About trend

trend

trend, stylised in all lowercase, is an Austrian business magazine headquartered in Vienna and published by Verlagsgruppe News, now VGN Medien Holding. It is one of the oldest business publications in Austria and is described as the country's largest business magazine by circulation in the batch record for this directory, with an official website at trend.at and the motto “Wir bewegen Wirtschaft” — we move the economy. Founded by Oscar Bronner at the end of the 1960s, it was the first independent business magazine in Austria. For most of its life it appeared monthly; in January 2016, after merging with its sister magazine Format, it switched to weekly publication, the frequency it retains. Its readers are senior executives, entrepreneurs and decision-makers, and, like its sister title profil, it belongs to the generation of Austrian magazines that pioneered investigative journalism in the country. This profile presents the verified record, including a necessary correction on the founding year.

Founding: 1969 or 1970?

Sources differ by one year, and the difference should be explained rather than hidden. Reference works on trend itself give its founding as 1969. Studies of the Austrian business press record that a special issue of only 500 copies, distributed free, was launched at the end of 1969, and the first regular issue, with a print run of 1,000 copies, appeared in January 1970. Oscar Bronner's biographies often date both trend and profil to 1970 for simplicity. The most precise verified account is therefore: founded by Oscar Bronner in Vienna in 1969, with its first issue in January 1970. Bronner, born in 1943, raised the money by mortgaging his flat, with Karl Schwarzenberg acting as guarantor for part of the capital. The launch coincided with a change in Austria's political and economic climate, including the Social Democrats' election victory under Bruno Kreisky in 1970 and the beginning of the Kreisky era. A survey a year later found about 160,000 regular readers, more than half of them grammar-school graduates — evidence that the new business monthly had found Austria's emerging managerial and educated readership.

The first independent business magazine

trend is described as the first independent business magazine in Austria and the first general special-interest journal focused on the economy. Before it, Austrian business publications existed, but none was considered truly independent; the press was still strongly shaped by political parties and interest associations. Bronner's intention had originally been a general news magazine like Der Spiegel, but a business magazine was cheaper to launch, and trend's success enabled profil within a year. Both titles targeted Austria's intelligentsia and introduced a new kind of journalism — well-researched, critical articles on subjects that had not previously been questioned — which later became known as investigative journalism in Austria. That origin gives trend a significance beyond business coverage: it is one of the founding titles of modern, independent Austrian magazine journalism.

Sale to the News group and monthly decades

In 1974 trend was sold to the Verlagsgruppe News. Bronner sold his majority stakes in trend and profil that year and moved to New York. Under the News group — later the Fellner brothers' group and then VGN — trend was published monthly, in a format of 210 by 280 millimetres, for more than four decades, from the mid-1970s until 2015. It targets senior executives, entrepreneurs and decision-makers. Its content, as described in the batch record and reference sources, covers economic developments, company leaders, investment, careers and culture. Among its recurring features, reference works note that it publishes a list of Best Workplaces in Austria. Monthly publication suited long-form business reporting: company portraits, management trends, economic policy analysis and rankings could be prepared in depth rather than to a weekly news cycle.

Merger with Format and the move to weekly publication

In December 2015 trend merged with its sister magazine Format. Format had been founded in 1998 within the Fellner brothers' News group as a news magazine and later became a business magazine; its independent life ended with the merger. On 22 January 2016 the combined trend switched to weekly publication. That change — monthly from 1974 to 2015, weekly from 2016 — is the clearest structural break in the magazine's modern history. A weekly business magazine competes more directly with the business pages of daily newspapers and with digital news, offering faster commentary on markets, companies and economic policy, while retaining magazine features and rankings. The batch record describes trend, following the merger, as Austria's largest business magazine by circulation, published weekly in Vienna by VGN Medien Holding. This profile reports that description as the directory record; no current audited circulation figure is independently verified in the sources consulted.

Circulation history

Historical circulation figures are documented at several points. trend had a circulation of about 72,000 copies in the mid-1980s. As a monthly it sold 68,000 copies in 2003, and its circulation was 50,000 copies in 2007. It rose in one measure to 60,067 copies in 2010, then decreased to 47,248 copies in the first half of 2013. Studies of the Austrian business press add market context: trend and Gewinn exchanged leading positions in the 1990s — Gewinn's reach and trend's reach were both around five to seven percent in that decade — and from 2001 both faced continuous reader losses, with reach around 5.3 percent in 2005 in one study. Explanations offered include low economic growth, unemployment, daily quality newspapers expanding their business coverage with weekly supplements, and the general ageing of print readerships. No post-merger weekly circulation figure is asserted here, because the sources consulted do not provide a verified, dated one.

Editorial character and audience

trend addresses Austria's business elite: senior executives, entrepreneurs and decision-makers, as well as, historically, the intelligentsia. Its motto, recorded in the batch data as “Wir bewegen Wirtschaft”, positions it as an active participant in economic life rather than a neutral bulletin. Its journalism combines reporting on economic developments with portraits of company leaders, and service-oriented coverage of investment and careers. That places it between two Austrian models: profil's political investigation and Gewinn's personal-finance advice. trend's focus is the economy as a system — companies, managers, policy and markets — written for readers who run businesses or follow them professionally. Its Best Workplaces list is an example of the ranking and benchmarking content that business magazines use to serve that audience and to generate debate among employers.

Ownership within VGN

trend's publisher is Verlagsgruppe News, VGN Medien Holding, in Vienna. The group also publishes News, profil, TV-Media, e-media, Woman and GUSTO, among other titles, and is Austria's largest magazine publisher. trend has belonged to the group since 1974 — far longer than profil, which joined only in 2001 — so its corporate history is largely the group's history: the Fellner era, the part-ownership of Gruner + Jahr, the 2001 merger that created Austria's largest magazine group, and the 2016 return of Gruner + Jahr's shares to VGN, alongside trend's own merger with Format. For readers and advertisers, common ownership means trend shares production, sales and digital infrastructure with Austria's leading news and lifestyle magazines, while keeping a distinct business brand at trend.at.

Vienna, language and the German-speaking market

trend is based in Vienna, in the state of Vienna, and published in German. Vienna hosts the headquarters of most large Austrian companies, banks, ministries and business associations, so a Vienna newsroom is well placed for business journalism. At the same time, Austria's small, German-language market sits beside Germany's much larger one; Austrian business magazines compete for attention and advertising with German titles while covering a distinctly Austrian economy — its family firms, banks, energy companies, tourism and public sector. trend's longevity since 1969/1970, through the Kreisky era, EU accession in 1995 and the financial crises of the 2000s, reflects sustained demand for that national business perspective in magazine form.

Digital presence

The magazine's official website is trend.at, recorded in this directory. Directory listings describe trend.at as offering the latest business topics, inspiring personalities and behind-the-scenes insights into Austria's companies, in print and digital formats. Specific traffic, subscription or social-media figures circulating in commercial directory listings are not treated as verified facts in this profile, because they are undated marketing data rather than audited measures. What is verified is the structural point: since 2016 trend has been a weekly print magazine with a continuous digital presence, a combination that defines most surviving Austrian magazine brands. Current offers and editorial contacts should be taken from trend.at itself.

Limits and corrections

Three points deserve openness. First, the founding year: this profile corrects a simple “founded in 1970” to founded in 1969 with a first regular issue in January 1970, following the magazine's own reference entry and business-press scholarship. Second, the description “largest business magazine by circulation” comes from the directory batch record; historical figures show trend and Gewinn close in reach for decades, so the ranking depends on year and measure. Third, circulation and staffing after the 2016 Format merger are not verified in the sources consulted, and no current figures are invented here. The solid core is this: trend is a German-language Austrian business magazine from Vienna, founded by Oscar Bronner, Austria's first independent business magazine, sold to the News group in 1974, monthly for four decades, merged with Format in December 2015 and weekly since 22 January 2016, published by VGN for executives, entrepreneurs and decision-makers.