Building a Career, One Step at a Time
A marketing career rarely follows a straight line. Mine certainly didn’t. It started in the world of fashion and retail, moved through a fast-moving digital agency, quietly grew into something bigger at a radiator company in the Netherlands, and eventually landed me managing marketing for a global brand across the Benelux. Looking back, every step made sense. At the time, it just felt like figuring it out as I went.
Where it started: Brova
Fashion moves fast. Seasons change before you’ve caught your breath, collections land before the previous one has sold through, and the pressure to present everything perfectly, consistently, and on time is relentless. It was exactly the right place to start a career in marketing and design.
Brova and the brands behind the names
My first professional role was at Brova, a company that managed a portfolio of well-known Dutch fashion and retail names: HoutBrox, Intersport, Duthler Dutch, and Purdey. Each brand had its own identity, its own customer, and its own visual language. My job was to understand all of them and make sure the materials we produced reflected that; from seasonal campaigns and in-store communications to promotional print and visual presentations.
What retail teaches you that nothing else does
Working in fashion retail is a masterclass in discipline. Deadlines are non-negotiable because the season waits for no one. Visual consistency matters because a brand that looks different in every touchpoint is a brand that doesn’t stick. And speed matters, because by the time something is perfect, the moment may already have passed.
I learned to work quickly without cutting corners. I learned that good design serves a commercial purpose, not just an aesthetic one. And I learned that managing multiple brands simultaneously means you can never afford to lose track of which voice belongs to which identity.
The foundation underneath everything else
I didn’t know it at the time, but Brova gave me something that would underpin every role that followed: the ability to hold several brands in my head at once, switch between them fluently, and deliver work that felt right for each one. That skill, working across different identities without losing clarity or quality, is something I use every single day. Whether I’m building a website for a breeder, designing a show flyer for an association, or developing a social strategy for a tack shop, each client gets a result that is theirs; not a template, not a recycled concept, but something built for them specifically.
It started in fashion. As it turns out, it fits everywhere.
