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Alexander Thiel

PartnerZurich

Helps leading consumer-goods, apparel, fashion, and luxury companies as well as retailers transform organizations to capture growth and unleash greater productivity

Alexander leads McKinsey’s Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail Practices in Switzerland and coleads McKinsey’s luxury and sporting goods work globally.

In highly competitive consumer-facing industries, Alexander helps leaders set new commercial strategies so they can find sustainable sources of business growth. When organizations must evolve to support the new strategy, he helps lead broad-based organizational transformations. This work often draws on a zero-based approach to assess and redesign business models and organizations, building the core elements of the new model from scratch—a methodology Alexander helped pioneer.

Alexander leads numerous McKinsey research efforts on evolving consumer behavior and applying cutting-edge, design-thinking methodology.

This work has taken Alexander across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, which includes time spent in the firm’s Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore offices.

Published work

Sporting goods 2023: The need for resilience in a world in disarray, McKinsey & Company, January 2023

Tackling inflation and margin pressure in the sporting goods industry,” McKinsey & Company, July 2022

Sporting goods 2022: The new normal is here, McKinsey & Company, January 2022

In fine jewelry and watches, sustainability shines through,” McKinsey & Company, December 2021

State of Fashion: Watches and Jewellery, McKinsey & Company, June 2021

Sporting goods 2021: The next normal for an industry in flux,” McKinsey & Company, January 2021

Is the consumer-goods industry ready for the new world of work?,” McKinsey & Company, January 2020

What business can learn from professional football,” McKinsey & Company, September 2019

The ever-changing store: Taking an agile, customer-centric approach to format redesign,” McKinsey & Company, April 2019

Zero-based productivity—Organization: Using zero-based principles to forge a purpose-built organization,” McKinsey & Company, December 2018

Org redesign: start with a blank page,” McKinsey & Company, May 2018

Fighting portfolio complexity,” McKinsey Quarterly, McKinsey & Company, December 2017

How do winning consumer-goods companies capture growth?,” McKinsey & Company, April 2017

Western Europe’s consumer-goods industry in 2030,” McKinsey & Company, October 2016

The consumer sector in 2030: Trends and questions to consider,” McKinsey & Company, December 2015

Three myths about growth in consumer packaged goods,” McKinsey & Company, June 2015

Education

Stanford Graduate School of Business
MBA

University of St. Gallen Switzerland
BA, business and economics

Columbia University
BA, econometrics, business administration