About Der Handel

Der Handel

Der Handel is the retail trade journal brand of the Frankfurt publishing world: the Zeitschrift that reported on the German retail industry (Handel) for decades — from its origins in the 1972 "Deutsches Fachzeitschriften-Magazin" of the Deutscher Fachverlag (dfv), under the title "Der Handel" since 1991 — and that today continues as a digital brand. At the turn of 2025/2026 the Frankfurt digital agency bitfuel took over dfv's corporate-media business together with the brands Der Handel and Etailment; the print edition of Der Handel was discontinued after the takeover, and the editorial team — Björn Böer and Thomas Rehm moved to bitfuel — was fully oriented toward the online magazine Etailment. In February 2026 bitfuel itself was acquired by the digitalization and AI consultancy SalesTech BidCo GmbH and merged into the salestech Studio in Frankfurt; etailment.de was relaunched in July 2026 with a new design.

Overview

Der Handel today is a retail media brand in digital form. The operating product is the online magazine Etailment (etailment.de) — the e-commerce and retail online magazine that absorbed Der Handel's digital presence back in September 2016, when the publisher merged the online appearances of both titles and derhandel.de began redirecting to etailment.de. The print journal Der Handel — the monthly (later 10, then 6 issues a year) retail trade journal — was put back (zurückgestellt) after the bitfuel takeover at the turn of 2025/2026: the print era ended, the brand continued digitally.

The brand's home is Frankfurt: the Deutscher Fachverlag (dfv) — founded 1946 by Wilhelm Lorch in Stuttgart as "Neuer Fachverlag," renamed on the 1948 move to Frankfurt — the trade-publishing house behind some 90 trade publications including TextilWirtschaft and Lebensmittel Zeitung. The bitfuel agency — cooperating with dfv since 2022 — took over the corporate-media business and the two brands in the strategic realignment; since February 2026 the owner is SalesTech BidCo GmbH, which brought bitfuel and the Bourros Group together in the salestech Studio in Frankfurt. The July 2026 relaunch of etailment.de — new design, revised section structure and navigation — marked the brand's current chapter.

The readership — the retail industry: the decision-makers of stationary and online retail, the e-commerce managers, the industry's service providers — follows the brand into its digital form: the online magazine for the trade (Handel) in all its channels.

History

The 1991 title — the reunification-era adoption — deserves its telling. The journal goes back to the "Deutsche Fachzeitschriften-Magazin" (later "DFZ-Wirtschaftsmagazin"), which from 1972 was enclosed with various publications of the Deutschen Fachverlags: the supplement as the title's ancestor. In 1991 it appeared under the title "Der Handel" — after the Deutscher Fachverlag took over the same-named journal of the East Berlin publisher Die Wirtschaft: the West German trade publisher adopting the East German retail journal's title in the reunification years. The monthly journal (Monatsblatt) thus carried a title with an East Berlin past into the reunified republic's retail landscape — the 1991 title as the bridge between two publishing histories. The title's function — the 1991's — founded the brand: Der Handel as the dfv's retail journal — the name under which the trade's paper would appear for three decades.

The frequency evolved with the market: the monthly appeared ten times a year from 2019 and six times a year from 2021 — the print consolidation of the retail-trade press. The 2016 digital merger — the Etailment union — deserves its telling. In September 2016 the publisher merged the online appearances of both titles: Der Handel — the retail trade journal — and Etailment — the online magazine for e-commerce — would henceforth appear together under etailment.de, with the former derhandel.de address redirecting there. The merger's logic: the stationary trade and the online trade belonged together — the journal of the Handel and the magazine of the Etailment as one portal. The merger's function — the 2016's — anticipated the industry's omnichannel reality: the print journal kept appearing (monthly, then 10x, then 6x a year), but the digital future was the joint portal — the 2016 decision that made etailment.de the brand's digital home a decade before the print's end.

The bitfuel takeover — the 2025/2026 caesura — deserves its telling. At the turn of 2025/2026, in the course of a strategic realignment of the Deutscher Fachverlag, the Frankfurt digital agency bitfuel — which had cooperated with dfv since 2022 — took over the publisher's corporate-media business together with the brands Der Handel and Etailment. The editors Björn Böer and Thomas Rehm moved to bitfuel, which has continued both titles independently since. The print edition of Der Handel was put back after the takeover — the monthly (then 6x-yearly) journal's print era ended — and the editorial team was fully oriented toward the online magazine Etailment. In early February 2026 the digitalization and AI consultancy SalesTech BidCo GmbH acquired bitfuel and brought it together with the likewise acquired Bourros Group in the salestech Studio in Frankfurt: the agency's new home. The takeover's function — the 2025/2026's — moved the brand from the trade publisher to the digital agency: the print journal became the online magazine's heritage — the caesura of Der Handel.

Coverage and Content

The editorial program follows the retail industry's agenda. The e-commerce coverage — the Etailment core — addresses online retail: the platforms, the technologies, the strategies of digital commerce. The stationary-retail coverage — the Handel heritage — addresses the brick-and-mortar trade: the formats, the locations, the customer experience. The industry coverage — the trade (Handel) in all channels — connects the two: the omnichannel reality of modern retail.

The July 2026 relaunch — the new design, the revised Rubrikenstruktur and navigation — restructured the portal for the current retail agenda. The brand's historic coverage — the decades of the print Der Handel as the retail industry's journal — remains the editorial DNA: the trade's topics, the industry's people, the market's developments. The formats' mix — historically the monthly/6x print journal, today the online magazine — defines the brand: the retail trade journal, from the 1972 supplement to the 2026 portal.

Organization and Ownership

Der Handel's brand owner is bitfuel — the Frankfurt digital agency — which took over dfv's corporate-media business and the brands Der Handel and Etailment at the turn of 2025/2026; since February 2026 bitfuel has belonged to the SalesTech BidCo GmbH (the digitalization and AI consultancy), which merged bitfuel and the Bourros Group into the salestech Studio in Frankfurt. The editors Björn Böer and Thomas Rehm moved from dfv to bitfuel with the takeover and continue both titles there.

The historic publisher — the Deutscher Fachverlag GmbH, Frankfurt (founded 1946, the trade-publishing house of the Wilhelm Lorch foundation) — published the journal from the 1991 title adoption through the 2025/2026 realignment. The business model today follows the digital B2B media pattern: the online magazine's advertising and corporate-media business. Detailed current circulation, staffing and revenue figures are not publicly confirmed; the print journal's historic frequencies (monthly, then 10x, then 6x a year) are documented.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital home is etailment.de — the online magazine to which derhandel.de has redirected since September 2016, relaunched in July 2026 with a new design, revised section structure and navigation. The portal carries the retail and e-commerce coverage: the articles, the backgrounds, the industry news of the trade in all its channels.

The digital strategy follows the B2B media logic: the online magazine for the daily news flow — the e-commerce, the retail, the omnichannel — under the historic Der Handel brand and the Etailment title. As the retail trade journal brand — the dfv-founded Zeitschrift (the 1972 origins, the 1991 title, the 2016 digital merger, the 2025/2026 bitfuel takeover, the 2026 SalesTech era) — Der Handel remains the trade's media brand: the print journal's heritage, the online magazine's present, at etailment.de.