This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Spargle meets Remy Brinkhorst
“You need to stay flexible, but flexibility doesn’t mean a lack of structure.”
What is your background?
I have a background in business administration. I started my career in consultancy at Capgemini Consulting, with a clear goal: to learn extensively from diverse organizations and understand the issues they face. I’ve always worked at the intersection of business and technology, focusing on how technology can enhance customer experience and make work more enjoyable, faster, and smarter.
After some time, I felt I wanted to work for one brand rather than advising multiple ones. In 2008, during the economic crisis, many companies, including Capgemini, were constantly restructuring. Change had become a constant, which I was fine with as I understood from theory that this was part of the process. But because I was continuously in situations focused on cost reduction or other necessary changes, I wanted to switch to a company with clear growth ambitions. I wanted to see, if a brand has a growth target, how do you actually achieve it?
Where did you go next?
I ended up at Samsung Electronics, where I worked for almost nine years. I started in the central marketing department, working with various business units. At that time, Samsung was transitioning from a B brand to an A brand, and the challenge was avoiding the need to reinvent the wheel every time. With my consultancy background, I could help standardize processes and maintain a broader view, which added value to the company. I focused on how to centralize processes, work effectively with partners, and establish solid service level agreements, all to keep operations running smoothly.
Once that was in place, I noticed that investment decisions were mainly being made on the business side. I thought it would be interesting to sit on that side and understand how our products were marketed with retailers like Coolblue or Media Markt. This led me to focus more on products and how to market them with a consumer-focused approach.
How did you move into e-commerce?
I moved to large household appliances and worked on launching built-in products with retailers. This role leaned toward sales and category product and account management, which interested me as I wanted to understand the dynamics between Samsung and the retailers. However, as the role shifted more into sales, I felt it no longer aligned with my interests. I wanted to focus on bringing a narrative to consumers and differentiating products within categories.
I then joined the e-commerce division at Samsung, just six months before COVID hit. That period was an intense learning experience as online sales quickly became our main sales channel. We started selling directly to consumers, which brought many new dynamics. I learned how to set up an e-commerce business and translate that to a customer-focused approach. Knowing who your customers are is essential, but tracking everyone is neither possible nor necessary. It’s about engaging and capitalizing on your customer base.
You also started your own company, right?
Yes, after three years of helping set up the e-commerce division, I realized I might be more of a builder. Over the previous nine years, I had changed roles multiple times, and with my combined experience from consultancy and working for a large brand, I thought, “Why not go out on my own?”
So, I started my own company, LIME Consultancy, focusing on digital transformation and combining business and technology. My first project was with Eyewish, where I helped build out the organization after it was sold by Grand Vision to MPG. I managed projects that integrated both online and offline environments, like developing a customer service system, an intranet, and a contact lens subscription proposition, all combining commerce with technology to streamline processes. The omnichannel concept—how to manage the customer journey across both digital and physical stores—was particularly fascinating to me.
“It’s really about the growth strategy organisations have and the speed at which they’re making decisions. […] When you start working towards 2, or 3 thousand, that brings more complexity to take into account. […] They are constantly in motion. And with that, you also have to change.”
What role did Spargle play in your career?
About a year ago, I came into contact with Spargle for Action. They approached me for a role, looking for someone who understands both portfolio management concepts and projects, as well as the world of marketing and the market Action operates in.
What is your role at Action?
I’m a portfolio manager. That means I oversee all the changes taking place within the marketing and format department of Action. Every quarter, new initiatives are implemented, and we check based on our strategy: are we still on the right track or not? We have a very transparent process for that, involving many people. That also includes the aspect I really like which is connecting many different disciplines and various people. Plus, the combination of how technology can help us do things smarter and better.
Action has incredible growth ambitions; they opened more than 300 stores this year. You need to have a simple model for that. You also need to change because the customer is much more online nowadays. For example, five years ago, Action had a very simple website which was more a digital translation of the physical flyer. Now there’s an app, and there’s a flyer in that app.. We try to work based on consumer insights, utilizing various data to be data-driven. Changing in that way is very interesting to me.
What challenges does that entail?
You see very interesting developments, so it can be something that’s sometimes more difficult, because insights don’t necessarily give you answers. You still have to try to find an answer that works for everyone. The expressions that follow must not only be in Dutch but also in all the languages spoken in the countries where Action operates. The scale at which you do something is different, so you always have to think about that. We can say, oh, it’s just a little adjustment in that store, or maybe it’s a small change in an app, but that has to happen multiple times over.
How do you make something simple again? That’s an additional component I’ve learned over the past year. How do you maintain the technology, the various processes, and communication toward consumers whilst keeping it simple for everyone? The operating model requires you not to complicate things; otherwise, you’ll hinder growth.
You mentioned that you’ve worked from different perspectives, so you’ve been on the retail side, but also on the product management side. Do you think those perspectives contribute a lot? That you can process every question in that way?
Yes, I can sit in different chairs, look at different perspectives. You obviously carry that experience with you, and that helps you understand why a certain role sees things in a particular way, and maybe isn’t able to see the bigger picture within that, and you have to help them see it nonetheless. Or, yes, understand why they don’t see it, which also ties into change management. And why do things need to be different? Or yes, you also carry that along with you.
What was the choice that led you to work as an interim at Action?
It’s of course through Spargle. Eyewish was a lot of fun because it had a sort of real endpoint that everyone was working towards, and it was a bit less complex. It was very enjoyable because the time pressure added an element that made some things more complex or required you to make choices. At Action, it’s really about the growth strategy they have and the speed at which they’re making decisions. So a lot of processes and a lot of tasks have been built for certainly 1,000 stores, and that’s still manageable, but when you start working towards 2, or 3 thousand, that brings more complexity and simplify things to take into account because they have different legal requirements in different countries, for example.
Organizations like this really attract me because they are constantly in motion. And with that, you also have to change. People often have the same mindset; they all want to change, but they also find it difficult to determine how to change. You can provide a bit of guidance there. Help push them in the right direction. I think because I’m also interim, so I have a bit more distance, I can more easily name things that might be harder for them, I know exactly where the pain points will arise.
“Knowing who your customers are is essential, but tracking everyone is neither possible nor necessary. It’s about engaging and capitalizing on your customer base.”
There’s massive growth in artificial intelligence and technology in general, which is advancing very quickly. How do you see that impacting how you work, for example?
What you see is that it’s often very much test and learn. Whenever a company wants to pilot something or say that AI could help us with it, as a large organization, you have to think: how do we handle data? What governance do we have around it? What can we also learn from other departments?
I think it’s a natural process. First, within departments, you test or try things out, then you elevate it a bit. Then, for certain topics, you deliberately look at what AI could do for you. For example, in marketing, companies are trying to identify where there’s a lot of repetitive work which could be structured differently.
And so it grows, but especially in big organizations like this, you really need to go step by step. That way everyone knows that something needs to be done with it, but you don’t just dive in. You start trying things, but you make conscious choices and learn within those choices. You start small and see if you can scale or adapt from there.
How do you think the trends in your role will evolve in the future? Do you have any expectations or maybe concerns about certain developments?
You need to keep adapting to changes. As I said in the beginning, change is the new constant. How do you make those complex issues manageable in terms of solutions? Look more at what hypotheses and expectations we have with them. The standard method of setting requirements, building a solution and implementing it, won’t work as well anymore. The trick is to keep things clear and stay transparent about what you’re doing. When you look back a year from now, it should feel like a natural process, where you’re still aligned with your strategy. You should be able to say: ‘I have these points on the horizon, but the path to get there isn’t paved – you have to pave it together. If you look back and think, ‘That was a fairly relaxed journey,’ it’s because you took conscious steps. But you can’t say beforehand, ‘We’re starting here, going there, and this is the route.’ The environment changes too quickly. You need to adjust your vision as you go. That doesn’t mean the endpoint changes, just maybe the route to get there. Not overly complicating that re-evaluation is the biggest challenge.
What helps you stay focused?
Repetition helps me a lot to not lose track. You need to stay flexible, but flexibility doesn’t mean a lack of structure. Many companies and departments benefit from structure, where you can be flexible within that and still have clarity on who makes which decisions. The same counts for agility: it doesn’t mean there’s no accountability. It’s still there. You need to be adaptable in terms of content, but not everything is hierarchical anymore. We’re a network organization with different streams, but there’s still an end responsibility. That duality can be difficult to navigate. But in the end it’s about repeating: where are we going, and what do we need now? It’s a bit of a loop, that structure, that bit of repetition. You need fixed structures to allow flexibility within them.
Don’t you ever feel like you’re getting stuck in that repetition, or is that what pushes things forward?
What I notice now is that because of this structure, sometimes it could go a bit stale after a while. In my current role, it’s fun, and I’m good at it, but eventually, this should go to someone who enjoys doing it continuously. I need to be stimulated by new challenges. Always keep learning.
