Profile: Lidl's new UK boss Christian Härtnagel

Ronny Gottschlich exited the UK chief executive’sseat at Lidl last month after six years at the helm and was followed swiftly by chief operating officer Martin Bailie, who quit earlier this month.

Filling the void at the top is new chief executive Christian Härtnagel, who has been drafted in from the discounter’s Austrian division at the tender age of 34 to fill Gottschlich’s shoes.

Härtnagel will need to quickly demonstrate a retail nous beyond his years if he is to maintain the force of Lidl’s British invasion.

From shopfloor to top floor

What Härtnagel lacks in age and familiarity with the British market, he will hope to make up for with his knowledge of the wider Lidl business.

Born in Nuremberg, Härtnagel began his career at Lidl Germany in 2003 as a store customer assistant while studying economics at university in Lörrach.

Upon graduating three years later, he took on the permanent role of area manager in south Germany and quickly moved through the discounter’s ranks.

By 2009, Härtnagel was promoted to head of logistics for a regional distribution centre and later spent time as head of sales at Lidl Ireland’s Newbridge warehouse as part of his international regional director training, which he completed in 2014.

A further promotion to regional director in Charleville in County Cork followed, before he switched countries again to become a board director at Lidl Austria.

His toughest task yet

Most would agree that Härtnagel’s latest role is his toughest test yet.

The keen football fan is tackling the UK market at a time when the big four are finding their shooting boots once more.

Tesco has got its house in order, selling off non-core businesses and investing in price.

Sainsbury’s has acquired Home Retail Group as it steps up its fulfilment proposition and revamps larger stores.

Morrisons is leveraging its vertically integrated model and driving up customer service levels to woo shoppers back into stores.

Even Asda, bullied into near submission by the discounters, is on the cusp of launching a fightback as a new leadership team breathes fresh optimism into the embattled grocer.

Shore Capital director Clive Black estimates that, amid that fiercely competitive backdrop, Lidl is currently suffering like-for-like sales decline of between 4% and 6%.

“If the business is starting to go into a bit of a dip – and it might just be a rogue data point or a rogue period – it’s intriguing that it has corresponded with a change in management,” Black says.

“To my mind, the Lidl business model wasn’t broken in the UK. Therefore, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

“But they do need to work out, if trade is spinning down, why that is.”

Keeping prices sharp

Black suggests that a dip in store standards, in terms of both cleanliness and availability, could be Lidl’s number one problem.

But he believes keeping prices sharp is also critical.

“The discounters may have a price lead over superstores, but they don’t have the lead they did have and that is starting to be picked up by shoppers,” he says.

“It’s probably got as good as it’s going to get for Aldi and Lidl in the UK, but that doesn’t mean they are not here to stay and that they can’t make more progress.”

Härtnagel’s paymasters in Germany will be demanding such progress.

But if his impressive career to date is anything to go by, he may just have a few ‘Lidl Surprises’ of his own up his sleeve.