Klöckner cooperates with Axel Springer in e-commerce

Klöckner & Co has entered into a strategic partnership with media publishing house Axel Springer, Kallanish learns.  The two companies’ digital units Axel Springer hy and kloeckner.i, will in the future work together to offer consulting services for entrepreneurs to assist them in their digital transformation.

With its kloeckner.i system, the German-based steel distribution group has forged ahead with its own digital transformation, to the extent that digital channels already account for around a quarter of group revenues. The company plans to increase this to 60% by 2022. Last year, Klöckner launched the XOM Materials platform, which is also open to its competitors (see Kallanish passim).

This would apply to two of six companies listed on XOM’s website so far – Friedr Lohmann GmbH and Häuselmann Metall. Four more companies have just joined and will start trading soon, among them more steel distributors, a spokesman reveals to Kallanish, but declined to name them as yet.

The Axel Springer group generates more than 80% of its operating profits through digital offerings. Set up in 2017, Axel Springer hy employs more than 40 digital experts who provide consulting services to customers outside the group.

Both companies say that they have carried out internal cultural and organisational change in order to make their successes possible. They are therefore joining forces to share what they have learned with other companies.