Change to Weleda: Manager Tina Müller on the nature trip

When the boss of the Douglas perfumery chain planned her company’s new flagship store on Düsseldorf’s Königsallee a year and a half ago, the hairdresser was particularly important to the woman at the top. Tina Müller’s personal house and court hair cutter was to move into the new branch, and the head of the group made every effort to do so with dedication. Yes, a small hairdressing table in the back corner on the first floor, that fits in with a business where everything should be about well-being. There was only one problem: Tina Müller’s Düsseldorf hairdresser is a well-known expert in natural hair care – and as such he steadfastly refused to use and tout all those chemical-based remedies that Douglas was supposed to sell in the shop. And the whole hairdressing corner should basically serve their sales. Tina Müller did not manage to resolve the dilemma. And so, after weeks of back and forth, she regretfully had to cancel her hair wizard.

Müller has not been at the helm of Douglas for almost a year. And it still seems a little strange today how lovingly the boss of a billion-dollar corporation with stock market plans and restructuring needs took care of positioning the hairdressing table in front of the fire extinguishers and filling it with her favorite hair clipper. But the hairdressing history at her previous company shows two things: Müller has always been able to use her networks, her personal preferences and connections for business. And personally, she had been on the organic cosmetics trip for a long time, with openly admitted preferences for crazy natural teachings in everyday life: “I get up between 6 and 6.30 a.m. – and now it sounds a bit esoteric – first drink some water with added energy. And then another liter of green tea.” This is how she once described her start of the day in the “Bild” newspaper.

Now Müller has turned her passion into a profession: At the beginning of the week she announced that she would be switching to the natural cosmetics brand Weleda as head of the company. The move comes as surprising as her departure from Douglas, presumably caused by the owners. Because Tina Müller’s ambition originally envisaged more than Weleda: Even if she was no longer able to achieve her previously often rumored goal of becoming the first female Dax CEO. She had always made it clear that she saw herself in this league. With a position on the board of the car manufacturer Opel, she tried to establish herself outside of her traditional cosmetics industry – and invented the famous “Reparking in the Head” advertising campaign there.

Descent or switch?

But the hoped-for industrial career did not make the short detour any easier. In Germany, it is difficult for a marketing expert to advance into the CEO league, Müller complained in an interview with Capital in spring 2022. In this country, production specialists or financiers would be preferred. A successful Douglas IPO might have given her more credibility for such a career move. But first the corona pandemic thwarted the plans. And then the main owner of Douglas, the financial fund CVC, who would rather see a cost manager for the way to the stock exchange at the top than continue to rely on the expansion-loving Tina Müller in times of the sales crisis.

The change to Weleda is now surprising in several respects in terms of career: The company is much smaller than Douglas and will never be found only in the vicinity of Dax companies. Weleda turned over around 414 million euros in 2022, at Douglas it was 3.65 billion euros. Douglas employs a good 18,000 people, Weleda only around 2,500. “For me, the priority is that I take on a meaningful job, the goal of which is to make people’s lives more beautiful and, above all, healthier,” she said to the “Handelsblatt” unmoved by what could formally be seen as a descent.

In addition, as an anthroposophical company, Weleda concedes business figures as success factors of secondary importance. Tina Müller’s preference for showing off numbers will have to give way to other things. Nevertheless, she also has a kind of restructuring task ahead of her at Weleda – i.e. something that the Douglas shareholders no longer believed her capable of: The natural cosmetics manufacturer reported a minus of 3.3 million euros before depreciation and taxes (EBIT) for the past year. Sales fell by 2.6 percent. Jobs have been cut and a factory in France closed. “2022 was definitely not an easy year,” said Müller. Profits would be written again this year.

For the new job, the manager, who grew up in Bad Neuenahr in the Palatinate, will move to Switzerland, where one of the two headquarters of the anthroposophic company is located. Before she decided to make the change, she let herself be guided through the company’s herb garden near the company’s German headquarters in Schwäbisch-Gmünd, reported Müller. Weleda uses some of the raw materials for its cosmetic and medicinal products there.

This article first appeared on “”.