Fond Of loses managing director to Aldi Nord

The start-up Fond Of sells seven brands, including Pinqponq and Aveor. Now its managing director Dirk Schülgen is leaving and moving to Aldi Nord.

Dirk Schülgen was managing director at the start-up Fond Of for three and a half years, from now on he manages international marketing at Aldi Nord. Schülgen is to expand and professionalize the discounter's marketing. In his role, he reports to COO Sascha Schikarski: "With an international, strategically working marketing department, we want to continue to professionalize, digitalize and standardize our processes," Schikarski explains the strategy.

Schülgen worked at Nike as head of the marketing team for the DACH region, at Electronic Arts he worked for eleven years. In 2017, he joined Fond of as managing director. At the beginning, the Cologne-based start-up focused mainly on the production of ergonomic school bags, probably the best-known brand is Ergobag, and the company also sells the brands Aevor and Pinqponq.

The founding of the start-up is a cliché: a flat-sharing party in 2010, three friends and the question of why there is no ergonomic school bag for children. Since 2018, the start-up is no longer called Fond of Bags, but Fond of. The founders are Oliver Steinki, Florian Michajlezko and Sven-Oliver Pink. Since the second year Fond of is profitable, it is still owned by the founders. Meanwhile, the three are also investors at High-Tech Gründerfonds and have launched an accelerator program. It is located in the "most digital office building in Germany" in Cologne called "The Ship".