Ghent, Flemish Region, Belgium
- Back in the days - August 2013 was the year I started working for Decathlon. I immediately was drown in the entrepreneurial spirit and the freedom I had to develop myself as a young professional. A perfect start to discover what I wanted to do and who I wanted to become. After a few different jobs and stores I started my role as the co-leader of Decathlon Gent and really wanted to create an environment where everyone present in our store team had the space to fully develop themselves and to undertake actions which he/she thought were best for our local sport users. All of this through transforming our managerial organization and evolving from jobs to roles. Subsidiarity at its best. After 3 years of leading this project, the results were amazing, both for our customers, our shareholders and for our team. - From Vision to action - After my break of 7 months travelling through South-America, I relaunched myself within Decathlon and was lucky to be a part of the co-creation process of our Decathlon United Vision. The thing I learned here that is by adopting an 'open to all' mindset, you can achieve great things. The South-America trip, co-writing a vision and becoming a dad increased the sense of urgency to act. It was time to crack the code and reinvent (retail) business to lower its environmental impact while continuing to put more people to do sports. I joined the sustainability project from Decathlon Belgium as a sustainability leader and launched a world wide innovation project called We Play Circular. Since 2025 I joined the transformation/innovation team of Decathlon Belgium exploring a short-term rental model (ski's & tents) for Decathlon Belgium to now be responsable for the second life business model. In the meantime I discovered a new super power: through vibe coding and the use of AI, we are now able to 'scale fast, fail fast' within innovation. Great things are coming and the time-to-market has significantly reduced. - My interests - People, circular economy, corporate culture & strategy, sports & regenerative economy, AI and process automation. - My talents - Positive, calm, visionary, 'confiance à priori', analytical, clear communication, making complicated things look easy, vibe coding.
Exploring the short-term rental model on ski's (winter) and tents (summer) through optimizing stock management, pricing, offer and digitalization. Concluded that the model was not scalable and not sustainaible, both financially and environmentally. So we decided to put the project on hold to focus on other priorities within Decathlon's Belgium circular economy strategy. Sometimes good things come to an end!
Based on my talents and interests I am spending 100% of my energy into projects related to decrease our environmental impact in order to put our business back in line with Paris Agreement objectives.
Ensuring our customer can find the product he/she needs by working the correctness of our IT stock through RFID-inventories and collaboration between our stores and our warehouse.
Trying to reshape the retail business model while testing a subscription model based on the sharing of sporting goods products. Potential economic, human and environmental gains are huge but important to go step by step. In 2021 we did a first project in Belgium testing this business model within a 100% fully physical experience. In May 2023 we re-launched in the cities of Antwerp and Liège with a fully reworked omni channel customer experience and a business plan including financial and CO2eq projections and data. Within the project team I am responsable for staying alligned with our vision as co-founder, making sure the customer experience is top notch as retail manager and ensuring the calculation of (potential) environmental gains by integrating CO2eq numbers within our business plan. https://www.we-play-circular.com
How do we want the world to evolve the coming years? Which role should Decathlon play to drive the change?
My wife and I took a break and we went out to explore South-America during our honeymoon. Argentina, Patagonia, Chile, Easter Island, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Galapagos Islands & Colombia. Eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired. Wake up because the sun is out! https://ellenennathantrouwen.weebly.com/reisblog.html
As the store co-leader I really had a 'Eureka' feeling when our Vision 'Do what I love' was launched. After some trainings to really get to know myself personnaly I felt 100% connected to this vision about creating a space where everyone was delighted and where everyone had the freedom to do what he or she thought was the best thing to do to make sports accessible for the many. Due to this (managerial) transformation I really got convinced this way of leadership is the way to go. An ecosystem build on trust, respect, freedom, love and entrepreneurial spirit! As long as you have people around you, you can achieve anything.
As a store operations manager in our sports megastore, I was responsible for: - managing logistics and availability of our products - security of our employees, customers and our products - maintenance of our building - financial analysis and management of costs Functional management was the key to success!