Intervju med Arne Barwinski
Program: Master's program in Business Development and Internationalization
Start of education: H09
Title: Business Operations Manager
Nationality
German/Finnish
Current employer and country of residence
Helly Hansen, Oslo Norway
A few words about my work tasks and responsibilities
As Business Operations Manager, my responsibility is to ensure the company’s growth and processes are in line with the company’s overall strategy. This includes commercial reviews, budgeting and process development across departments.
Why I chose the Master’s Program in Business Development?
In the back of my head, I always knew that I would like to work for a start-up or smaller company and in time have my own entrepreneurial experience myself. Therefore, the content of the studies fitted my ambitions quite well. I’ve worked now in big corporations as well as smaller sized but fast growing businesses, and I can see the benefits of my studies revealing itself no matter the size of the company.
A few words about how I got my current job and some advice to current students?
After finishing my studies in Umeå, I started a two years Management program at Bestseller A/S in Denmark, Germany and Netherlands, working as retail manager. This has a been a great, natural first step to steer my career into the direction I wanted to go, which was basically, getting to know everything there was to learn about the apparel business.
At the beginning I had no idea about what I wanted to work with or what role could fit me, but I believed it’s always a great idea to learn everything there is to learn about a certain industry we feel interested in and take it from there. Think about the industry you are interested in and the companies within that industry and be proactive. Don’t just look at the normal ways of applying but take the initiative and put yourself out there. Apply even there’s no open position, show your passion and you will be surprised how far it gets you.
I personally was quite fascinated about the retail business and apparel industry in specific and focused my first years of my career on that path. After my management program, I switched from Retail Operations to Business Development where I mainly worked within sourcing and learned lots about how an apparel company sources their products.
However, after three years of working for a clothing company, I decided to switch to another inspiring retail company called Zebra A/S in Copenhagen, Denmark (Flying Tiger Copenhagen). At Zebra, I was working as a project manager as well in the Business Development department, which gave me the chance to work further with many different aspects of the retail business. Improving processes and structuring teams became hereby a naturally strength of mine. This skill lead me as well to my next job in Wanaka, New Zealand. At the merino outdoor brand Mons Royale, I worked as well as project manager at the beginning to sharpen various internal processes. After a short time though, I was put in charge for the Operations in APAC and North America which lead me again to my current role as Business Operations Manager at Helly Hansen.
After all these years now in the retail and apparel business, I can say, that there is no aspect of running a retail company, I haven’t been in touch with. I guess my advice hereby would be to keep your eyes open, don’t necessarily get stuck in one position and try to get involved in as many interesting projects and different areas you can, to gain the full perspective on the business. Of course, if you want to become a specialist in a certain field, forget all about that and get yourself knee deep into the role, you want to excel in.
We all have different paths and none is wrong. But in one thing we are all the same, we are all very impatient when we start working and we want to know everything as fast as possible and be the best from the beginning. But that unfortunately is not going to happen. You have to learn a lot and stay hungry over the years in order to get better. It’s comparable to any other sports you do. As more training hours you put into your sports, the better you get and other people will recognize your progress.
Plan your dreams and don’t plan your future. Makes no sense? Well, you can’t plan your future into detail as life just happens and nothing always goes the way you thought it would go. It happened to me and it will happen to you as well. So, plan your dreams, your passion and you will be on the right path to whatever the future upholds for you. While studying and at the beginning of your work, you are super eager to make a certain career plan for yourself but just believe in yourself that the path you choose will define the career for yourself and you will do the right things automatically. Trust yourself the most, above everything and everyone else. Take a leap of faith now and then and listen to your instinct when you are facing decisions. Whatever you will decide, you can be sure, it all will make sense later on, no worries.