Friday, May 21, 2021
dm boss Christoph Werner
“Don’t present customers as a problem”
Shortly before the start of the pandemic, Christoph Werner becomes the head of Germany’s largest drugstore chain. The son of the company founder explains why leadership “per ordre du mufti” makes no sense for him in times of the Corona, and how to deal with nervous customers who hunt for toilet paper.
Christoph Werner has been the head of dm, Germany’s top-selling drugstore chain, since September 2019. A few months later the pandemic began, which also became a logistical challenge for dm. “Getting started was a baptism of fire for me,” says Werner in the podcast “The Zero Hour”. “This breaks a lot of routines.”
For dm boss Christoph Werner, a company has to “create conditions in which customers can orientate themselves” in exceptional situations.
(Photo: imago images / BeckerBredel)
Drug stores were in a special position during the Corona crisis: While many retailers could no longer sell their products due to the lockdown, dm faced the opposite problem. Customers fought for toilet paper and tended to buy hamsters for other things as well. Werner speaks of an “exceptional situation”. The dm boss emphasizes that it is important “not to present customers as a problem”. Rather, a company must try to “create conditions in which they can orientate themselves again”. For example, toilet paper could only be bought in limited quantities.
Dm generated sales of 11.5 billion euros in Europe in the 2019/2020 financial year, also because the company quickly adjusted to change. The online offer has been expanded, and over 100 corona rapid test centers have also been set up. “We have to deal with new technologies at an early stage so that we can use them when they become relevant for competition,” says Werner.
The dm boss attaches great importance to close cooperation with his employees. “In a situation like this, it is not about centralizing everything and only controlling the company by ordre du mufti, but rather consciously relying on the judgment of the many colleagues in the working group”. The decisive factor for the culture of a company is “how to deal with one another in a crisis”.
Werner does not believe that the shopping areas in the inner cities, where the chain is very present, will die. “Retailers are under pressure, but retailers are not,” he says. Changes in themselves cannot be stopped, the question is how to deal with them: “How can this change be accompanied in such a way that it does not lead to enormous distortions with mass unemployment?”
Also hear in the new episode of “The Zero Hour”:
- Whether Werner regrets not having become a pilot
- How the dm boss switches off from his everyday work
- What he thinks of an unconditional basic income
You can find all episodes directly at Audio Now, Apple or Spotify or via Google.
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