About BM Bau- und Möbelschreiner

BM Bau- und Möbelschreiner

BM — today "BM Innenausbau / Möbel / Bauelemente" — is the monthly trade magazine for the interior-finishing, furniture, and building-components industry, published by the Konradin-Verlag Robert Kohlhammer GmbH in Leinfelden-Echterdingen. The magazine is the industry's meeting place: it delivers the indispensable impulses and practice tips for the business success, showing what really matters and what will matter — the current market trends, the promising business ideas, the innovative products, the efficient production methods, and the user reports and practice examples. Its target group is the investment decision-makers, the owners, and the specialists and managers in the joinery and cabinet-making craft, the interior finishing, and the window construction, in trade and industry. Under editor-in-chief Christian Närdemann, the BM brand stands for the unique cross-media integration of print, online, newsletter, and social media.

Overview

The joinery is the wood craft's entrepreneurial business: the cabinet-makers, the interior fitters, and the window builders — the owner-managed workshops deciding the machine investments, the software purchases, and the business strategies. BM addresses this industry's leadership with the monthly trade magazine's program: in each issue, the furniture and interior finishing, the building components, the materials, the supplied parts, the technology, the vehicle fleets, and the business management. The monthly cover topic — announced on the title page, explored through the specialist contributions and product reports inside — structures the reading: one selected theme in depth per issue.

The BM EDV-Magazin — four times a year in January, March, June, and October — brings the special section on software and IT: the readers updated on the digital developments. The BM Spezial's purchasing reference — the annual "Bauelemente, Komponenten und Zubehör" — is the brand's B2B institution. The joinery's purchasing — the fittings, the hinges, the drawer systems, the lighting, the adhesives — runs through the specialist wholesalers and the manufacturers' direct sales; the annual reference book organizes this supply market: the components categorized, the suppliers listed, the products described. For the workshop buyers, it is the year's procurement companion; for the suppliers, it is the catalog advertising that works all year. The BM EDV-Magazin's quarterly IT sections — January, March, June, October — track the craft's digitalization: the CAD/CAM generations, the ERP integrations, the online configurators, and the digital customer communication. Together, the monthly magazine, the quarterly IT special, and the annual purchasing reference form the joinery's complete information system: the news, the digital, and the buying. The 2024 volume — 13 issues, 1,374 pages total, 73.2 percent editorial — documents the title's substance. The bm-online.de portal — 70,000 visits per month — and the BM TV extend the brand into the digital and the moving image.

History

BM's lineage reaches back to the "Bau + Möbelschreiner" — the monthly issues of 1966 published by the Konradin-Verlag Robert Kohlhammer in Stuttgart — the joinery trade's postwar press. The Konradin publishing house deserves its family-business portrait. The Konradin-Verlag Robert Kohlhammer GmbH — the Kohlhammer family's specialist media company in Leinfelden-Echterdingen near Stuttgart — publishes the trade titles for the craft and industry: the BM for the joinery, the dds (das magazin für möbel und ausbau, since 1901, 53,000 readers per issue) for the same industry's craft side, and the db Deutsche Bauzeitung (since 1867, Germany's oldest specialist journal for architects and civil engineers) for the construction. The publisher Katja Kohlhammer leads the family house. The BM and the dds — the two joinery titles under the one roof — divide the market: the BM as the industry's meeting place for the investment decision-makers, the dds as the craft magazine for the joiners, cabinet-makers, interior fitters, and window builders with its Heft-im-Heft concept. The family's 160-year publishing continuity — from the 1867 Bauzeitung through the 1901 dds to the BM — is the German specialist press's endurance story.

The magazine's development tracked the joinery's transformation: from the craft workshops through the CNC revolution to the current digitalization — the software, the networked machines, and the online marketing. The BM EDV-Magazin — the quarterly IT special — institutionalized the digital coverage; the annual BM Spezial institutionalized the purchasing reference. The cross-media expansion — the bm-online.de portal, the newsletter, the social media, and the BM TV — built the brand's continuous presence between the monthly issues. Through the decades, the title's promise remained: showing what is and what will be really important.

Coverage and Content

Each monthly issue follows the industry's agenda. The furniture and interior-finishing coverage treats the craft's core: the custom furniture, the interior projects, and the design. The building-components coverage addresses the windows, the doors, and the prefabricated elements. The materials coverage treats the wood, the wood-based panels, and the surfaces. The supplied-parts coverage follows the fittings, the hardware, and the components. The technology coverage addresses the machines: the CNC centers, the edge-banding, and the automation. The vehicle-fleet coverage treats the workshop vehicles. The business-management coverage addresses the entrepreneurial leadership: the strategies, the marketing, and the succession.

The monthly cover topic gives each issue its focus: the selected theme explored through the specialist articles and the product reports. The BM EDV-Magazin's software and IT sections update the readers on the digital tools: the CAD/CAM, the ERP, and the online presence. The annual BM Spezial's purchasing reference lists the building components, the components, and the accessories: the buyers' guide. The user reports and practice examples — the workshops' projects, the investments' results — ground the coverage in the craft's reality.

Organization and Ownership

BM is published by the Konradin-Verlag Robert Kohlhammer GmbH in Leinfelden-Echterdingen — the Kohlhammer family's specialist publishing house. The publisher (Herausgeberin) is Katja Kohlhammer. The editor-in-chief is Christian Närdemann; the editorial team includes Regina Adamczak, Heinz Fink, Marc Hildebrand, Miriam Matsche, and Lukas Petersen. The media sales are led by Simone Felk (Leiterin Media Sales).

Commercially, the magazine follows the B2B trade-press model: subscriptions from the industry's professionals — the joinery owners, the interior fitters, the window builders, and the trade and industry managers — and advertising from the industry's suppliers: the machine manufacturers, the material suppliers, the fittings makers, the software houses, and the vehicle providers. The investment decision-maker — the magazine's defined target — deserves the business portrait. The joinery owner deciding the CNC machining center, the interior fitter choosing the CAD software, the window builder investing in the profile machining: these capital decisions — tens or hundreds of thousands of euros — are the magazine's commercial reason: the machine manufacturers, the software houses, and the material suppliers advertising where the buyers read. BM's editorial program serves the pre-investment information need: the technology comparisons, the user reports from the workshops that already invested, the business-management guidance on the financing and the ROI. The twice-yearly BM Marktbefragung — the market survey — gives the advertisers the reader data; the ad copy tests measure the campaigns' impact. The 73.2-percent editorial share — 1,006 of the 1,374 pages in 2024 — documents the journalism's weight against the 26.8-percent advertising: the readers' trust as the advertisers' asset.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital home is bm-online.de, the portal carrying the industry news, the product reports, and the market content — with 70,000 visits per month the industry's digital meeting place. The BM TV extends the brand into video: the machine demonstrations, the company portraits, and the trade-fair reports. The newsletter delivers the regular briefing to the subscribers' inboxes; the social-media channels carry the community conversation.

The digital strategy is the cross-media integration: the print monthly for the curated industry reading — the cover topics, the EDV specials, the annual purchasing reference — the portal for the daily news and the 70,000-visit reach, the BM TV for the moving image, and the newsletter and social media for the continuous connection. As the interior-finishing, furniture, and building-components industry's meeting place — from the 1966 Bau + Möbelschreiner through the monthly BM to the cross-media brand — the magazine remains the joinery's medium: the impulses and practice tips for the business success — monthly in print, daily on bm-online.de.