In response to the increasing digitization of the retail sector, Messe Frankfurt has joined forces with nmedia, an electronic data interchange company, to develop nextrade. Set to launch in the second half of this year, this new platform is a digital B2B marketplace for suppliers and retailers in the home and living consumer goods industry.

Along with placing orders at trade shows in the traditional way, retailers will be able to use this new online platform year-round for ordering products and product lines from their supplier partners.

“Nextrade will be open to all suppliers and retailers regardless of their participation in a Messe Frankfurt show,” said Erdmann Kilian, head of marketing and communications at Messe Frankfurt. “We launched nextrade on the occasion of Ambiente 2019 [held Feb. 8-12] and would like to welcome many of its exhibitors as well as visitors at nextrade in the future.”

To take advantage of nextrade, each supplier simply enters their product details on the marketplace platform inside a “webshop” of their own. Once a retailer has been activated by their supplier, they can use the platform to place centralized, digital orders in each of the webshops, using a single channel rather than placing orders manually with each supplier.

Meanwhile, nmedia has been busy translating the language of suppliers’ and retailers’ IT systems, thus allowing the automated ordering of products and product lines. The company has implemented a fully automated process, generating orders in the retailer’s system and sending them to the supplier’s system. This helps save resources while increasing efficiency for both suppliers and retailers, Kilian added.

To set up nextrade, nmedia will migrate its entire portfolio of 1,000 retailers and 500 suppliers from the EDI platform to the new marketplace. As its sales partner, Messe Frankfurt will acquire new suppliers and retailers wanting to be part of the marketplace.

With digital business models causing massive consolidation in the retail trade, launching a web-based ordering platform such as nextrade to support its exhibitors and retailers year-round makes good business sense for the Frankfurt, Germany-based show organizer, said Detlef Braun, member of the Executive Board of Messe Frankfurt.

“In the future, thanks to our sales and marketing partnership with nmedia, Messe Frankfurt will provide exhibitors and visitors to its consumer goods exhibitions with a further tool to give them a competitive edge in an increasingly tough market environment,” Braun said. “Like our trade fairs, this tool will create a perfect match between supply and demand.”

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