About us

The VNR publishing group is a family-owned business founded in 1975. It is our mission to ensure our customers’ success. Through actionable, expert knowledge, we help our customers to be more successful in both their personal as well as their professional lives. We are the 8th largest special interest publishers in Germany. While our headquarters are in Bonn, our approach is international.

We are entrepreneurs – What makes us special is our entrepreneurial approach at all levels of the organization. Every team member thinks, acts and plans as if they were an entrepreneur. This spirit enables us to deliver real customer success.

VNR at a glance:

  • Family-owned business since 1975
  • Founded by Norman Rentrop
  • Approx. 600 employees
  • Average employee age is 35.7
  • Informal work culture
  • 144 million euros annual turnover (2021)
  • 8th largest specialist publisher in Germany
  • Operates in 7 countries
  • Headquarters: Bonn-Bad Godesberg

Our companies

We, the VNR publishing group, offer publishing content and services to ensure customer success. Digital expertise and workflow solutions for our customers are developed at VNR Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG (Bonn, D), Financial Media Corporation (Jacksonville, USA) and Agora Business Publications (Manchester, UK). We offer our own marketing and fulfillment systems to external customers through platform X GmbH & Co. KG.

Our awards

Ausgezeichneter Ausbildungsbetrieb - VNR Group

Key Facts about us

Our company

Since the company was established in 1975 by Normal Rentrop, and we launched our first product “Die Geschäftsidee” (English: How to start your business), we have been ensuring customer success through independent expert knowledge, advice, and services. Direct marketing is our outstanding skill: Our organization and systems are designed to empower successful marketing and quick product testing.

Our products

We publish products created by independent, knowledgeable editors. Our utility journalism is what draws customers to us. This includes informational pieces by practitioners, created espacially for end users. As a publishing group, we prefer not to dictate just one central opinion. Instead, we offer our editors a platform to express various opinions as part of our ethical principles. On this platform, they can present reliable and verified information and opinions. Formats vary from printed articles to webinars in order to suit the customer’s needs. We offer further services such as workflow solutions, e-learning, consultation and many more. With these services, we support our customers to implement our practical advice on a daily basis in their professional and personal lives.

Our advertising

Our advertising consists of valuable content and strong sales arguments. It is not only designed to make our existing products more successful but also to test new products on the market quickly and effectively.

We continuously invest in our products in order to help as many customers as possible become more successful. Furthermore, we focus on developing new customer relationships, growing a larger network and discovering new forms of advertising. We are data-driven, and we scale our marketing measures, their fulfillment, and the processing of the products with the help of top-notch systems. These systems enable us to quickly create offers for customers, test our products, and develop them in close collaboration with our customers.

Our customers

We strive for long-term, trusting and close relationships with our customers, which gives us the opportunity to build and test products for and with them. The development of new products and formats is our recipe for success. We specialize in the marketing and processing of recurring subscription products, and therefore focus on these products to make our customers increasingly successful.

Excellent products and our outstanding subscription service ensure customer satisfaction. This results in enthusiastic, successful customers who recommend us and our products to others.

platform X

We also provide the services of our marketing and fulfillment systems – called platform X – to external companies. With more platform users, we will be able to develop it faster and further expand our network. We are growing our international network by using our systems in the USA and the UK. External companies that use our systems and services will become another mainstay of the publishing group.

Our employees

The foundation of our success is based on great ideas and the commitment to our most valuable asset: our employees. Our internal organizational goal is “entrepreneurship” within the company. To this end, we invest one month’s salary per employee per year in individual training and further education. For over 40 years, we have trained more than 200 apprentices and trainees. Today, more than >40 of them are still working in the publishing group. We encourage long-term-careers, and focus on and encourage individual performance. Our leadership principles support our culture and our employee development.

We are entrepreneurs

Every team member thinks and acts as an entrepreneur inside the organization. They make customer-centric decisions, implement them quickly and take ownership. They make these decisions in line with the overall company strategy, are proactive and ensure our long-term success.

To empower entrepreneurs, our processes and systems are designed to enable independent decision making and support implementation. Our career development programme aims to find, train and develop entrepreneurs so that every individual can be their very best.