CEO of Europe’s biggest fashion website, 38, quits job ‘to prioritise wife’s career’
CEO of Europe’s biggest fashion website Zalando quits to prioritise his wife’s career
- Rubin Ritter, 38, has been a co-CEO of fashion retailer Zalando since 2010
- He will resign next year so that his wife’s professional ambitions can take priority
- Zalando has been criticized for having an all male five-member management board
The boss of Europe’s largest online fashion retailer has said he will step down to put the professional ambitions of his wife first.
Rubin Ritter, the co-chief executive of German firm Zalando, will resign at the company’s annual meeting in May next year ‘to devote time to my growing family’ and support the career of his wife, who is believed to be a judge.
Ritter, who is expecting his second child with his wife next year, has been in the job since 2010.
Tasked with overseeing strategy and communications, the 38-year-old helped turn the Berlin-based start-up from into one of the world’s top online fashion retailers with 14,000 employees and net profit of almost £90million ($121 million) in 2019.
‘My wife and I have agreed that for the coming years, her professional ambitions should take priority,’ he said in a statement on Sunday.
Rubin Ritter, the co-chief executive of German firm Zalando, will resign at the company’s annual meeting in May next year ‘to devote time to my growing family’
Ritter, who was responsible for strategy and communication at the top of the company, said he was eager to ‘explore new interests beyond Zalando’. His contract was due to expire in November 2023.
The company declined to provide details on Ritter’s wife or her profession, but German media described her as a judge.
The head of Zalando’s supervisory board, Cristina Stenbeck, said the company regretted Ritter’s decision but ‘we have the highest respect for the underlying personal motivation.’
Last month, Ritter published the company’s first report on diversity and inclusion, saying these should be seen as ‘an opportunity rather than a challenge’.
The company has been criticized for currently having only men on its five-member management board.
Ritter’s move is unusual in Germany, where the gender pay gap remains one of the largest in Europe.
Tasked with overseeing strategy and communications, the 38-year-old helped turn the Berlin-based start-up from into one of the world’s top online fashion retailers with 14,000 employees and net profit of almost £90million ($121 million) in 2019
Women on average earned 20 percent less than men in 2019 according to federal statistics agency Destatis, partly because many women in Germany work part-time.
Berlin start-up Zalando was founded in 2008 and has been run by a three-member CEO team consisting of Ritter, Robert Gentz and David Schneider since 2010.
The site has risen to become Europe’s leading online clothing retailer, employing 14,000 employees and serving 17 countries.
It posted revenues of 1.85 billion euros ($2.2 billion) in the third quarter of 2020, up 22 percent year-on-year as the pandemic has boosted online shopping.
‘When we started to ship the first shoes to our customers from the basement of our office, we did not know where the journey would lead us. It is impossible to overstate Rubin’s impact on Zalando’s success,’ Gentz said.
