Status: 09.11.2023, 19:09 PM
By: Sina Alonso Garcia
CommentsShare
It has not yet been decided whether Bonita Grupp or her brother Wolfgang will inherit their father as CEO of Trigema. In an interview, she talks about her family and the future of the company.
Burladingen - For Bonita Grupp and her brother Wolfgang, everything revolves around the question in the coming year: Who will inherit their father as Trigema managing director and lead the company into the future? Wolfgang Grupp and his family are still keeping the final decision under wraps. The only thing that is certain so far is that Grupp will initially hand over all of his company shares to his wife at the end of 2023. The latter in turn has six months to hand over the company to one of the children. According to Grupp, the procedure is necessary in order not to have to pay inheritance tax twice, as BW24 reports.
As father Grupp recently explained, he sometimes makes his succession at the top of Trigema dependent on his children's choice of partner. For example, anyone who marries abroad and can no longer be regularly present in Burladingen is therefore eliminated as a successor. If you look at the relationship status of Bonita Grupp and her brother, you can't yet draw any conclusions about who might be more likely to win the race here. While it is known about Wolfgang Grupp Junior that he has a girlfriend in Munich, Bonita said in an interview with the Black Forest Messenger that she is currently single. "I'm currently single again," she openly admitted.
Bonita Grupp: "Person and life planning" must fit the role of the future Trigema boss
According to Bonita, there is no competition with her brother. "We get along really well and complement each other. What is close to both of our hearts and what drives us is to lead the company into the next generation," says the young entrepreneur, who heads the online retail and human resources divisions at Trigema. Ultimately, it is crucial that "the person and the life plan" fit the role of the future Trigema managing director. "And it's not said that if one person runs the company, the other can't work there too."
Bonita and her father Wolfgang Grupp (archive image 2017). © Eventpress/Imago
In the past, critics have repeatedly accused Bonita and her brother of working exclusively in their family's company as company heirs. The 33-year-old explains the move as follows: "My brother and I wanted to work with our father at an early age and learn a lot from him. He's our best mentor." Now that she has been with the company for nine years, the fact that neither of them has had a taste of foreign company air is no longer discussed.
Bonita Grupp: Biography
Born in Burladingen, Bonita Grupp (*1989) and her brother Wolfgang (*1991) attended an elite English-speaking boarding school in Switzerland immediately after primary school. After that, both siblings studied business administration in London. After completing her master's degree in economic history, Bonita Grupp worked at the university for a year and finally started working in the family business in her mid-20s.
When looking to the future of Trigema, Bonita Grupp sees sustainability as her top priority. "Environmental considerations are playing more and more of a role," she says. "And thanks to our regional production, which we have here in the district, we see ourselves well positioned here. In the future, we will be able to communicate topics such as the CO emissions of a product even better to the outside world and make better use of our data." Trigema already offers T-shirts in its range that decompose themselves according to an ecological principle. In the long term, the company is also trying to create a symbiosis between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retail.