The current developments around the Corona pandemic do not allow on-site trade fair meetings at the moment. This is a difficult situation for exhibitors and trade visitors to maintain business relations during this time. Against this background in particular, the order and data management portal Nextrade offers new opportunities with a digital 24/7 business relationship between trade fair participants. As a result, retailers can place their orders with the connected suppliers around the clock and thus independently of current official measures.

"We have just passed the milestone of 1,500 registered retailers at Nextrade, and that with participants from 55 countries active on our Nextrade platform. And the trend is rising. On the supplier side, 185 companies from 17 countries are already registered with more than 250,000 articles - and new ones are added daily. Well-known companies such as Artebene, Le Feu, Emform, Mags, Noi, Römertopf or Sigikid are among our latest suppliers", says Nicolaus Gedat, managing director of nmedia, pleased about the success of the portal.

Philipp Ferger, managing Director of nmedia and Group Show Director, Tendence and Nordstil, also draws a positive conclusion: "Visitors to our fairs - above all, Ambiente, Tendence and Nordstil - actively accept the additional and, what is more, free service offered by Messe Frankfurt. At the beginning of May, we also started our international marketing campaign in the first European markets such as Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden together with Messe Frankfurt's sales partners there. And as you can already see today, the portal is also rapidly gaining in importance internationally.”

Nextrade is intended to support retailers in maintaining business relations outside the sector's trade fairs and offers them the opportunity to balance out their backlog of orders by using the portal. At the same time, retailers can discover new suppliers there. The order and data platform thus creates new channels and touchpoints that contribute to the industry trade fairs throughout the year. "As a trade fair organiser, we have been observing, particularly since the beginning of the year, the massive extent to which analogue encounters are dependent on external factors such as the corona virus. Online platforms cannot replace trade fairs, personal encounters and product experiences, but they do represent an important addition and currently an ideal alternative for our customers' business. Despite all the challenges facing retailers, it's great to see the strength with which they are continuing in these times and remaining active in different ways," Ferger continues.

However, the online platform is not only aimed at trade fair participants. As the first digital B2B marketplace for Home & Living, the platform brings together supply and demand from the entire industry digitally - and thus creates great added value for both sides. It also offers suppliers completely new sales and distribution channels, especially abroad.

Nextrade enables them to easily integrate trading partners, both at home and abroad, who were previously not reached via trade fairs or other sales channels.