Galaxus moves into its German headquarters in Hamburg

The Swiss online store Galaxus is expanding abroad and will soon be launching in Germany. Now the subsidiary's employees have moved into their headquarters: it is located in the Ottensen district of Hamburg. "We chose Hamburg mainly because of recruitment," says Frank Hasselmann, Managing Director of Galaxus Germany. "The city is enormously attractive for specialists from the e-commerce and media sectors, and we want to benefit from that."

The Hamburg team is expected to consist of a good ten employees by the end of the year. In addition to Hasselmann, experts for marketing, business development and purchasing will work in Hamburg in the first phase. The office is designed for 40 workstations for the time being.

"We supplement our team with experienced employees from Switzerland on a selective basis," says Hasselmann. "But mainly we recruit talent from Germany." All new Galaxus Germany employees work in Zurich for the first two months to make contacts and get to know the online retailer's agile corporate culture. "This includes, for example, that we are always on a first-name basis regardless of hierarchical level and discuss things at eye level, that the teams set their own goals and that we courageously try out new things instead of talking them down," says Hasselmann.

Support from headquarters

At the launch, the employees in Hamburg will still receive strong support from Switzerland. In the home country of Galaxus and its sister brand digitec, the online retailer now employs almost 1,300 people. Around 170 employees each work in category management and software development, and a good 60 in marketing. "In the coming months, however, we will establish all core functions locally and gradually reduce the support from Switzerland," says Hasselmann.

With Hamburg, Galaxus now has three locations in Germany. At the end of September, the online retailer opened its warehouse in North Rhine-Westphalia, from where Galaxus will serve its customers throughout Germany. And in May, the company's own logistics hub in Baden-Württemberg on the border with Switzerland went online. This facilitates smooth access to Swiss online shoppers for marketplace providers from the EU.

With sales of 861 million Swiss francs in 2017, the Galaxus parent company Digitec Galaxus is the largest online retailer in Switzerland. The Galaxus brand stands for a large selection of quality products at low prices, for independently researched test reports, for clever filter functions, and for a particularly active customer community.