Harald Roossien

Advisory roles for Export Management / New Business Development / Commercial Management / FDI and M&A. Interim or freelance; remote, hybrid or on-site.

Wickey, one of the largest manufacturers of playground equipment for private use (+70M), has decided to enter the professional market. To this end, it has established Wickey PRO. I was hired as a temp replacement for the New Business Director to spearhead the launch and guide the company into this new market, as well as actively promote to distributors and installers. To accelerate the product portfolio, I have initiated an international Drop shipping project with multiple playground equipment manufacturers

At BOERplay, I was the face of the company on the international market and the spider in the sales web. I set out the export strategy, set up new product lines or had them made export-ready and once that was in place, I looked for potential partners worldwide. I signed contracts and partnerships with new partners and, in Germany, after the bankruptcy of our German partner, I took over part of the staff and set up a German subsidiary turnkey. When it was running with 10 FTEs, I focused on other markets.

Wolf ButterBack was running at full speed in Germany, Austria and Italy, but the rest of Western Europe was underdeveloped. I have further expanded the sales in the Netherlands and completely set up in Belgium, France and Spain. To this end, I had new products developed for these countries and hired several representatives for sales to bakeries in the Netherlands and France. I oversaw the day-to-day management of this team.

This company (now Biscuit International) had appointed a new agent in Great Britain for which central contact ("Account Support") was sought. In addition to this, I was given the opportunity to deal with non-strategic countries, such as CA, USA, MEX, IRL and ISR. By paying more attention to these customers, major steps could be taken with product and packaging adjustments. In time, I also got a B2B part for which I launched several successful products that are still on the shelves in several countries.