About BioHandel

BioHandel

BioHandel is the largest and leading trade magazine of the German organic industry, published monthly by the bio verlag gmbh in Aschaffenburg. Since its 2002 launch — continuing the "Schrot & Korn Spezial" lineage — the magazine has explained organic food in its depth and shown its readers how to use that knowledge in the daily shop routine and the competition for customers. With the current news and the practice-ready guide pieces, BioHandel is the guide and the coach in one. Its readers are the drivers of organic in Germany: the decision-makers from retail, manufacturing, and the associations — the opinion leaders and multipliers who make them the premium target group for everyone advancing organic. Under editor-in-chief Michael Stahl, the magazine networks the industry across print, digital, and the app.

Overview

The organic industry is the food trade's conviction business: the organic shops, the organic chains, the manufacturers, and the associations — plus the conventional food retailers, the discounters, and the drugstores that have discovered organic. BioHandel addresses this industry's professionals with the trade magazine's program: the sales strategies for organic products, the numbers and facts for the benchmark analysis of retail operations, the best-practice examples from the dealer everyday, the inspiration for the shop design, the insights into the manufacturing companies, and the product knowledge for the customer consulting. The organic news from trade, politics, and agriculture, the in-depth background reportages, the analyses, the trend observations, and the personnel news complete the program.

The magazine's positioning — "Wissen, was die Branche bewegt" (knowing what moves the industry) — names the editorial promise: the deep organic knowledge translated into the shop practice. The readership — the organic shops and chains, the conventional food trade, the organic associations and manufacturers, the discounters and drugstores — is the industry's professional core. The close networking of the media channels — print, digital, app — serves the target group's information and usage behavior. The publisher's motivation — "30 percent organic by 2030," the federal government's target — frames the magazine's mission: advancing organic together.

History

BioHandel's history reaches back through its predecessor: before the 2002 launch under the BioHandel name, the contents appeared under the title "Schrot & Korn Spezial" — the trade supplement of the bio verlag's consumer magazine Schrot & Korn. The 2002 founding as the independent BioHandel created the dedicated trade title: the monthly specialist magazine for the organic trade, published by the Aschaffenburg bio verlag gmbh — the house that also publishes the Schrot & Korn consumer magazine. The Schrot & Korn connection deserves its publishing context. The bio verlag's consumer magazine Schrot & Korn — the organic consumers' magazine distributed through the organic shops — and the BioHandel trade magazine form the publisher's two-sided market: the consumers reading Schrot & Korn in the shops, the shop owners reading BioHandel behind the counter. The "Schrot & Korn Spezial" predecessor — the trade content published under the consumer brand's umbrella before the 2002 BioHandel launch — shows the strategy's origin: the trade journalism growing out of the consumer magazine's industry network. The 35-year networking claim counts this whole lineage: from the Spezial pages through the independent monthly to today's cross-media brand. For the advertisers — the organic manufacturers — the two titles offer the complete funnel: the trade readers who list the products and the consumer readers who buy them.

The organic market's structural shift shapes the magazine's current agenda. The specialist retail — the organic shops that built the industry — now captures only a small single-digit share of organic sales, while the conventional supermarkets, the discounters, and the drugstores sell the bulk of organic products. For BioHandel's core readers — the organic shops and chains — this is the existential question the magazine's best-practice coverage answers: how the owner-managed shop competes against the discounters' organic shelves through the consulting competence, the assortment curation, and the customer relationship. The benchmark analyses — the key figures comparing the retail operations — give the dealers the management tools; the shop-design inspiration gives them the differentiation. The magazine's mission — advancing organic toward the 30-percent target — thus serves two masters: the industry's growth and the specialist trade's survival within it. The digital extension — the biohandel.de portal, the app with its learning courses, product knowledge, and news, the newsletter, the job board, and the academy — built the cross-media brand. The sold circulation of 5,200 copies (ISSN 2194-2099) documents the focused trade reach.

Coverage and Content

The monthly print issue follows the organic trade's agenda. The sales-strategy coverage treats the organic selling: the assortment management, the pricing, the customer approach, and the competition with the conventional trade and the discounters. The benchmark coverage provides the numbers and facts: the key figures for the retail-operation comparison. The best-practice coverage presents the dealer everyday: the successful shops, the shop-design inspiration, and the actionable impulses. The manufacturer coverage opens the factory gates: the insights into the producing companies. The product-knowledge coverage builds the consulting competence: the commodity science for the customer advice. The news coverage follows the industry: the trade, the politics, and the agriculture — plus the background reportages, the analyses, the trend observations, and the personnel.

The cross-media extensions deepen the coverage: the app's learning courses and product knowledge for the shop staff's training, the job board for the industry's personnel market, the academy for the continuing education. The magazine's role — the "Inside-BranchenExperte und Beziehungsknüpfer" (the insider industry expert and relationship builder) for all who trade organic from conviction — names the community function: the know-how for the current and future challenges, the best-practice examples, and the inspiring action impulses.

Organization and Ownership

BioHandel is published by the bio verlag gmbh, Magnolienweg 23, 63741 Aschaffenburg — the specialist publisher for the organic industry that also publishes the Schrot & Korn consumer magazine. The editor-in-chief is Michael Stahl. The publisher's media service (anzeigen@bioverlag.de) serves the advertisers with the cross-media offers: the print magazine, the product placement, the banners, the advertorials, the newsletter, the crossmedia combinations, the app, the job board, and the academy.

Commercially, the magazine follows the B2B trade-press model: subscriptions from the organic industry's professionals — the print annual subscription at 88.28 euros domestic (82.50 plus VAT), the digital subscription, and the print-plus-online combination at 184.58 euros — and advertising from the industry's suppliers: the organic manufacturers, the wholesalers, the shop outfitters, and the service providers. The readership — the decision-makers from retail, manufacturing, and the associations, the opinion leaders and multipliers — is the organic industry's premium target group: everyone advancing organic advertises to the people driving organic.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital home is biohandel.de, the portal carrying the industry news, the magazine content, and the media services. The BioHandel app extends the brand into the mobile and the training: the learning courses for the shop staff, the product knowledge (Waren-Wissen), and the news — with the product-placement advertising in the app's sections. The newsletter delivers the regular briefing to the industry's inboxes; the job board serves the personnel market; the academy provides the continuing-education formats.

The digital strategy is the cross-media networking: the print monthly for the curated trade reading — "Wissen, was die Branche bewegt" — the portal for the daily news, the app for the mobile learning and news, and the job board and academy as the digital services. As the organic industry's leading trade magazine — from the 2002 founding through the organic boom to the "30 percent by 2030" mission — BioHandel operates as the industry's guide and coach: the knowledge, the best practices, and the network — monthly in print, daily on biohandel.de and in the app.