My experience and core competencies suit organizations that operate in the sporting and consumer goods as well as the retail industry and look for an experienced general manager, senior leader, non-executive director or advisor. In summary I can offer
- Multifunctional and international leadership experience
- Multi-channel retail expertise
- Business development expertise
- Digital expertise
- Turn-around and driving financial performance
- Organizational and cultural transformation
- Marketing expertise
- Coaching
Multifunctional and international leadership experience as GM but also in business development and marketing, SCM/IT and finance in the sporting goods and retail industry, predominantly in the MEA region including Turkey, Israel, Iran but also the Southern Balkans.
Multi-channel retail expertise: Having led organizations in a multi-channel market with a high share of DIrect-to-Consumer business, having designed and implemented consumer centric Omni-channel brand and distribution strategies with the aim of accelerating revenue growth and strengthening the positioning of the brands and categories. Key strategies and initiatives applied in the multi-channel market I will describe in more detail on the page “Market Place Management: Omni-Channel)
Business development expertise – covering new market entry strategies, strategic business planning and implementation of new business models in the MEA region as well as incubating and developing new channels and new retail formats in developed markets. Also, this will be described more elaborately on the page “Market Place Management: Business Development”
Digital expertise – having established and rapidly grown a profitable own eCOM channel for the adidas and Reebok brands in Turkey, started up and developed the eCOM presence in the digital multi-brand distribution and eCOM pureplayers, designed and implemented digitally let marketing strategies across all markets and spearheaded digitally driven process/workflow optimization to increase internal efficiency and provide best in class consumer service. ECO/digital channels and digital brand marketing will be covered in detailed on the page “Market Place Management: Business Development”
Turn around and driving financial performance – strong track record over the past 5 years as General Manager:
- Achieving double digit revenue and profitability CAGR over the past 5 years across all four markets – Turkey, Israel, Romania and Bulgaria.
- Continuously improving the own retail profitability and productivity
– Achieving YoY double digit retail comp growth across the entire retail network, improving Operating Margins in Romania and Bulgaria by 7pp over 5 years and in Turkey by 4pp over the past 2 years – through
– Key initiatives focused on store portfolio management, improved margins via pricing and category merchandising as well as mark-down optimization / increase in the share of full price business, cost focus and operational and service excellence. - Turn around success related to Turkey, our biggest and most volatile market – suffering from substantial import barriers, duty increases and 200% currency devaluation over the past 5 years
– Besides sustaining double digit revenue growth, EBIT improved by 4pp and annual Cash Flow by over 30m EUR over the past 2 years – through
– Key initiatives focused on driving retail profitability, growth in the the higher margin categories and channels, prioritizing eCommerce as well as pricing and margin optimization, strong control and reduction in OOH, vendor management optimization, tight control over receivables and, critically important, well designed and executed currency hedging strategies.
Organizational and Cultural Transformation
- Orga blue-print harmonization covering 8 multi-market organization – focused on designing the standard orga charts in collaboration with the GM and Senior Leadership in the markets, developing the implementation plans and preparing the communication and transition process for execution.
- Organizational and cultural transformation to support the transition to a consumer centric and globally integrated organization.
– Developing a culture that is consumer and future market place oriented and putting in place new leadership in the areas of brands, retail, HR, finance and IT.
– Evolving the organization in the form of setting up a full HR function with strong business partnering capability, establishing Category Business Units within the adidas brand function, setting-up Retail Merchandising to drive assortment planning and in-season trading, merging VM into Marketing and establishing Digital Marketing & Ecom functions as well as a Business Development department.
– Workforce Optimization – driving efficiencies, streamlining decision making and delivering 20% back-office overhead savings.
– SAP implementation and respective change management in three subsidiaries.
Besides that I have 6 years of experience in leading marketing teams regionally and in markets covering strategic marketing and planning, category / product management, brand marketing, retail & trade marketing as well as sports marketing. I’ll talk more about the strategic brand marketing pillars on the page “Brand Marketing”
Coaching
I am Certified Executive Coach and Master Facilitator and describe my work and how I can contribute On the page “Coaching”