Bert Foerster

Commercial Leader · Scaling & Turnaround · Strategy to Execution · E-Commerce · Digital · Retail · Zalando · ex-Wayfair · ex-Roland Berger · Berlin / Munich

Munich, Bavaria, Germany

About

Fifteen years across strategy consulting, commercial leadership, and corporate strategy. At Roland Berger I spent eight years building the foundation: commercial rigour, structuring complex problems, cross-industry breadth, and operating standards that I have built on in every role since. At Wayfair I ran two underperforming European categories with full P&L responsibility and turned both around. At Zalando, I helped take Zalando Plus from a single-market program to eight markets with full commercial ownership - building and leading cross-functional teams across business development, performance management, marketing, analytics, and later product management. More recently, in a small and senior corporate strategy function, I have been working directly with the management board and business unit executives on group-wide strategic questions across the full range of Zalando's strategic agenda - from co-authoring Zalando's strategy update and AI strategy to retail media, loyalty monetisation, and a TikTok Shop pilot, among many others. What I enjoy is finding the problem worth solving, making a clear-eyed call on it, and not leaving until it delivers - whether that means doing it myself or building the team that does.

Experience

  • Zalando (5 yrs 7 mos)
    • Head of Corporate Strategy
      Mar 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 4 mos

      Leading company-wide strategy/ transformation projects

    • Head of Product - Zalando Plus
      Jan 2023 - Feb 2024 · 1 yr 2 mos

      Leading product management, product design, software engineering for the acquisition, engagement and retention space as well as overall marketing for the fashion and lifestyle membership program Zalando Plus

    • Head of Commercial - Zalando Plus
      Dec 2020 - Dec 2022 · 2 yrs 1 mo

      Leading business & market development, planning & analytics, marketing for the fashion and lifestyle membership program Zalando Plus

  • Category Leader at Wayfair
    Jul 2019 - Dec 2020 · 1 yr 6 mos

    Strategy to execution for home textiles & mattresses business, turnaround and 140% YoY on a high double-digit EURm base

  • Roland Berger (7 yrs 10 mos)
    • Project Manager / Senior Project Manager
      Jan 2016 - Jul 2019 · 3 yrs 7 mos

      Automotive, financial services

    • Junior Consultant / Consultant / Senior Consultant
      Oct 2011 - Dec 2015 · 4 yrs 3 mos

      Consumer goods, retail, insurance/ reinsurance

  • Internships at Industry, consulting, research
    2007 - 2011 · 4 yrs

    -- Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) - Business planning for spin-off company -- Bayer AG - Stakeholder strategy -- Roland Berger GmbH - Consumer goods & retail -- KPMG AG - IT strategy advisory and performance -- Verbundnetz Gas AG - Strategic asset and portfolio management -- Halle Institute for Economic Research (Member of the Leibniz Association) - Economic forecast and financial market analysis -- U.S. Commercial Service - International trade, foreign direct investments