About PBS Report

PBS Report

PBS Report is the monthly German trade journal for paper, office supplies and stationery (PBS), published in Frankfurt am Main by the Agenda Verlag Zarbock Media GmbH & Co. KG (Sontraer Straße 6, 60386 Frankfurt). In its 56th volume year in 2023 — founded around 1967 — it is the PBS branch's established monthly: the trade journal for the industry and the specialist retail of paper, office and stationery products. The managing director is Dipl.-Ing. Ralf Zarbock; the editor-in-chief (V.i.S.d.P.) Pietro Giarrizzo. The single issue costs 11 euros, the annual subscription 109 euros. The sister titles from the same house: Schreibkultur and Office Easy.

Overview

PBS Report is a German-language monthly B2B trade journal for the paper, office-supplies and stationery industry, published in Frankfurt am Main. The publisher is the Agenda Verlag Zarbock Media GmbH & Co. KG (Sontraer Straße 6, 60386 Frankfurt am Main; tel. 069/420903-0; verlag@zarbock.de); the printing by the Druck- und Verlagshaus Zarbock GmbH & Co. KG at the same address. The appearance: monthly, with the reservation of merging individual issues into double issues. The prices: the single issue outside the subscription 11 euros including VAT plus shipping; the annual subscription 109 euros including VAT including postage and shipping. The readers: the PBS industry and trade — the manufacturers of paper, office and stationery products, the specialist retailers, the department stores' PBS departments, the mail-order and online traders. The manufacturers — the writing-instrument producers, the paper mills' fine-paper divisions, the office-technology makers — read the journal for the trade's news. The specialist retailers — the stationers, the office-supply dealers, the school-outfitters — read it for the industry's news: the new products, the conditions, the trends. The department stores' PBS departments and the mail-order traders — the generalists with the PBS assortments — read it for the category's developments. The programme: the industry and trade news, the digital business, the office supplies and technology, the school, leisure, papeterie and greeting cards. The monthly rhythm gives the branch its common reading: the industry's month in the journal, the trade's month prepared. The redaction: Pietro Giarrizzo (V.i.S.d.P.; trade/industry, digital business, office supplies and technology), Sabine Baumstark (school, leisure, papeterie, greeting cards), Nadine Vosseler (advertising disposition and reader service), Armin Schaum (media consulting).

History

The PBS Report's 56th volume year in 2023 dates the founding to around 1967: the monthly for the paper, office-supplies and stationery branch in the Federal Republic's economic-miracle decades. The Zarbock house — the Agenda Verlag Zarbock Media and the Druck- und Verlagshaus Zarbock, both at the Sontraer Straße 6 in Frankfurt — is the family publishing and printing house: the publisher and the printer under one roof, the managing director Dipl.-Ing. Ralf Zarbock. The Frankfurt publishing address — the Sontraer Straße in the city's east — places the PBS journal at the German publishing metropolis: the book-fair city that also hosts the Paperworld. The journal's history is the PBS branch's trade-press history: the industry's consolidation — the manufacturers merging, the specialist retail shrinking, the online trade rising — the Paperworld Frankfurt as the international leading fair, the Soennecken cooperative as the trade's organisation. The advertising price list No. 52 of 1 November 2021 documents the established B2B operation. The sister titles extend the house's PBS publishing: Schreibkultur — the writing-culture magazine — and Office Easy — the office title. The branch's crisis years — the 2020–2021 Corona collapse with the 2-billion-euro revenue break-in, the paper submarket's 14-percent minus — are the journal's reporting reality: the trade journal accompanying the branch through the transformation. The Corona years hit the PBS branch's foundations: the closed schools, the home offices without the office supplies, the deserted city centres — the stationers' frequency collapse. The journal reported the figures: the Marketmedia24 branch reports' scenarios to 2028, the online trade's inexorable rise, the specialist retail's hybrid repositioning. The transformation's winners and losers — the distance trade's boom, the city-centre retail's struggle — are the monthly's ongoing story: the branch reinventing itself, issue by issue.

Coverage and Content

The journal's programme is the PBS value chain. The trade/industry coverage (Giarrizzo): the manufacturers' news — the new collections, the product innovations — the trade's developments — the specialist retail, the cooperatives, the online traders — and the digital business — the e-commerce, the digitalisation of the branch. The school/leisure/papeterie/greeting-cards coverage (Baumstark): the school business — the enrolment seasons, the school-product trends — the leisure — the creative occupation, the drawing and painting — the papeterie — the fine papers, the writing instruments — and the greeting cards — the seasonal business. The product presentations: the new products from the industry — the writing instruments, the notebooks, the office technology. The fair reports: the Paperworld Frankfurt — the branch's international meeting point — and the Insights-X. The market data: the Marketmedia24 branch reports — the 2-billion-euro Corona break-in, the online trade's rise to nearly 29 percent market share by 2030 — the figures that the journal reports. The journal's journalism is the B2B trade press's: the industry's news, the trade's service, the products' presentation.

Organization and Ownership

PBS Report is published by the Agenda Verlag Zarbock Media GmbH & Co. KG in Frankfurt am Main (Sontraer Straße 6, 60386 Frankfurt; verlag@zarbock.de). The managing director is Dipl.-Ing. Ralf Zarbock. The editor-in-chief (V.i.S.d.P.) is Pietro Giarrizzo (trade/industry, digital business, office supplies and technology; pietro.giarrizzo@zarbock.de); the editors Sabine Baumstark (school, leisure, papeterie, greeting cards) and Nadine Vosseler (advertising disposition and reader service); the media consulting Armin Schaum. The printing by the Druck- und Verlagshaus Zarbock GmbH & Co. KG (team@zarbock.de) — the house's own printing house. The commercial model is the trade journal's: the subscriptions — 109 euros annually — the single-issue sales, the PBS industry's advertising via the price list No. 52, and the sister titles Schreibkultur and Office Easy as the portfolio. The 109-euro subscription is the B2B journal's price: the industry and trade paying for the branch's news. The price list No. 52 — the 1 November 2021 tariff — structures the advertising business: the formats, the prices, the discounts. The sister titles — Schreibkultur's writing culture, Office Easy's office world — extend the house's PBS portfolio: the three journals covering the branch's segments. The printing house under the same roof — the Druck- und Verlagshaus Zarbock — is the vertical integration: the publisher printing its own journals. The court of jurisdiction and place of performance is Frankfurt am Main. Detailed circulation figures are not publicly confirmed in the sources available.

Digital Presence

The journal's website is pbsreport.de — the online portal with the current issue's excerpts, the subscriptions, the media data. The Yumpu flipbook archive — the January/February 2023 issue browsable page by page — shows the digital edition. The Paperworld's branch book lists the journal among the Frankfurt specialist journals: "PBS Report / Schreibkultur / Office Easy." In the German PBS trade-press landscape PBS Report occupies the monthly-journal pole: the Zarbock house's 56-volume-year monthly for the paper, office-supplies and stationery branch — the industry's news, the trade's service, the school and papeterie coverage — from the Sontraer Straße to the branch's value chain, monthly in print, with the digital excerpts online. The 56 volume years — 1967 to 2023 — span the branch's modern history: the economic-miracle stationers, the 1970s' school business, the 1980s' office technology, the 1990s' reunification boom, the 2000s' online disruption, the 2010s' consolidation, the 2020s' Corona collapse and digital transformation. Through each decade the monthly reported: the industry's products, the trade's structures, the branch's figures — the PBS branch's memory in the Zarbock house's journal.