What DACH and Central European buyers ask a new supplier first

We read every categorised reply from buyers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. They answered 108 supplier introductions run through our system this year. That is 864 replies after removing bounced messages, of which 483 were written by a person and 375 were automatic out-of-office notes.

Five things stand out.

The rest of this report gives the numbers behind each point and the differences between markets and buyer types. It ends with a ten-item checklist for a manufacturer preparing a first contact.

Of the 483 human replies, 114 contain at least one question or request to the supplier. A typical reply carries two topics. Here is how often each topic appears.

The order is almost the reverse of what a typical supplier puts in a first email. Manufacturers open with their certificates and their history. Buyers ask for a price and the whole range. A buyer who asks “please send your price list and catalogue” is not being lazy. They are checking, in the fastest possible way, whether the supplier belongs in their price band. They also check whether the range is wide enough to be worth a meeting.

Certifications matter, but later. In the first exchange they appear in 11% of question-bearing replies, and in only two of 248 refusals is a missing certificate the stated reason. Sustainability data, packaging compliance and carbon footprint, which fill trade-press headlines, appear in a single reply.

Two markets clear our publication threshold of at least 20 question-bearing replies: DACH (53) and Czechia with Slovakia (36).

Czech and Slovak buyers go straight to the price: two thirds of their questions concern it. German-speaking buyers ask about the price less than a third of the time, and far more often about certifications, references and private-label capability. A supplier using the same first email in both markets is answering the wrong question in one of them.

Buyers at retail chains, wholesalers and distributors (81 question-bearing replies) ask for the price first: 56% of their replies mention it. Industrial buyers at processors, bakeries and other manufacturers who buy ingredients or components (33 replies) ask for samples and specifications first. That is 45%, with price at 27%. The industrial buyer needs to test the product before a price means anything. The trade buyer needs to know the price before testing is worth their time.

248 replies decline. Here is what they say, and how often the refusal leaves a door open.

The largest group is uncomfortable for suppliers. Half of all refusals say, in one form or another, that the supplier wrote to the wrong place. That means a chain that does not list the category, a department that buys non-food, or a company that only sells its own production. These are not decisions about the product. They are the cost of writing before checking who actually buys what.

The reasons suppliers fear most are rare. “We have a supplier and we are satisfied” is 13%. Price as a reason for refusal does not appear at all, because almost nobody declines after seeing a price; they decline before asking for one. A missing certificate is named in two replies out of 248.

Nearly a third of refusals are not refusals. A buyer who writes “no budget this quarter”, “we are not expanding the range at the moment” or “keep us on file” has left the door open, and 60% of “no demand” replies do exactly that. For a supplier with a calendar, these are the warmest answers in the dataset.

Trade buyers decline more often with “not our product or department” (48%) and “not expanding the range right now” (9%). Industrial buyers decline more often with “no demand” (23%) and “satisfied with current supplier” (14%).

154 human replies point the supplier somewhere else. Where?

41% of redirects name a specific person. A further quarter confirm that the message is now on the desk of someone in purchasing. Only 1.3% ask not to be contacted again. In other words, a reply that looks like a rejection in the inbox is, four times out of ten, a referral.

The 16% who report that the addressee has left the company are a reminder that contact data ages fast. Every sixth redirect in this dataset was caused by a stale name.

Buyers do not sit on supplier emails. If they are going to answer, 82% do so within a day and 92% within three days. A supplier who takes a week to send the price list that was asked for has, by the buyer’s clock, missed the moment.

55% of human replies came after the first email, 28% after the second, 13% after the third and 4% after the fourth. Put differently, 45% of all answers would never have arrived if the supplier had written once.

Buyers answer in their own language, whatever language they were written to in. Of the human replies, 43% are in German, 28% in English, 14% in Czech, 7% in Slovak and 7% in Hungarian. A supplier who cannot read a Czech or Hungarian reply within hours will lose the exchange described in the previous section.

375 of the 864 replies were automatic out-of-office notes. In June and July roughly half of all replies were automatic; in August 29% and in September 23%. February also shows a high share (59%). This is driven by purchasing departments at retail chains that answer every unsolicited email with an automatic note about their supplier process. The median announced return is five days; 8% of notes announce an absence of more than two weeks. Figures for October are affected by a categorisation lag and are not reported.

Source. Every reply that buyers sent to supplier introduction programmes run through ProspectX between February and November 2026, as recorded and categorised in our sending system. In scope: 163 programmes addressed to buyers: retail chains, wholesalers, distributors, food-service operators, importers and industrial purchasers of ingredients and components. They were run on behalf of manufacturers of juices and concentrates, frozen bakery, private-label cosmetics, pet food and food ingredients. Out of scope: programmes addressed to manufacturers themselves and any non-buyer audience.

Base. 9,036 buyers were contacted; 108 programmes produced at least one categorised reply. After removing bounces and “do not contact” requests, 864 replies remain, of which 483 were written by a person and 375 were automatic out-of-office notes. Market is assigned from the programme, not from the reply.

Processing. For each reply the quoted thread and signature were removed. Then addresses, domains, telephone numbers and the names of people and companies from the contact record were replaced with placeholders. Each anonymised reply was coded by a language model (Claude Opus 5.5) against a fixed taxonomy. The taxonomy covers ten question topics, ten refusal reasons, a “not now” flag, the destination of a redirect (second pass, ten categories), language and tone. Time to reply is measured from the last email sent before the reply.

Quality. A stratified sample of 100 coded replies was re-read and re-coded independently in a second pass by a different model (Claude Fable 5.1). Agreement with the first pass was 98% on the overall stance of the reply and 95% on the full code; the two disagreements did not change any published figure. The author approved the taxonomy and the published figures before publication. Only aggregates are published, and a chart cell is shown only where it rests on at least 20 replies. No reply can be traced to a buyer, a company or a client.

Limits. The data describe buyers who replied, not all buyers contacted. Replies came overwhelmingly from DACH (256 human replies), Czechia and Slovakia (102), Poland (74) and Hungary (43). The United Kingdom, the Nordics and Benelux are too thin to report. Topic shares depend on the products offered, which were mostly food and drink. The out-of-office share for October is affected by a categorisation lag and is not reported.

ProspectX introduces European manufacturers to retail, wholesale and industrial buyers in their export markets and books the first meeting. The replies analysed here are a by-product of that work. The dataset grows every month; we intend to update this report when the next 500 human replies have arrived.

Questions about the method: Casper Morawski, casper@getprospectx.com.