Glow25

Glow25 ist die europaweit führende Plattform für Schönheit, die kein Alter kennt. Unser fachübergreifendes Team an Expert:innen aus Biologie, Gesundheit & positiver Psychologie entwickelt funktionale Lebensmittel, Gewohnheiten und Community-Erfahrungen, die Menschen dabei unterstützen, sich beim Blick in den Spiegel (wieder) wohl in ihrer Haut zu fühlen.

Co-Gründer & Strategischer CEO

Primal State Performance GmbH

Die Primal State Performance GmbH gilt als eine der führenden Plattformen für gesunde Leistungsfähigkeit im deutschsprachigen Raum. 

Unser +100-köpfiges Team entwickelt und vertreibt funktionale Lebensmittel, Techniken und Hilfsmittel für mehr Energie, Fokus und Wohlbefinden im Alltag.

🌱 Co-Founder Glow25 | 🚀 Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies Europe | 🇩🇪 Top 3 fastest growing eCom in GER | ❣️ Top 3 Best Employers in Berlin | 🎤 New Podcast: LebensWerk (Link in BIO)

✍️ Hey! My name is Rafa. I am currently spending my days as the Strategic CEO of Glow25, a brand with a mission to change the narrative of "aging" from something we are scared of to something we can celebrate. If you don't know this brand, and you are based in DACH, it's not unlikely that your (grand)parents do. The fact, that...

...our team of around 120 people is nominated as:

🌎 Top 100 fastest growing companies in Europe (Financial Times Europe), 
🇩🇪 Top 3 fastest growing eCom brand in Germany (Statista), 
❣️ Top 3 best rated employer in Berlin (Kununu)...

...literally gives me chills.

Not, because our legendary team is bootstrapping this project from 0 to 9-figure level in around 3 years without classical investment rounds or VC money. 

BUT...

...because this "street credibility" gives me a chance to respectfully discuss with old school founders, CEOs, and leaders of other companies...

...if building a sustainably successful business and team REALLY requires elbows, blame & shame games, systematic passive-aggressive behavior, a culture of pressure and fear, or reducing humans to their mere performance.

Humbly, I am convinced that it does not. 

🌱 My intention on this platform is to share my journey as founder, leader, CEO, and human with the mission to have a meaningful impact in this life:

How? Not by „saving the world“ or „building an empire“ or „legacy“.

But by courageously discovering and expressing who I am, and why I am here. 

If these words resonante, happy to connect.

R

🤯 Rekordmonat: Während sich Marketer weltweit auf Black Friday vorbereiten, ist der „Glowember” schon halb vorbei.

Dieses Jahr hat das Glow25-Team die bislang durchdachteste, umfangreichste und kreativste Kampagne für Black November erstellt. 

Wir nennen sie "Glowwember". 

Das Ergebnis:

Rekordumsätze mit dreistelligem Wachstum im eigenen Onlineshop.

Wir haben schon jetzt bereits an 3 Tagen den Umsatz des Black Friday letzten Jahres übertroffen. 

Absolut wild. Und ich bin super stolz auf das gesamte Team ❣️

Wer im E-Com arbeitet, kennt die Situation vor dem großen Sale:

Bestände checken.
Rabatte kalkulieren.
Creatives entwickeln.
Kampagnen aufsetzen.
Onlineshop vorbereiten.

und so weiter …

Obendrauf noch hohe Ziele und maximaler Druck.

Ich kenne viele E-Com Brands, die während dieser Zeit sogar eine Urlaubssperre verhängen und trotzdem nicht hinterherkommen. 

Und das ist völlig nachvollziehbar.

Als Glow25 noch viel kleiner war und noch Primal State hieß, war ich für die Black November Kampagnen verantwortlich, das Team damals waren noch 2 weitere Kollegen.

Ich weiß noch, wie ich Tag ein Tag aus bis nach Mitternacht am Schreibtisch saß und irgendwie noch Copy, Landeseiten, Emails und Co. zusammengebaut habe. 

Also falls du eine kleine E-Com-Brand gerade baust: I feel you. 

Heute läuft das alles etwas anders.

Glow25 ist erwachsener. 

Wir haben dedizierte Teams für Content, Performance Marketing, Logistik, Finance und alle anderen Departments, die bei einem Sale involviert sind.

Gefühlt "jede Person" im Team hat irgendwo mit angepackt. Und bereits viele Wochen vor November mit dem Kampagnenbau gestartet.

Jetzt geht es darum, den November auch erfolgreich abzuschließen. 

Auch unser Logistik-Team darf die Rekordumsätze in zeitnahe Lieferungen für unsere Kundinnen in ganz Europa verwandeln.

Woran ich mich noch gewöhnen muss:

👉 Das alles passiert in meiner Rolle als Ex-CEO und Gesellschafter komplett ohne mein Involvement.

Ein Beweis, dass Glow25 von und mit einem fantastischen Team geführt wird.

Vielen Dank an das gesamte Team für euren Einsatz.

Let’s grow & glow together ✨

Rafael Frenk

🌍 Scaling news: Glow25 almost quit international markets, now we are exploding. What changed? 

Ok ... let’s talk about failures.

At Glow25, while the DACH market was booming, we struggled to repeat our growth story in international markets for some time. 

And honestly, we were disappointed. And asked ourselves:

How can this be?

We had a strong international team under Lea Wagner, Marcele Guimarães, and Clarisse Pieter. 

We even installed a special task force, the: 

🥷 "ISU - International Scaling Unit" 

... that was working tirelessly to create powerful marketing funnels in markets outside of DACH.

The result? We grew nicely.

But Glow25 does not like "nice".
We love BAM. 

So what was the issue? 

Not the people. They are highly talented, dedicated, and great.

The issue was our "company mindset" that was driven by us founders, and especially by me as the former CEO. 

I personally had a huge blind spot in creating our organization. 

Yes, we were speaking English. 
Yes, we hired international talent. 

But the company identity was "German", 99% of everything we were doing was for the DACH market, with international being an afterthought.
 
The consequence:

No alignment on international product launches.
No alignment on marketing ops.
No alignment on messaging.
No alignment on reporting.

We treated internationalization as sort of an external project.

No wonder we failed.

And even though some team members pointed this out to me in the past, I was so focused on Germany that I did not really "get it". 

It took our new CEO Steven Mattwig and CFO Arnd Mückenberger to point this problem out earlier this year. 

They did, and together with the team, they are solving it fast. 

👉 Now, internationalization is at the very core of our organization.

As a result, we can identify behaviors and patterns from customers across all countries.

This enables us to combine country-specific measures with global best practices to create maximum impact within a certain market.

The results speak for themselves:

🔥 Now, we’re already No.1 in the Netherlands on Bol & Amazon.
🔥 Now, we just secured our first retail listing in the Netherlands.
🔥 Now, we are hitting 8-figure-level, while growth is accelerating.

As you can see in the pic, the search volume for our brand is going up all over Europe.

I LOVE the fact that we turned a weakness into a strength.

We could have just said:

Ok, let's keep Glow25 a DACH company for now. 

But this felt strange. We felt that this company is meant to have a global impact in the pro-aging field. 

We just needed some more time to crack the code.

In the end, it comes down to a simple question:

"Are you building a local or an international company?"

If it's an international one, you have to massage this identity into every goal, process, and project you are thinking about. 

Sounds easier than it is. 

But it’s worth it. 🔥

Thx Glow25-Team!

P.S.: Are you scaling internationally? How is it working?

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