Case Study - Trekmates

Trekmates & Karsten Leichsenring (Germany)

Company Background

Trekmates, based in Nottingham/East Midlands, is one of the UK's leading outdoor accessories brands which currently supplies over 700 locations in the UK and has distribution arrangements in 20 other countries across Europe and East Asia.

Their product range contains all kinds of outdoor accessories like gloves, caps and hats, base layers, socks and ski goggles. Furthermore they sell various trekking equipment like trekking poles, hammocks, mosquito nets and other similar products.

As they wanted to expand their activities in Europe and especially in the important German market, they were consequently looking for a person to help them researching and opening up this market and in creating a German database.

About Me

I am a 26 year old business student from Chemnitz/Germany. As my mayor subjects at University are International Management and Marketing, I always wanted to do my placement abroad. I have decided to go to the UK to improve my English language skills and to develop my business skills. Throughout my placement with Trekmates I had not only the chance to get to know about the UK outdoor market, but also the European market.

I found out about ISPO through a link-up on my University's website. They really helped me in finding the right placement and a suitable accommodation and gave me the opportunity to get in contact with other placement students in the UK, especially in Derby.

Placement

At Trekmates I supported the European sales manager especially with the German market. I started doing several market researches and advertisements as well as creating customer portfolios. After I got familiar with the whole product range I prepared and evaluated trade shows in Germany (Winter ISPO 2008 Munich) and Poland (ZIMASPORT 2008 in Kielce), which I of course attended as well.

Throughout my placement I got an insight into the UK and European outdoor market. I learned how to deal with customers, wrote business letters, adverted products and prepared and attended trade shows. Along the way I improved my language skills and got an insight into different countries and cultures.

Conclusions

I am really glad that I had decided to do a placement in the UK because I got so many impressions of the British business culture and also the country.

I really liked the friendly atmosphere at Trekmates and met a lot of interesting people at and after work. Furthermore I am now really interested in outdoor activities since I started working at Trekmates, although I wasn't very into trekking and hiking before.

So all in all I can definitely advise anyone to experience a placement abroad. If I had some spare time during my further studies, I would really like to do another placement abroad.
Karsten Leichsenring

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