Ambition, experience and plenty of enthusiasm:
a portrait of sales director Roland Nicolussi
It all started back in 1992 with an application letter – the typical beginning to a working career, you might think. But it wasn’t quite so typical for Roland Nicolussi, now sales director at NaturalLook: “I went to school with Frowin Pitschl”, the 47-year-old says with a smile, “and he also helped me write the letter to his father’s company”.
From NaturalLook all-rounder to sales expert
Roland, from the village of Girlan, was 18 years old at the time – and was promptly hired as a warehouseman at NaturalLook. In the 1990s there were not as many employees as there are today, so he was soon able to get a taste of all the various areas. Almost from the outset he would sit at the table with Ewald and Gerhard, allowed to have his say and help shape everything from strategy to marketing and sales, where he has since 2003 held the top spot as sales director for the Italian-speaking regions.
Together with his assistant Silke Innerebner, Roland manages the sales department and sales office, with eleven permanent staff and 17 sales agents. “Silke is my contact person and the person I most trust in all business matters. She is an incredibly positive person, highly structured and very hardworking. We have already achieved numerous goals together. By the way, she was the first employee I hired in 2004”, he says with a laugh, adding, “I can learn a lot from Silke and the other employees.” Good teamwork and above all the discussions held on an equal footing – not only with colleagues, but also with long-standing customers – are what Roland Nicolussi particularly values in his work.
NaturalLook now employs no fewer than 50 people: “Everyone here is highly motivated and they get things done. We all behave well towards each other, with everyone allowed to speak openly. My office is like a second home to me”. Roland also appreciates the fact that, as his employer, NaturalLook is very well organised and forward-thinking as a company. “I strongly maintain that we are a very innovative and high-quality company, one that is extremely precise, punctual and forward-thinking”.
New strategies and challenges
“I love working out strategies and implementing them. I’m also on the road a lot – when I’m driving my car home late at night on the motorway, I can really relax.” Travelling for Roland is part of his everyday work – whether by car, plane or train: he is on the move all year round from Bozen, whether to Cologne or Palermo. He therefore knows the Italian market like the back of his hand and is well aware of how much it has changed, especially in the last two years. “Online sales have become incredibly important alongside shop-based trading – a rethink is absolutely necessary to keep up with the global players, especially among smaller retailers, as is a willingness to change and adapt your own habits – otherwise you are out of the running. Helping customers in the shop trade along this path and working out new strategies with them is certainly one of the greatest challenges in my job today. And NaturalLook is a great role model in this respect.”
The storyteller
His commitment and the tenacity with which he tackles and implements projects has meant that Roland has really expanded his areas of responsibility at NaturalLook over the past decades, with his sociability also a great advantage in his work: “Others sometimes find my unbridled enthusiasm rather overwhelming”, he smiles. “I’m a people person, I get things going and I like to communicate – some say I am a storyteller (he laughs). But I’ve learned that I often have to restrain myself, even if I would do certain things in a different way than others.”
“I was given the chance to make mistakes”
Roland, a father of two, fondly remembers his early days at NaturalLook. “After working for two years in the warehouse, it was truly exciting for me to get my own desk! (He laughs.) I was also lucky enough – and this is something I would wish for every young person – to have a mentor. Ewald Pitschl has always been a very youth-oriented person, and he would always push me forward in what I was doing, even taking me on business trips early on. I could thus learn a lot and absorb numerous values: respect, enjoyment, sociability and always listening to others, for example.” Both Frowin and Gerhard Pitschl gave the still-young Roland “the chance to make mistakes”, as he puts it. “They let me make a lot of decisions independently – and things did not always work out the way I had imagined. But you learn from your mistakes – and I’m very grateful to them for that.”
Learning from past experience and always being open to what comes along – Roland Nicolussi knows what makes a good sales director and how to have a good time: not only at NaturalLook, but also in his private life, whether out and about in the mountains with his family and dog – or on his motorbike. And, because Roland loves to tour, he also visits the various regions of Italy and Europe in his free time, with the particular aim of getting to know the local cuisine – so that he will have plenty of material for his stories!
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