Growth comes down to people.

A manufacturer well known in German retail, active in self-medication and self-care, in the middle of a growth phase. The portfolio spans three product categories at once: food supplements, cosmetics and personal care, and over-the-counter medicines. Distribution runs through the bricks-and-mortar pharmacy, but above all through the drugstore chains, where the products occupy large shelf areas and visibility at the point of sale decides success.

Within the portfolio, one product group had grown over the years across all three categories. It includes a long-established warming balm that the company distributes exclusively for the German market as the licensing partner of an Asian manufacturer: a product with high awareness and a loyal base of repeat buyers. The potential of this group was considerable, yet it went untapped. Responsibility was scattered across several functions; no one led the group's marketing from a single hand.

Management's goal was not to administer the status quo but to grow: expand the share in the drugstore channel, scale the licensed product, bring the three categories together under one shared strategy. For the first time, this called for a Marketing Group Lead with genuine end-to-end ownership of the group's marketing, from the shelf through the campaign to the margin.

The complicating factor: the company's headquarters sits in a rural area, away from the well-known hubs of the consumer goods industry. Growth in this phase demands presence and commitment on site, and that was exactly where the staffing question became the real hurdle.

A growth phase calls for a different person than a consolidation. Someone who merely tidies up a range unlocks no potential. What was needed, therefore, was not an administrative head of marketing, but a shaping personality who runs a product group like their own business and takes ownership of the result.

Professionally, that meant category management across three regulatory worlds: food supplements under food law, cosmetics under the EU Cosmetics Regulation and over-the-counter medicines under medicines law. On top of that, commercial steering at the drugstore point of sale, solid experience in scaling brands and a sure instinct in dealing with an international licensor.

Personally, what counted were the qualities no CV shows: entrepreneurial drive, the willingness to carry responsibility end-to-end rather than distribute it, and the ability to rally a grown organisation behind one direction. And, indispensable for this phase and this location, the genuine willingness to be present on site for the long term. A growth ambition cannot be led from a distance.

Anyone who is to lead on site for the long term cannot be flown in from the metropolis. That is why, for ANDRIS Consulting, the location was not the obstacle of the search but its compass. We searched nationwide, but with a clear lever: the connection to the region.

Through direct search we specifically approached experienced category and marketing leaders with family or biographical roots in the countryside. The returner effect, the wish of experienced leaders to move back home after years in the big city, was the strongest and most honest incentive this market had to offer. Whoever wants to return of their own accord does not come for a year, but stays.

In the selection process, ANDRIS Consulting assessed both at once: the professional substance for three regulatory worlds and the fit to the company's phase. Does the candidate's entrepreneurial drive match the company's growth ambition, or is it geared towards orderly administration? A structured aptitude diagnostic made visible whether, behind the CV, stood the shaper this very phase required.

The position was filled within twelve weeks, despite the location away from the metropolitan areas. The leader brought on board came from category management in the drugstore and FMCG environment and brought roots in the region. Beyond the critical early phase, they have stayed with the company.

Scattered responsibility became one hand on the wheel. Since then, the product group has been led across all three categories under one shared strategy. The Asian licensed product was repositioned as a modern self-care offer, in line with the licensor's specifications and without touching the licensing agreement.

In the drugstore channel, expanded listings, more shelf space and double-digit sales growth followed, carried by a younger base of buyers who rediscovered the heritage product.