The person behind Store Standard
About
I've spent close to two decades in retail, the last ten of them at Ralph Lauren, in high-volume stores, finishing with a $75 million P&L, a team of over 300 and more than 20 managers.
I started as an intern in a stockroom, then a weekend job, then the shop floor, assistant manager, assistant general manager, general manager, and multi-site manager. Every step came with more responsibility and more scope, and very little of it came with an explanation of how the business underneath it actually worked.
I should say that none of what I achieved in that last role was achieved on my own. I had managers who stayed with me for years, who grew as I grew, and without them there would have been nothing to show for any of it. I've been fortunate in that respect, both in the teams I worked with and the people I reported to, and it's part of why I've ended up doing what I do now.
The gap
What was actually missing
A lot of people in store leadership will recognise this. You're given the role and the responsibility, and beyond a handful of KPIs and some inspirational quotes, the expectations aren't made particularly clear. The tools you're supposed to be using tend to be assumed rather than given. What's missing, in my experience, is the bigger picture: the business foundations that aren't explicitly part of your role but that absolutely determine what you can achieve in it. While you're filling in those blanks yourself, it can genuinely feel like the information is being kept from you on purpose, even when it isn't.
For a long time I was missing a big part of the why behind decisions being made above me, and like a lot of people in that position I handled it badly. I distanced myself from those decisions, got frustrated, started doing things my own way, and because I was leading a team, they followed me rather than the business. I don't think that's defiance and I don't think it's rare. It's what tends to happen when you're held to a set of outcomes and the mechanics behind those outcomes are never really explained.
The turning point
What changed it
What changed it for me was going back to school, years into the job, and finally filling in the gaps I'd been working around for a decade.
It's worth being accurate about the order though. The results came before the education, not because of it. I was already running one of the best-performing stores in the business. What the education gave me was the ability to explain why it worked, and being able to explain it is what lets you do it somewhere else, or teach it to someone else, instead of just having done it once.
That's the reason Store Standard exists. I've lived what a lot of retail managers are living right now, I've delivered the results, I know what a store looks like when it's run properly, and I also know what the people in those stores are thinking, which is very often not what they're saying.
The record
Experience, education and accolades
Ralph Lauren, 2016 to 2026. Assistant General Manager, then General Manager, then Dual-site Manager across the Netherlands and Belgium.
Along the way I consolidated five separate stores into a single operating model, which then became the flagship I led, and two further stores were added to my remit after that. By the end I held full P&L accountability for $75 million in annual revenue, an organisation of over 300 people and more than 20 managers, across three stores and an off-site operation in two countries.
- EMEA Store Leader of the Year, 2024
- EMEA Raise the Bar Award, 2025
- McArthurGlen Special Recognition, 2022
- Model Store Award, three consecutive seasons, 2024 to 2025
- MBA candidate, University of Edinburgh, completing 2027
- Executive Leadership Programme, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, High Distinction
- BSc Business Administration, Open University of the Netherlands
Based in Maastricht. I work wherever the stores are.