The Business to Business trade has been active for decades in the training and further education of young people. The sector is aware that today’s junior talent ensures the future of the company, as experts and executives are and remain the most important performance factor. E/D/E is setting a good example, as in particular the charitable E/D/E Foundation promotes dedicated and talented junior employees through scholarships.

E/D/E sets great store on training the junior talent in the sector as best as possible, thus overall increasing success. For this purpose, we have been holding the contest “Trainee of the Year” since 2009. E/D/E members from the Business to Business trade have the possibility of nominating the best trainees of the year and of registering them for the contest.

With its corporate strategy CHALLENGE 2020, E/D/E has given itself a strong guideline until the end of the decade, a clear vision and ambitious aims. The core-projects of CHALLENGE 2020 have reached first milestones during the past year. The new online-marketplace Toolineo was launched on December 17th, 2015. Another milestone is the electronic data-centre eDC, which was launched in 2014. It comprises a completely new product information program (PIM) and provides members with a comprehensive data pool of all manufacturer data. Other milestones that are being worked on are the doubling of storage capacity up to 150000 items, expansion of the activities of ETRIS Bank GmbH, increasing trade volume in Europe as well as enhancing the degree of networking and communication within the association.

E/D/E connects its members and suppliers exceptionally successful and offers the possibility to its partners, to actively develop the offered services and marketing concepts. Events and marketing instruments such as catalogs, brochures or online-shops boost E/D/E services even further. In competence groups, meetings and specialist groups new concepts are continually developed.

With the E/D/E Unternehmer Netzwerk (Entrepreneur Network) E/D/E additionally supports its members in a regular and effective exchange of opinions at eye level. Both owners and managers of E/D/E partner companies participate, meeting several times annually. For young talents in the industry, both qualification measures offer support for juniors and young entrepreneurs in starting out as company leaders. In order to boost expansion of training-possibilities, E/D/E created the concept of the AKADEMIE a further training institution for dealers and suppliers. It functions as a central platform for qualification in Industrial B2B.

Strengthened by E/D/E's financial indepence and continuous orientation towards market conditions, E/D/E evolved into an internationally active group of companies by founding its subsidiaries.Strategic expansion of the company always puts advantages for E/D/E and its partners first.

Apart from the important domestic market, European markets are more and more put into focus. Trade volume abroad increased in 2016 to 1.24 billion Euros. Since 2011, the one hundred percent subsidiary EDE International AG controls all activities of E/D/E outside Germany.

Operational excellence and optimal service for members have been the focus of the Wuppertal family business ever since. We want to be a benchmark for the sector in the quality of our work.

The processes of First-Class-Service 48, which started das a quality- and service-offensive, are established firmly in daily business to he content of E/D/E partners. Within 48 hours, requests are directly taken care of or yield a response as to the state of affairs. Further more, a delivery capacity of 97.5 percent of E/D/E logistics across almost all business areas is a constant and positive sign of quality.

In order for us to improve continuously we have been having our quality inspected by an independent institute, AGQS Qualitäts- und Umweltmanagement GmbH. E/D/E fulfills all requirements within the context of the recertification audit according to DIN EN ISO 9001:2008. AGQS especially emphasized the good further development of quality management – verbatim measuring processes according to performance figures. Also emphasized was the high degree of process transparence by a corresponding detail-level in process descriptions (as of April 2015).