A management consultant, Alexander von Preen, is taking over the position of chief executive at Intersport Germany, the biggest voluntary group in the Intersport galaxy, with retail members running some 900 stores in the country. He is taking the place of Kim Roether, who resigned in June, citing personal reasons (SGI Europe Vol. 29 N° 19+20 of July 6, 2018). Another consultant, Harald Schedl, had taken his place on an interim basis.
A statement by the supervisory board said that von Preen was the right man to lead the transformation of the cooperative because of his experience with cooperative structures and the retail sector. The 53-year-old manager has been working for 20 years with Kienbaum Consultants International on corporate governance, strategic and operational management, as well as change management. Intersport Germany was one of his clients.
Meanwhile, Thorsten Schmitz has been promoted as the CEO of Intersport Austria, a subsidiary of Intersport Germany that takes care of about 900 retail members in Austria as well as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. The 40-year-old manager has been in charge of the product assortment and sales at Intersport Austria for the past two years, and he was made responsible for category management in all the five countries supervised by Intersport Germany.
Schmitz is taking the place of Matthias Boenke, who has successfully led the expansion of the Intersport banner in Austria over the last four years, and he will still report to him in his new role. Boenke recently joined the supervisory board of Intersport International Corp., and he has now become one of the four members of Intersport Germany's new enlarged executive board.
Boenke, 52, has been lately in charge of supervising retail members of the cooperative who are using the Intersport banner. He will continue in this role. Starting on Nov. 1, the other retail members of Intersport who are trading under different banners will be supervised by another new board member of Intersport Germany who is coming from Switzerland, Frank Geisler.
Geisler will be taking care of big German sports retailers like SportScheck and Engelhorn, which have been purchasing products through Intersport. They were recently joined by another big retailer, Karstadt Sports. Geisler, 53, worked for Karstadt, Puma and Kaufhof before he became in 2011 the CEO of Dosenbach-Ochsner, the leading player in the Swiss sports and footwear retail market, controlled by Deichmann, which owns Ochsner Sport.
The fourth member of Intersport Germany's executive board is Hannes Rumer, who will continue to be in charge of finance.
