Independent strategy & business development consultant
I lead retail and e-commerce initiatives from strategy through delivery — the strategy and target operating model, the alignment across functions, the project plan and milestone structure, the day-to-day steering of the workstreams, and the tracking that shows whether it worked. Twelve years inside Zalando and Hugo Boss. Now independent.
What I do
Some of it is thinking work — a category that needs a position, a market that needs to be understood before anyone commits. Most of it is what happens after the decision: getting it built, getting it better, or getting the organisation around it to change. I take on either, and often the first leads to the second.
The thinking work before anything gets built: competitive benchmarking, customer and market research, positioning and USP definition, facilitated workshops to answer the questions underneath — is the problem worth solving, how do we want to be positioned, what could the solution look like. Then the strategy papers and plans that win the buy-in.
Target picture, operating model, project and rollout plan — and the execution itself. From the first board paper through to the proposition launch, the expansion to the eleventh country, a feature launch or a facelift — hand in hand with buying, logistics, marketing, legal and offline.
The work that scales the impact and innovates the customer experience. New features, facelifts and format extensions on an existing proposition, plus the process work behind them — where a workflow costs more than it should, where two teams duplicate, where a handover keeps breaking. Smaller scope, high impact.
Target operating model, reshaping the organisation, adapting to change — increasingly with AI as a new team member. I support both the shape of the transformation and its execution, from the PMO side or as the devil's advocate in the room.
Selected mandates
Open a row for my role, the scale and what came out of it.
Head of Business Development for the launch and the scaling that followed, reporting to the Category VP. I shaped the proposition strategy and ran the workstreams day to day: buying, logistics, marketing, legal, offline retail — from launch through to optimisation and innovation.
A dedicated organisation across functions, more than 100 stakeholders across the group. International expansion to eleven countries.
Over €250m in incremental revenue and a category that became a permanent part of the customer proposition.
Zalando PMO, working alongside the senior PMO of a top-tier strategy consultancy: workstream tracking, decision preparation and the interface into the executive board. Responsible for business continuity once the consultancy left.
500+ employees, responsibilities redrawn across design, sourcing, buying and commercial.
A leaner, smarter operating model — executed in a way that stuck.
Repositioning the designer segment across every customer touchpoint, from site experience to campaign and service standards, alongside the Category VP.
An elevated designer experience and assortment across all Zalando markets, including the group's first designer collaboration (2016).
A credible premium proposition and a template for the brand collaborations that followed.
Proposition operational plan, initiative prioritisation, project execution and monitoring in quarterly reviews — hand in hand with the proposition VP.
A team of 7–10 direct reports, four categories, 25 markets, 50m+ customers.
A clear and aligned vision, execution against it, and the right basis for the decisions along the way.
Large-scale digital campaigns including seasonal flagship and Formula 1 sponsorship activation, plus CRM and email marketing.
Global campaign footprint, agency and internal teams across two countries.
Measurably better return on digital spend through channel and creative optimisation.
Working together
Most engagements start small and grow. If you are not sure which one fits, describe the problem and I will tell you which of the three I would propose — or that you do not need me.
A focused look at one question: a category, a market entry, a stalling launch. Ends with a decision paper your leadership team can act on and take a directional decision from.
I take the mandate and run it: workstream leads, milestone plan, steering committee, escalations. The default engagement, and the one where I am most useful.
From a short process optimisation sprint to a large-scale transformation. The shape follows the task: pure advisory, a focused sprint, or a longer companionship through the change at a few hours a week.
About
Twelve years of corporate strategy and business development, most of it spent building things that did not exist yet inside companies large enough to make that difficult.
I spent nine years at Zalando, across Premium, Beauty, Kids and Sports. I have seen the strategies, the project pipelines and the launches of several customer propositions from the inside — and a few of them carry my fingerprints. In between, Hugo Boss taught me what a strong brand is worth, and where a campaign can be made to work harder. All of it in close collaboration with VP and C-level executives.
I work best where the answer is not obvious and the org chart does not help: a proposition nobody owns yet, a division that needs re-cutting, a plan that three functions each half-agree with. My bias is towards impact over output — fewer initiatives, properly finished. I say what I think early, including when it is that the project should not happen.
I work from Berlin and Tarifa and travel to clients across Europe.
Get in touch
A short description of the problem and the timeline is enough to start. I reply within two working days, and an initial conversation costs nothing — including when it ends with me pointing you somewhere else.