Early Days
In January 1998, our current managing director Nicolaus Gedat founded nmedia
GmbH. Being one amongst thousands of start-up companies, our aim was to seize the
opportunities of a further emerging internet in order to bring new B2B services to
brands and retailers.
The objective then was and always is to offer our customers facilitations and
efficiency enhancements through electronic communication, paying particular
attention to market players in Dining, Living and Giving.
EDI Clearing Center
It quickly became clear to us that the key to success would be to link old economies
with new ones. Minority shares of EK/servicegroup eG and invenido GmbH (wmf
group, Villeroy and Boch, Leonardo) allowed us to continue on this path. We first
concentrated on interconnecting the ERP systems of brands and retailers, thus
establishing an EDI clearing center. With more than 1,000 connected retailers / trade
organizations and hundreds of suppliers in over 20 countries, we have become a key
player in the industry. You won't find any business model between supplier and
retailer that we cannot ameliorate through our EDI services (automated exchange of
orders, sales data, invoices, etc.).
B2B Marketplace
NEXTRADE is the next logical step in our evolvement. Until now, suppliers and
retailers could exchange documents through our clearing center only by using EDI
technology. With NEXTRADE, all market participants have an instrument at hand to
interconnect with their trade partners.NEXTRADE constitutes an online B2B marketplace which enables all market players to exchange data on products, stock information, transaction data, etc., 24/7, all through our online platform.
To implement NEXTRADE and to place it on the market, we chose the partner with
the best prerequisites for that path forward: Messe Frankfurt. One could label
NEXTRADE as a virtual trade fair, in the case of the Ambiente (biggest consumer
goods fair): a perennial Ambiente. Together with Messe Frankfurt and their
international network, we will roll out NEXTRADE in 178 countries and thus globally.
Messe Frankfurt, as well as EK/servicegroup eG and invenido, have acquired a
minority shareholding of nmedia GmbH.