Profiles

Ralf Duester is co-founder and Managing Director of Setlog GmbH and responsible for Supply Chain Management and Logistics. He is also President and Chief Executive Officer of Setlog Corp. the 100% subsidiary of Setlog GmbH, based in New York.

He is board member and Vice President of the Log-IT Club/Logistikcluster NRW with its more than 270 member companies from global sourcing industries from logistics, as well as from management consultancies, and member of the Executive Committee of the Logistics Cluster at the Federal State NRW. Mr. Duester is a member of several leading organizations: the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP); the American Apparel&Footwear Association (AAFA) and the Bundesverband Logistik (BVL) – the German Federal Logistics Association as well as member of the advisory board of NRW Invest (USA) LLC.

He is a qualified logistics manager and obtained a degree in Business Management, specializing in marketing and foreign trade. He is an expert in Sourcing, Supply Chain management and Logistics in the apparel market and in the consumer goods industry.

After one year in the import and export department of the logistics company Lep Group International, Mr. Duester worked for ten years for the Steilmann Group, the largest apparel group at the time. Here he was responsible for planning, purchasing, and the management of international transportation and finance. Amongst other assignments in this company which had fourteen subsidiaries, he was entrusted both with the corporate-wide management of global export logistics, as well as with sourcing logistics in Asia. As Director of Asia Singapore in the Steilmann Group Asia Limited (SGAL Ltd) he was responsible for purchasing-logistics planning as well as for the financing of Asian suppliers in the documentary transfer of payments. Together with the Management Consultancy McKinsey, he directed the restructuring of the Steilmann Group’s complete logistical process.

Subsequently Mr. Duester acted as Director of Logistics at Matchbid AG, Dusseldorf. His area of operations during these one-and-a-half years included the complete logistics management of marketplace customers, as well as the development and implementation of Internet-based logistics applications.