Country Managing Director — Home-Care Division

The mandate

The home-care division holds recognised positions across laundry, surface care and adjacent household categories, but the quality of its demand decisions has deteriorated. Promotional forecasts are routinely revised after customer commitments, innovation volumes remain in baseline assumptions after launch evidence weakens, and market teams compensate for uncertainty by requesting inventory. The resulting pattern is expensive: service is protected through intervention, aged stock is corrected late, and account conversations focus on allocation rather than category growth.

The Country Managing Director will restore one commercially grounded plan for the Netherlands business. This is a replacement appointment with full accountability for country profit, cash, customers and people. Sales, marketing, category, revenue growth management, finance, supply coordination and local corporate affairs sit within or directly alongside the remit. The executive must make demand planning a general-management discipline rather than treating it as a technical process owned by supply chain.

The timing matters. Large grocery and drugstore customers are consolidating decisions, private-label competition is becoming more sophisticated, and sustainability commitments are changing pack, formulation and refill expectations. Some new formats may create attractive repeat behaviour; others add operational complexity without sufficient consumer adoption. The Managing Director must place disciplined bets while protecting the reliability that major accounts expect from a strategic supplier.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in Amsterdam, the role leads approximately 725 employees and material partners in the Netherlands and contributes to decisions across the wider international region. The country includes a significant commercial organisation, local marketing and enabling functions, with manufacturing and shared services provided through a broader group network. Success therefore depends on influencing regional supply, innovation and capability priorities as well as directing the local team.

Customer concentration creates both leverage and exposure. A small number of accounts can materially alter volume through assortment, promotion or shelf decisions, while digital grocers and rapid-delivery models create different pack and availability economics. The business also serves smaller outlets through intermediaries. The incoming leader must ensure account ambition is matched by feasible assumptions and must prevent apparent customer responsiveness from becoming uncontrolled customisation.

The planning problem is not simply forecast accuracy. Brand activity, retailer events, weather, competitor pricing and household stocking behaviour affect categories differently. Historical shipments are distorted by forward buying and previous service constraints. A credible reset will separate base demand from events, record assumptions at the level where decisions are made and reveal whether commercial investment produces incremental consumption or merely changes purchase timing.

First-year agenda

In the first ninety days, the Managing Director will establish a shared view of the country's economics and decision failure points. They will review forecast bias and value-add by category, promotion and customer; map inventory age and write-offs to original assumptions; and examine the consequences of changes made inside planning lead times. Meetings with priority customers and visits to field, logistics and consumer-research settings will test internal explanations against external reality.

The executive will then redesign the monthly and weekly operating cadence. Category and account leaders will own documented demand assumptions; finance will reconcile those assumptions with net revenue and margin; supply will state constraints and alternatives; and the Managing Director will arbitrate the small number of choices that cannot be resolved below country level. Meetings should result in decisions, not parallel forecasts or negotiated optimism.

Promotion governance is an early priority. The business needs common tests for incrementality, retailer funding, cannibalisation, post-event stock and repeat impact. Activities that fail those tests should be changed or declined even when they support a short-term shipment target. Revenue growth management will work with account teams before customer negotiations, ensuring pack-price architecture, terms and volume scenarios form one commercial position.

Innovation will move onto a staged evidence model. Refill and concentrated formats, in particular, require clear measures of trial, repeat, operational loss, consumer understanding and retailer execution. The Managing Director will protect promising propositions from premature judgement, but will stop extensions that rely on repeated forecast overrides. Resources released from marginal variants should strengthen the launches and core lines with the clearest potential.

By the end of the first year, the Netherlands business should carry materially less unmanaged forecast bias, healthier inventory and a narrower set of exceptions. Major customers should experience more dependable commitments and better category dialogue. The executive should also have identified practices that can transfer to other markets without suggesting that every country's retail structure is identical.

Leadership responsibilities

The Managing Director owns the country strategy, operating plan, profit and loss, balance-sheet use and reputation. They will represent the division with customers, employees and relevant industry stakeholders. When regional priorities conflict with a country commitment, the executive must surface the economics and customer consequences early enough for a deliberate choice.

Leadership-team effectiveness is an immediate responsibility. Functional leaders need unambiguous decision rights and a performance contract that joins commercial, supply and financial outcomes. The Managing Director will assess succession, address capability gaps in account planning and analytics, and create a climate in which forecast risk can be disclosed without being interpreted as a lack of ambition.

The role also carries responsibility for responsible business conduct. Environmental claims, product instructions and consumer communications must be supportable. Retailer relationships must comply with competition law and group approval requirements. Cost or service pressure cannot justify unsafe product decisions, inaccurate sustainability representation or unfair treatment of smaller partners.

Measures of success

The board will review profitable share, organic net revenue, retained gross margin, trade-spend productivity, cash conversion and country operating contribution. Demand measures will include bias, forecast-value-add, promotion accuracy, innovation forecast stability, service and inventory age. These will be segmented so that aggregate improvement cannot hide repeated failure in a strategically important account or category.

Customer outcomes will include joint-plan delivery, issue resolution, assortment quality and evidence that conversations have shifted from shortage management towards category value. Organisational progress will be assessed through leadership retention, decision speed, succession coverage and reduced manual intervention. Sustainability initiatives will be judged on verified consumer, environmental and economic results rather than launch announcements.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring at least 28 years of leadership in consumer goods, home care, food, personal care, retail or another high-volume branded environment. A substantial country or multi-country profit-and-loss remit is essential, including direct negotiation with concentrated modern retailers. The strongest candidates will have led both brand-building and customer economics rather than developing exclusively in one function.

The board will seek specific evidence of repairing a demand-planning system through commercial ownership. Candidates should explain how they changed assumptions, incentives and meeting decisions—not only which forecasting tool they implemented. Experience with promotion-intensive categories, private-label pressure, portfolio pruning and supply-constrained customer allocation will be relevant.

This leader must combine external presence with internal precision. They should be capable of maintaining a senior customer relationship through a difficult assortment or service conversation while holding their own team accountable for the underlying causes. Fluency in Dutch market dynamics and experience working in a European matrix are highly desirable; international mobility and cultural judgement are required.

Compensation and appointment terms

The expected base range is EUR 410,000–590,000, supplemented by annual incentive and long-term participation tied to profitable, cash-disciplined performance. Final terms will recognise the candidate's relevant scope, present package and mobility needs. Relocation and treatment of forfeited awards will be evaluated individually once mutual commitment is established.

Confidentiality

The organisation's name is withheld because the current leadership transition and customer planning issues are not public. Detailed market and portfolio information will be provided only to progressing candidates after conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must anonymise customer negotiations, sales data and internal forecasts used in their examples.