You would expect a retail CEO to understand the finer details of products, but perhaps not as far back as Constanze Freienstein can go.
She explains that her violin is a 19th century trade instrument, modeled off the Jacobus Stainer violins of the 17th century, and inherited from Constanze’s grandfather. Her daughter Feodora’s violin is a trade model of an Amati that was carried into World War II by her paternal great-grandfather Alfred.
Stainer violins had been the most sought-after instrument in the 17th and 18th century and musicians / composers that owned a Stainer violin include Johann Sebastian Bach and W. A. Mozart. Amatis are known for their warm, sweet tone. As she explains, in the 1900s, trade manufacturers found a way to industrialize and scale the manufacturing of musical instruments what was still an incredibly exacting production process with rich results: The instruments sing.
Constanze played violin through childhood and university, and has played in symphony and chamber orchestras throughout her career in retail. She started in marketing at Proctor & Gamble, was Senior Vice President, Customer and Marketing, at Hudson’s Bay Company and CEO for Lands' End Europe.
Eventually, after more than a decade abroad in the U.S. and the U.K. she felt it was time to move back to her home country, Germany.
She joined AlixPartners in 2023 in the Retail practice in the Dusseldorf office, drawn to a role that would parlay her industry and consulting experiences and allow her to dive deeper into companies’ opportunities than the day-to-day focus of CMO and CEO roles allowed. At AlixPartners, there is “deep collaboration, thinking about things together, developing things together, and discussing the right approach,” she says.
In a senior team model, she explains, things work a lot like an orchestra, where accomplished soloists come together and contribute to something bigger. “There are very different skills, but you play together and find ways of respecting each other, listening to each other, giving people space when it's their time,” she says, “and the result is a wonderful piece of art brought to life.”
One of her first projects was a QuickStrike for a luxury fashion company, where she looked at the stitching, double facing, and other product details in an examination of profit margins for luxury segments—it all comes down to how the product performs for customers, she says.
“I look at every business I work with from a customer-first perspective,” says Constanze. “I am a marketer at heart and this will never change for me.”
She has also done a digital venture-building project in which the team built an AI-enabled digital business that is designed to deliver millions of dollars of additional revenue. The work was “extremely creative and strategic, but also very intense working closely with the client team all along the way.”
Her skills as a leader have come into play, but she emphasizes the teamwork aspect of the work the Retail team do—the melding of individual skills.
Those magical harmonics have been the throughline of her life; Constanze reels off a series of pieces that are particularly likely to move her. Her household has always been filled with music, from her grandfather playing his violin at Christmas when she was a child to the music her son and daughter now create on piano and violin.
Listen to some of Constanze's favorite pieces:
Constanze joined a chamber orchestra in Dusseldorf after returning to Germany. Previously, she had been playing with Rutland Sinfonia in the U.K. She explains that strings in an orchestra create a “thick, dense, lovely sound like a carpet that often times carries the melody but can also blend into the background and enable other instruments to come to life and shine.”
The sentiment holds for her career. She could have moved into another CEO role after Lands’ End, but chose to solve client challenges on the consulting side where she could impact many companies, rather than just one, and help teammates to grow alongside her.
“Many of the people I had in my teams are in leadership roles themselves now,” she says. “It’s very rewarding.”