INTERVIEW
A BRAND
new promise Data and service – these are the two core concepts at the heart of Germany’s Schäfer Shop. Everything else around is just nice padding, says CEO Andreas Reuter
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n the grand scheme of things, Schäfer Shop is not an old company. It was founded in 1970 as a mail order and catalogue firm by the entrepreneurial Schäfer family, who already owned two other, unrelated businesses, the first one dating back to 1937. But it has certainly achieved plenty in a relatively short period and is particularly well known in its home nation of Germany, first as a pioneer in the B2B mail order sector and then as an e-commerce expert with a digital go-to-market strategy. With a reach across nine European nations, Schäfer Shop is currently in the midst of an overall brand restructuring and strategic review, due to be completed in March. When Heike Dieckmann caught up with CEO Andreas Reuter in this first-ever Schäfer Shop interview with OPI, the conversation quickly turned to the importance of data and service – and how best to use both – in our commodity-driven industry.
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OPI: Let’s begin with your OP career. Some of our readers might know you, as you had quite a long stint at Staples in Germany, I believe, before joining Schäfer Shop in 2012. Andreas Reuter: Yes, I’ve been in the business supplies B2B space for 20 years now. I started in 2001 as District Manager of Staples Germany. I then worked in several roles in the company before becoming Managing Director of first Retail at Staples Germany, then of all of Staples in the country, and finally Managing Director of the reseller’s German and Austrian operations. I really enjoyed working for Staples, but as you know there was plenty going on at the parent company, and in 2012 I decided I wanted a
change. When I had the first conversation with Schäfer Shop about the CEO role, I asked them what exactly they expected of me. The answer was simple: make this business successful again. OPI: Again? AR: The firm had been going through a large-scale restructuring process and changed its outlook from a B2C focused organisation with quite a different product portfolio to a predominantly B2B orientated operator. That’s the nutshell version. OPI: Quite a vague remit, wouldn’t you say? AR: Absolutely. But I said, yes sure, I will do that. I haven’t regretted it for one moment. Schäfer Shop is a family-owned business. As such, my team and I have an enormous amount of freedom to do what we think is right for the company. OPI: That must be quite different from your Staples experience. AR: Definitely. I reported to Mike Miles, President of Staples Europe at the time. He was based in Framingham, Massachusetts, so not exactly the office next door, which gives you some indication. But it wasn’t just the fact that working for a family business is more personal or that there is time to develop and implement ideas because you’re not tied to quarterly results. In terms of digitisation, Schäfer Shop was streets ahead of Staples and, to be honest, a lot of companies in our sector. OPI: Why is that? AR: Much of it has to do with data, the company’s biggest asset I would argue, and also the long-term employment of staff. We’ve been collecting data since 1995 when we first established a digital presence, so we have amassed a vast pool of customer behaviour information. We use this data differently now than we did back in 1995 or even in 2012 when I joined, but that’s not really the point.
