History

Nordic Netproducts AB started operations in 1967, under the name Ekonomisk Litteratur AB. The year after the reference book Sveriges Största Företag (Sweden’s Largest companies) was published for the first time. The annually published reference book contained from the beginning the 500 largest companies in Sweden, but grew over time to include the country’s 10,000 largest companies.

When the company was founded, there was a great need for “industry bibles”. It led us to develop a book concept with detailed company information and indexes of companies, products, agencies and brands. The first trade book was Skandinavisk Plastindustri (Scandinavian Plastics Industry) which was released in 1972. In the late 1980s the company expanded and began to publish more titles. Industrins Inköpsbok (The Industrial Buying Guide) was released in 1988, and in subsequent years books for furniture, electronics, packaging and construction industries were released. The trade books then were expanded to include companies from Norway, Denmark and Finland.

As the information technology developed, people started to ask for the books in a digital format. In 1996 Sveriges Största Företag was released on CD-ROM, shortly thereafter the trade books too were released digitally. The development of the Internet had taken off and at the end of 1997 we introduced the web service Largestcompanies.com containing the largest companies in Sweden. The next year, we developed a web service for our trade books too. It was named Nordicnetproducts.net.

During a transitional period business information was published in parallel in both printed media and on our web services. During this period, the demand for books decreased while traffic to the web services increased. The breaking-point was in 2003, when our web services took over completely. This was the last year the books were released. As a complement to the web services, we launched Stora Leverantörsboken (The Great Nordic Suppliers’ Guide) and The Largest Companies Magazine.

Largestcompanies.com was also broadened to include Norwegian, Danish and Finnish companies, as happened in 2005. The following year the company changed its name from Ekonomisk Litteratur AB to Nordic Netproducts AB to further highlight the transition from books to Internet.

The company’s focus today is on its web services. In 2009 new versions, with the latest search engine technology, were launched. The technical achievements have fundamentally changed our way of handling large amounts of information, from the printed media to the almost infinite possibilities of the Internet.

Important dates and events for the web service Nordicnet

1997
Collaboration with E+T Förlag, now Talentum Sweden, is established in order to bring their industry news together with our Nordic database. This results in the site Nordicnetproducts.net. Talentum Sweden today publishes trade magazines as Ny Teknik (New Technology), Dagens Media (Today’s Media) and Affärsvärlden (Business World). 30,000 corporations with business and company information representing ten industries are the content on Nordicnetproducts.net.

1998
The number of visitors is about 3,500 a month.

2001
Nordic Netproducts AB is the sole owner of the Nordicnet concept.

2002
The number of visitors is about 6,000 a month.

2005
The number of visitors has now increased to 50,000 a month.

2007
The site is marketed with the domain names Nordicnet.se, Nordicnet.fi, Nordicnet.no och Nordicnet.dk.

2008
The number of companies on the site is about 100,000 spread over 45 industries in the manufacturing and service sector. Over the last two years, traffic to the site has doubled and is now around 200,000 visitors a month.

2009
A new version of Nordicnet is launched. The web service is now based on the latest search engine technology with a focus on speed, efficiency and usability.

2011
Nordicnet gets My pages where customers are able to follow viewing statistics for company presentation and product searches. Furthermore Nordicnet RFQ is launched, a service where companies can submit requests for quotation.