Europages, Kompass and wlw: what B2B directories can and cannot tell you about a distributor
What Europages, wlw, Kompass and DirectIndustry hold, how listings are made, what a profile proves and what it cannot — with a check-list for using them well.
Marta Zielińska · Market research
Updated 29 October 2026 · 7 min read
Type "office furniture distributor France" into Europages and you get pages of results in seconds. The question is what each result proves. Directories are the fastest way to a long list, and the slowest way to a short one.
Putting it simply: Europages, wlw and Kompass tell you that a company exists, where it is, how to reach it and which categories it is listed under (chosen by the company on Europages and wlw, assigned by Kompass). They cannot verify whether it has actually sold your kind of product to anyone, whether it resells or manufactures beyond its own declaration, or whether its profile is current — and ranking can be bought. Use them to find and contact companies you have already identified by other evidence, and to fill gaps, not as proof.
Disclosure: Cresques is our own product. We compare on criteria you can check yourself and link to each source.
What the three directories are, as of October 2026
| Europages | wlw (Wer liefert was) | Kompass | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operator | Visable | Visable | Kompass International |
| Positioning (own words) | "The leading B2B marketplace for European trade" | "The leading B2B marketplace in Germany" | EasyBusiness: "more than 60 million companies around the world" |
| Scale (own figures) | 2,200,000 registered companies; 1,000,000 buyers monthly; 21 languages | "600000 +" companies and "400000 buyers per month" (Visable, October 2026); focus on Germany, Austria and Switzerland; since spring 2026 one profile is shared with Europages | "+70 countries covered"; "+60 advanced search filters"; "+40M corporate and named email addresses" |
| How a company gets in | Free registration; paid options such as "Boosted Products and Services" and "Top Ranking" | Free registration; Visable sells additional visibility and online-marketing services | Company data compiled by Kompass (companies can also register free); sold as a database product to the searcher |
| Who pays | Suppliers for visibility; "free to use for buyers" | Suppliers for visibility; free for buyers | The searcher: pricing on request (demo) |
| Category source | Chosen by the listed company | Chosen by the listed company | Kompass's own product-and-service classification, assigned to the company record |
Two things follow from the table. First, Europages and wlw are marketplaces financed by the companies that appear in them, so a prominent position signals a marketing budget, not sales in your category. Second, Kompass is a different animal: a paid database with its own classification, sold to the searcher, closer to a prospecting tool than to a marketplace. All three are genuinely useful for what they are.
What a directory entry can tell you
- That the company exists and where. Name, address, often a registration number and a website.
- How it describes itself. Product categories, keywords, languages, sometimes certifications and export markets.
- How to reach it. A contact form or request-for-quote tool on the marketplaces; named e-mail addresses and phone numbers in Kompass.
- Who else is in the category. A quick view of how crowded "office seating" or "surgical consumables" is in a given country.
For a first orientation this is real value, and it costs nothing on the marketplaces.
What a directory entry cannot tell you
Whether the company sells your category to anyone. A profile under "medical consumables" is a declaration. It does not show a single customer, contract or shipment. The company may have added the category hoping for enquiries, or kept it from a line it dropped years ago.
Whether it is a distributor or a manufacturer. Most categories mix makers and resellers. A manufacturer is your competitor; a distributor is your prospect. Europages asks each company to declare a type (manufacturer/producer, distributor, wholesaler and others) and reviews new registrations before they go live, so the filter helps — but the type is self-declared, a company may be both, and no directory shows what it has actually sold in your category.
Whether the profile is current. A listing can outlive a change of ownership, a relocation or a wind-down. The registration date and "last updated" stamp are rarely shown.
Why it ranks where it does. Paid placement is a normal part of the marketplace model. On wlw, Top Ranking results carry a small icon explained only on hover, and the operator says the service packages a supplier has bought can also affect its ranking; a reader skimming results may not notice.
Whether you may e-mail them. A contact address is not permission. In France a professional may be prospected by e-mail under conditions; in Germany a cold commercial e-mail without prior express consent is an unreasonable nuisance under § 7 UWG. Directories show the address and leave the law to you.
DirectIndustry: an exhibition, not a reseller directory
DirectIndustry, part of the VirtualExpo group, is best understood as a permanent online trade fair for industrial products. Team France Export, the French export-support alliance, describes it as "the dedicated B2B platform for the sector" (our translation) with more than 2.7 million buyers a month, catalogues translated into nine languages, and, for French firms, a Team France Export package that includes a twelve-month DirectIndustry subscription with a personalised online stand. That makes it a place to show your own products to industrial buyers and to see which competitors exhibit. Some exhibitors are distributors, but the platform is organised around products, not around who resells whom.
Directory profile versus award notice
The alternative source of a distributor's name is a public document. Every working day TED, the Supplement to the Official Journal of the EU, publishes more than 3,000 procurement notices. When a public buyer concludes a contract above the EU thresholds, it must publish an award notice naming the winner, its address, whether it is an SME, the value and the CPV codes (Directive 2014/24/EU, Article 50 and Annex V Part D).
| Question | Directory profile | Contract award notice |
|---|---|---|
| Who wrote it? | The company itself (Europages, wlw) or the directory's researchers and licensed sources (Kompass) | The buyer, under a legal duty |
| Does it prove a sale in the category? | No | Yes — a named buyer, date, value and CPV code |
| Is it dated? | Rarely visible | Always |
| Does it show the customer? | No | Yes, the contracting authority |
| Can visibility be bought? | Yes, as a normal feature | No |
| Does it cover every company? | Anyone who registers (Europages, wlw), plus companies the directory has researched (Kompass) | Only companies that won public contracts above the thresholds |
| Does it show the lawful contact channel? | No | No — the notice is evidence, not a route |
The last two rows are the honest limits of procurement evidence. A distributor that sells only to private clinics or retail chains will not appear in a notice, and a notice does not tell you how to approach anyone. Cresques works from the notices — you create a market as a country plus CPV categories, every company shown is tied to a notice you can open, and the lawful first-contact channel is shown per country. Company profiles with an AI-researched role and first messages drafted in the local language are live; e-mail alerts on new awards come with paid plans.
How to use a directory well
- Start from names you already trust — a notice, a fair, an introduction — and use the directory to find the website, the contact and the self-description.
- Read the self-description for fit. Does your product sit naturally next to the brands they list?
- Confirm the company in the register. The European e-Justice Portal's "Find a company" service searches the business registers of every EU country plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway; basic details are free.
- Separate makers from resellers on the company's own site: its own factory and brand, or a catalogue of other people's brands?
- Check the country's rules before you write. A directory contact form is often the safer first step in a consent country.
- Note paid placement and look past the first page; the distributor you want may not be paying for position.
What this means for a manufacturer
- Directories answer "who is out there and how do I reach them", not "who sells my category".
- The marketplace model is financed by listed companies; treat ranking as marketing, not evidence.
- Kompass is both a supplier-financed directory (with paid priority listings) and a paid searcher-side database with its own classification; budget for the database as a prospecting tool.
- DirectIndustry is a venue to exhibit your products, not a list of resellers.
- Pair any directory with a dated document — an award notice, a reference, a catalogue — before you invest a week in a company.
