Alumni Spotlight -Susanne Rank, BBA '10

MU graduates have a huge variety of employment options, with many of them diving directly into the tourism and hospitality industry securing jobs at international hotels, airlines, and more. When the Shangri-La Hotel didn’t follow through with plans for a Vienna branch, Susanne Rank, BBA ’10, decided to go the entrepreneurial route, and open her own gourmet shop.

‘’What my parents and I really have in common is the passion for travel and food. This is why we have kind of a competition going on, who is bringing back home the most delicious products from various trips. And I have to admit: my parents won – so far! From a business trip to Norway, they brought back home the best salmon I have ever tried! Of course the salmon was quickly finished, and we were desperately looking for a comparable quality to buy in Austria, unfortunately without success.

After my short dream career at the pre-opening of Shangri-La Vienna (they decided after 8 months of the pre-opening phase to not open the hotel due to still unknown reasons), I was frustrated and had no perspective of where and how to continue my hotel career. I had many discussions with my parents of what I could do for work… One day my dad told me that Mr. Mikal, the salmon producer from Norway, was currently looking for somebody taking over sales and distribution for Europe and Russia. Since we could not find a similar quality of salmon here, we thought there would definitely be a business opportunity - it would only be a matter of how to sell and manage it. So, due to the fact that I still had no idea where to work, and furthermore the idea of being self-employed seemed very attractive to me, my parents and I decided to accept this challenge.

The idea we always had in mind was going back to a small specialty shop with excellent service and professional advice. Furthermore, out of our family competition, we collected many contacts to small family-owned manufacturers and this helped us a lot, developing our delicious and very much quality-based product line. And now here we are: at Alserstrasse 41, 1080 Vienna you can find the brand new Relachs Boutique with:

• smoked, graved, and marinated salmon
• awarded D.O.C.G Prosecco and white wine
• different seasonal sauces

Everything is produced from small regional manufacturers with highest quality standards. In order to help guests in making a choice, they are welcome to taste the products before buying them. Now, after two months of operation, we are registering unexpected success. Our guests appreciate the quality and reliability of our products and recommend it to their friends and relatives, which, of course, is the best advertisement. Moreover, we receive requests from whole Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and many other countries, asking where to buy our products. This is why we are thinking of expanding to other business locations, and hence are intensively looking for distribution and franchising partners.

My education at Modul University gave me a lot of self-confidence, which you definitely need when building up a business from the very beginning. I theoretically knew where I must start and what has to be done, such as planning logistics and distribution channels, creating a brand and developing the whole marketing strategy and plans, writing a business plan and gaining investments, choosing suppliers, and many other things. All this knowledge helped me a lot and made it much easier for me so that I could concentrate on the things I was not so aware of. And at this point I also want to thank my parents, as they helped me with the tricky things you can only learn from experience such as negotiations, all the legal issues, and the most important thing: patience!

Although there is a whole lot more risk, responsibility, work, worries, and almost no spare time, I´m very happy being an entrepreneur and can only encourage everybody with a smart idea to just go ahead and try it!’’