, small, or local suppliers can deliver it. Getting into that database is the on-ramp. Skipping it and emailing a buyer directly usually means your details never make it into the system they search.

When you register, expect to provide:

• Your company profile: legal name, locations, year founded, ownership, and a short description of what you do.
• Your diversity classifications and certificate details: the certifying body, certificate number, and expiration date for each.
• Commodity or category codes: what you actually sell, mapped to the categories Colgate buys. Be precise here. A buyer searching for "label printing" or "third-party logistics" finds you on the strength of these codes.
• Capability and capacity information: enough to show you can serve a company that buys at national and global scale.

Keep the certificate dates current after you register. Certifications from NMSDC, WBENC, and the others expire on a fixed cycle, usually annually, and a lapsed certificate can quietly drop you out of a buyer's filtered search.

What Colgate's procurement team is actually buying

Colgate's Global Procurement group says it looks for suppliers that meet or exceed expectations on quality, service, cost effectiveness, sustainability, and innovation, and that contribute directly to the company's growth strategy. Read that as the bar, not as marketing copy. A diverse certification gets you into the consideration set. A clear, specific answer to "what do you make us better at, and at what cost" is what moves you toward a purchase order.

The spend spans more than the obvious raw materials. Colgate has described its inclusion focus as covering direct and indirect material suppliers, service providers, temporary labor, recruiting and training, marketing agency partners, and consultants. If your business sits in any of those lanes, you're inside the category map, not outside it.

A practical filter before you invest time: can you serve a buyer that operates across dozens of countries and expects consistent quality and documentation? If you're a regional service firm, the realistic entry point is often a U.S. category or a single plant or distribution site, not a global contract on day one. Land there, perform, and expand.

The realistic on-ramp

Registering is necessary. It's rarely sufficient on its own. The suppliers who break through tend to stack a few things:

1. Get and keep a current certification from a body Colgate recognizes. This is the gate.
2. Register on SupplierGateway and complete the profile fully, with accurate commodity codes. A half-finished profile is a profile buyers can't find.
3. Tighten your capability statement so that when a buyer does open your record, you read as a serious vendor for a specific category, not a generalist. Lead with what you supply, who you already supply it to, and your capacity.
4. Build proof through certification networks. NMSDC and WBENC run matchmaker events, business opportunity fairs, and regional programs where corporate members like Colgate actively source. Showing up where the buyers are looking shortens the path considerably. Our guide on how to get into corporate supplier diversity programs walks through working these channels.
5. List your business publicly so buyers researching a category can find you outside Colgate's own portal too. A complete profile in our supplier directory puts your certifications and capabilities in front of corporate buyers actively searching for diverse suppliers.

A note on Tier 2

Large corporations like Colgate often track Tier 2 spend, which is the diverse-supplier spending done by their own prime suppliers. If you can't land a direct (Tier 1) contract yet, becoming a certified subcontractor to one of Colgate's existing prime vendors still counts toward the company's diversity goals, and it's frequently a faster door. When you talk to a prime that already supplies Colgate, ask whether they report Tier 2 diverse spend. If they do, your certification is an asset to them, not just to you.

Before you register, get certified the efficient way

Every step above assumes you hold a current certification that Colgate recognizes. That's the gate, and for most owners it's the slowest part, because each certifying body runs its own application, document list, and renewal cycle. If you're starting from zero or juggling several certifications at once, CertifyAll handles the filing and document compilation across bodies once, so you arrive at Colgate's SupplierGateway with the certificate that actually unlocks the search.

Colgate-Palmolive kept its Supplier Inclusion program when a lot of companies were cutting theirs. That makes it one of the more reliable corporate targets for a diverse business right now. Get certified, register where the buyers look, and show up in the networks where Colgate sources. Then see which other corporate programs accept your certification and register there too, because the work you do to get into one program is mostly reusable for the next.