Moritz Koehler
Work location: Shanghai
I come from Munich, Germany. I joined the company in January 2019. At that time, I wanted to change my field (from Quality to Procurement), and Melchers offered the perfect vacant position for my request. In this procurement manager position, I could still put my previous job experience to good use for the company. Besides the fact I also wanted to be located in Shanghai, the job promised a challenging environment and many rooms for personal growth, which convinced me that this is the right opportunity. The recruitment process itself was very straight forward and of good transparency.
Being a trading company for technical components (buying in China, selling in Europe), we are handling all supplier and operations-related workload in our China offices. This means sourcing new suppliers, getting quotes for new projects, managing projects, handling running orders, ensuring the quality of products, supervising the shipping process, etc. About 80% of my working time I spend in the office and 20% visiting suppliers and factories. My office days are pretty routine, which is nice, to be honest, because this allows me to focus on the actual work on hand. When on the road, our schedule is quite different. We visit tiny and big suppliers, one-day trips (back and forward trips by plane within one day), and trips lasting more than a week, depending on the project and the need for us to be on the side.
There are two skills that help me for my job: 1) Chinese Language: even though I am still in the process of mastering Mandarin, it helps me a great deal with my daily work. Many of our small suppliers (especially the older senior managers/owners) do not speak English. Without speaking some Chinese, I could not build a relationship with these suppliers or enter into negotiations; 2) My previous job as Quality Manager, taught me a lot of the importance of process and procedures even in daily (office) operations. Almost every job/task can be expressed as a process, and if there is a process, you can iteratively improve it. Due to the Melchers group structure, the individual business units and companies are granted much independence. Luckily, this freedom and power to make decisions are also passed down from the business unit managers to each employee. However, “with great power also comes great responsibility”, so one must also structure and arrange his work/objectives. However, I enjoy this environment very much since I can actively shape my work environment and personally grow in the process.
Simply put, Melchers is a company to stay and grow. As can be well seen there are many Melchers ’employees (in China and Germany) who are working here for more than 20 years. Melchers being an “Honourable Merchant” is fair to their business partners and their employees, which makes Melchers a very “pro-employee” company with a great work-life balance. If you can manage to work in an environment with high freedom and responsibility, I can recommend Melchers as a great place to work.
