About Baustoffmarkt

Baustoffmarkt

BaustoffMarkt — published as Baustoffmarkt — is the leading business magazine for decision-makers in the building-materials trade, "the voice of the building-materials industry." For over 50 years it has accompanied the industry with clear-eyed, well-founded reporting, reaching the heads of the building-materials trade in print and digital. As the official organ of the Bundesverband Deutscher Baustoff-Fachhandel e.V. (BDB), it is connected to more than 90 percent of Germany's organized building-materials retail through the association — plus decision-makers from the tile trade, the DIY and home-improvement markets, and the building-materials industry across the German-speaking region. The magazine appears with RM Handelsmedien of the Cologne-based Rudolf Müller Mediengruppe, which took the title over from the Duisburg publishing house Wohlfarth on 1 January 2017. With 2,461 print copies, around 22,000 monthly online sessions, and a newsletter reaching nearly 5,000 recipients at a 57 percent open rate, it is the trade's concentrated decision-maker medium.

Overview

The building-materials trade is the construction industry's distribution backbone: the dealers who stock, advise, and deliver the materials — from the masonry and roofing through the insulation and drywall to the tiles and the garden assortments — and whose listing decisions determine the manufacturers' market access. BaustoffMarkt addresses this trade's leadership: the owners, managing directors, and buyers of the building-materials dealerships, the purchasing cooperatives, and the industry's sales management. Its program is the business magazine's: the market developments, the company strategies, the product innovations, and the trade's operating questions — the assortment, the logistics, the digitalization, the personnel.

The magazine's institutional anchor is its role as the BDB's official organ: the Federal Association of German Building-Materials Retailers' communication flows through the title, binding the organized trade's companies to the magazine. The editorial mix combines the association matters with the independent business journalism — the market analyses, the company portraits, the product presentations — and the trade-fair coverage (from the BAU to the GaLaBau). The "Produkt des Jahres" (Product of the Year) award, organized around the industry's transformation themes — sustainability and environmental consciousness, premium products, digitalization — the "Bauwende" (building turnaround) — gives the magazine an agenda-setting instrument. The podcast "Handel im Ohr" (Trade in the ear), produced jointly with the sister title BaumarktManager, extends the brand into audio.

History

BaustoffMarkt was founded more than 50 years ago in the publishing house Wohlfarth of Duisburg — the specialist publisher for building technology, building-materials trade, and security technology, led in its second generation by Frank Wohlfarth. The title grew with the building-materials trade's consolidation: the family dealerships joining purchasing cooperatives, the BDB organizing the trade's interests, and the manufacturers' growing dependence on the trade's listing decisions. Through the construction cycles — the booms, the 2000s stagnation, the 2010s recovery, the recent building crisis — the magazine documented the trade's strategies.

The decisive publishing event came on 1 January 2017: the Cologne-based Rudolf Müller Mediengruppe took over the Wohlfarth publishing house's Fachtechnik division — the six media titles baustoffmarkt, baustoffpraxis, schloss+beschlag-markt, bauelement+technik, sicherheitsmagazin, and homesecurity — merging them with the trade-media-focused Siegfried Rohn Verlag (already publishing baumarktmanager, markt in Grün, and Motorist) into the new RM Handelsmedien GmbH & Co. KG, led by Holger Externbrink and Dr. Christoph Müller. The Duisburg location continued as the new unit's branch, and all the division's employees were taken over. In October 2023, the Rudolf Müller Mediengruppe legally consolidated its specialist publishers — including RM Handelsmedien — under the name RM Rudolf Müller Medien GmbH & Co. KG. The family-business continuity — from the Wohlfarth family to the Müller family — preserved the title's publishing tradition.

Coverage and Content

Each issue follows the building-materials trade's business agenda. The market coverage analyzes the trade's economic environment: the construction economy's cycles, the building-materials demand, and the competitive dynamics between the specialist trade, the DIY markets, and the direct distribution. The company coverage portraits the trade's businesses: the dealership strategies, the succession solutions, the cooperative organizations, and the industry's manufacturers. The product coverage presents the innovations relevant to the trade's assortments — the sustainability and environmental materials, the premium renovation products, the digital tools — feeding into the "Produkt des Jahres" award.

The operating coverage addresses the dealerships' daily management: the assortment and listing decisions, the logistics, the digitalization (automation, BIM planning, virtual showrooms), and the personnel questions. The BDB coverage carries the association's matters: the industry-policy positions, the member services, and the trade's collective initiatives. The trade-fair coverage documents the industry's gatherings — the BAU, the GaLaBau, and the trade's own events — with the special advertising packages (the product advertorials, the native articles) connecting the manufacturers to the decision-maker readership. The magazine's market position rests on a structural fact of the building-materials economy: the manufacturers need the trade's shelves, and the trade needs the manufacturers' products — and BaustoffMarkt is the medium where this interdependence is negotiated publicly. The listing decision — whether a dealership stocks a manufacturer's product — is the trade's sovereign act, and the magazine's product coverage, its "Produkt des Jahres" award, and its trade-fair packages all orbit this decision. The BDB's official-organ status gives the title the organized trade's institutional weight: when the association speaks on industry policy — the building regulation, the competition conditions, the sustainability requirements — it speaks through BaustoffMarkt. The Rudolf Müller Mediengruppe's trade-media portfolio — baumarktmanager for the DIY markets, markt in Grün for the garden centers, Motorist for the motor-device trade — positions BaustoffMarkt within the complete retail-marketing coverage: the specialist building-materials trade alongside its neighboring distribution channels, all served from the Cologne publishing house.

Organization and Ownership

BaustoffMarkt is published by RM Handelsmedien GmbH & Co. KG — since October 2023 legally consolidated as RM Rudolf Müller Medien GmbH & Co. KG — the Cologne-based trade-media house of the Rudolf Müller Mediengruppe. The Rudolf Müller Mediengruppe, a family business led by managing partner Dr. Christoph Müller, is one of the leading specialist-information providers for planning, building, real estate, and retail marketing, with a spectrum spanning specialist journals, books, digital platforms, training, congresses, industry forums, and the FeuerTrutz fire-protection trade fair. The group's publishers include Bruderverlag Albert Bruder (carpentry, timber construction), Charles Coleman Verlag (metal construction), FeuerTRUTZ Network (fire protection), and the Immobilien Manager Verlag.

The magazine's institutional partner is the Bundesverband Deutscher Baustoff-Fachhandel e.V. (BDB), whose official organ the title is — the association's communication channel to the organized trade. Commercially, BaustoffMarkt follows the B2B business-press model: subscriptions from the trade's companies, and advertising from the building-materials industry — the manufacturers whose listing depends on the readers' decisions — plus the digital and event revenues. The 2026 media data document the reach: 2,461 print copies; online an average of 22,246 sessions and 34,973 page views per month (September 2024–August 2025); the newsletter averaging 4,979 recipients with a 57.23 percent open rate — the concentrated decision-maker audience.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital home is baustoffmarkt.de (with baustoffmarkt-online.de for the product sections), carrying the news flow — the market news, the company reports, the product presentations in the "Produkte" section — and the magazine's digital services. The newsletter, reaching nearly 5,000 recipients at the exceptional 57 percent open rate, is the trade's regular briefing. The "Handel im Ohr" podcast, produced jointly with BaumarktManager, extends the brand into the audio channel — distributed via the RM websites, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts — bringing the industry's people and challenges to the listeners beyond business hours.

The digital strategy follows the business-press logic: the print magazine for the curated decision-maker reading, the portal for the daily market-news flow, the newsletter for the regular briefing, and the podcast for the conversational industry coverage. After more than 50 years — from the Wohlfarth founding through the 2017 Rudolf Müller takeover to the RM Rudolf Müller Medien consolidation — BaustoffMarkt operates as the building-materials trade's business medium: the voice of the industry, the BDB's official organ, and the decision-makers' information source — in print, online, and audio.