From the shop floor to market entry.

At OBI, I led a DIY store department with around 40 employees as department manager – covering staff scheduling, professional leadership and the organisation of day-to-day operations. There I learned that leadership in retail starts with understanding a team's daily work.

At ALDI SÜD, I became Regional Sales Manager responsible for five stores: operational management, people leadership and the implementation of company standards in an organisation that measures performance very clearly.

As Sales Manager at Denner in Switzerland, I led twelve stores – in a different market, with different expectations and the same underlying question: how does a standard become everyday practice?

With Candy Sale, I co-founded a retail company and helped shape it from concept development to a network of seven stores. It was not just about opening new shops, but about building a working retail model – from range design and supply to operational organisation and leadership.

The next step was turning the concept into a franchise system. I laid the key foundations for it: franchise and store manuals, the contractual framework and standardised processes that allow independent partners to run the business model on their own.

On this foundation, Candy Sale later grew into a company with 14 locations.

This experience has shaped my view of business growth. At ALDI SÜD, OBI and Denner, I learned to lead established retail organisations. As an entrepreneur, I had to create the structures myself, make decisions at my own financial risk and take responsibility for the consequences.

For me, growth is therefore not just expansion. What matters is building structures that can sustain growth over the long term.

With Offscale, I built a consultancy for franchise development, focused on designing and standardising franchise systems, operational processes and partner models. It showed me how much unspoken knowledge sits in a functioning business – and how much care it takes to document it so that others can work with it.

Since September 2026, I have been Country Manager Germany, responsible for building up and expanding Gold Union in the German market: location development, setting up operational structures, coordinating external partners and preparing and delivering new store openings. The themes of my previous roles come together in this one task.