Marcus Diekmann, one of Germany’s best-known digital and retail experts, is coming to Cologne-based fair fashion retailer Armedangels. The deal was as unusual as it was media-effective: on the initiative of ‘Manager Magazine’, Diekmann announced on LinkedIn in April that he was looking for a new professional challenge and invited interested companies to apply to him.
“Get louder for the cause”
It is now clear that Diekmann will start at Armedangels as a “Strategic Advisor” from November. For him, working with the sustainable fashion label is a real matter of the heart: “Armedangels is a brand that gives me goosebumps,” says the retail expert. It is one of the few companies with a real purpose that wants to make the world a better place. He therefore sees great potential in the further development of the brand, whose core DNA is sustainability: “I am firmly convinced that together we can really make a difference and that we have to become louder for the cause. “I’m really looking forward to working with the Armedangels team, which is very professional and has a lot of know-how,” Diekmann explains exclusively to FashionUnited.
Increasing relevance
Armedangels has doubled its sales in the last three years, with a volume of 77 million euros in 2022. The company has been profitable and grown strongly on its own since 2011. With Marcus Diekmann at its side, the fashion label now wants to ignite the next stage of evolution. “Our vision is to achieve global relevance with more sustainable fashion and to convince consumers of our products and our brand. For this we need size on the one hand and notoriety on the other. We are developing a sustainable growth strategy and are becoming a pioneer in the fashion industry. Marcus is the ideal sparring partner and source of inspiration for this process,” explains Martin Höfeler, founder and CEO of Armedangels.
Grow to matter
The goal for the next few years is ambitious: Diekmann wants to double sales and help bring about a change in thinking in society so that more and more people buy sustainable fashion – not out of a guilty conscience, but because they want great fashion at a great time want to bear the price. Sustainability also has to be fun, this is the only way the world can change.
The first step is to develop a strategy paper called “Grow to Matter” over the next four months and then present it to the public. The most important parameters such as product, price, reach, service, IT & processes, organization and culture should be analyzed and the right strategies and tactics should be decided and implemented. Armedangels’ omnichannel approach is also to be further expanded: “We are already an online-first omnichannel company and will continue to shape this culture. We take omnichannel very seriously, which is why we will do even more for our target groups, the consumers, but also for our wholesale partners,” promises Diekmann. This could include, among other things, new IT solutions including AI for wholesale in order to be able to support trading partners even better.
“Lion is looking for a cave”: looking for a job the other way around
The collaboration between Marcus Diekmann and Armedangels came about quite unusually. At the initiative of Manager Magazine, Diekmann publicly announced on LinkedIn in April of this year that he was looking for a new professional challenge and invited interested companies to apply to him. His guidelines include: purpose (“I want to make this world better”), performance culture (“a hungry team”), test, learn, build bigger (instead of 5-year business plans) as well as openness, authenticity and honesty.
Martin Höfeler and Marcus Diekmann came together as part of this call. Both knew each other beforehand and were always in close contact, but it was only during the course of the experiment that it became clear that Armedangels was exactly the company Diekmann was looking for. In order to take this step, he also waived the majority of his salary demands, which he also made public when he made his call. However, it has been agreed not to disclose the amount.
In the past few months he has received numerous job offers, including around 15 serious ones, which he has considered intensively. But he also received a lot of critical letters from people who didn’t like the media dimension of his job search, he says. The entire job search was supported behind the scenes by “Manager Magazin”.
In recent years, Marcus Diekmann has repeatedly made a name for himself through his unusual actions and his committed nature. He advises companies on transformation issues and has held leading positions at medium-sized trading companies, including Rose Bikes, P&C Düsseldorf and BetterBed. In 2022, he received the Forum Prize from the Textilwirtschaft industry magazine for his entrepreneurial achievements at Rose Bikes and for his pro bono initiative “Dealers help dealers” during the Corona pandemic. In 2021 he founded the Founders League, a platform for young start-ups and founders in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.