There are some individuals who earn their reputation from visibility. But there are also others whose reputation comes from being close to reality after years of being near enough to decisions, consequences, and results in order to know which of these stand the test of time. Malte Karstan is definitely one of the latter.
Having spent the last three decades immersed in the constantly changing world of global commerce, he has seen business plans become popular and quietly forgotten, companies grow in record time only to collapse again almost overnight, entire product categories undergo revolutions where clarity beats confidence. Such experience has taught him far more than opinions can- namely, judgment.
Working shoulder to shoulder with top executives and interacting closely with both corporate boards and investors who have to make critical choices, Malte has consistently provided his insights into the current state of affairs and the direction markets are taking in a range of global retail and luxury brands. It should come as no surprise then that the driving force behind Malte’s work is never abstractions or storytelling per se; rather, it is about outcomes: improvement, changes, and endurance.
A Mindset Built on Conviction, Not Noise
For Malte, evangelism is a mindset- one that is built on genuine conviction rather than clever positioning. Without belief in what you are saying, he argues, advocacy is just noise. That philosophy has shaped everything about the way he works.
He entered the digital commerce world in its earliest, most uncertain days. Back then, nobody fully understood what the internet would do to buying and selling. Concepts like e-commerce, digital marketplaces, and online brand building were still being figured out in real time. Malte grew alongside all of it, learning not from textbooks but from experience and from watching ideas succeed, fail, scale, and collapse.
After thirty years, he has developed something that cannot be taught in any classroom: pattern recognition. Malte watches how hype cycles work, how inflated expectations give way to premature scaling, and how things eventually consolidate into something genuinely useful. That recognition is what keeps him grounded when the rest of the industry is chasing momentum.
From eBay to Agentic AI: Three Decades, One Truth
Very few professionals in the retail and commerce space can say they were present at the very beginning of the digital revolution and are still at the frontier today. Malte is one of them. He was there during the early days of eBay and NetMarket, when the idea of buying something from a stranger on the internet still felt strange. He watched those early experiments slowly become habits, and habits slowly become industries.
Through all of that change- mobile commerce, globalisation of marketplaces, the rise of social selling, and now the emergence of artificial intelligence, Malte has held onto one fundamental insight about consumer behaviour: people have always optimised for trust and convenience, and they always will.
Every channel has changed. Every device has transformed. Every payment method, algorithm, and discovery mechanism has changed dramatically. But the consumer is still asking the same two questions before making a decision. Can I trust this? And is this easy for me? Those questions drove purchasing behaviour in the early days of eBay, and they are driving it today on TikTok Shop and Zalando. The mechanisms that answer those questions have evolved, but the need behind them has not.
Platform Strategy: Winning Without Losing Yourself
Malte supports organisations across a wide range of global commerce platforms- Amazon, Tmall Global, TikTok Shop, Temu, Zalando, Rakuten, Jumia, Shopee, Bol, and many others. His work in this space spans market entry, cross border expansion, and global marketplace acceleration. And the first thing he tells every legacy brand entering this landscape is something they may not want to hear: “You cannot compete with platforms like Temu or TikTok Shop on their own terms, and trying to do so will cost you more than it returns.”
Those platforms operate on fundamentally different economics- manufacturer-to-consumer supply chains, algorithmic demand creation, and efficiency at a scale that legacy brands simply cannot replicate. Attempting to match them erodes margin and, worse, erodes brand identity. The smarter move, he argues, is to play to your own strengths rather than chase someone else’s model.
Speaking to Three Different Worlds at Once
One of the things that sets Malte apart from most advisors is his ability to move fluently between the creative, the technical, and the financial dimensions of any business challenge. He works with brand designers who think in narrative and identity, data engineers who think in systems and logic, and private equity investors who think in risk, return, and time horizons. Being able to speak meaningfully to all three, without losing coherence, is what he calls trilingual authority.
Malte is clear that this is not about mastering three vocabularies. It is about understanding three fundamentally different value systems. A designer may protect brand integrity over short-term revenue. An engineer may prioritise system stability over speed. An investor may accept complexity if the return justifies it. Recognising those trade-offs, and knowing where alignment is possible versus where it is not, is what allows Malte to drive outcomes that all three sides respect.
He advises young consultants who want to develop this capability to invest in genuine immersion. “There are no shortcuts. You have to sit with designers long enough to understand why certain decisions resist measurement. You have to work with engineers long enough to grasp what system constraints actually feel like. You have to study how investors evaluate value creation beyond the headline numbers. Without that depth, you are only translating words, not meaning,” shares Malte.
The Habit He Is Most Proud of Breaking
Malte does not hesitate while discussing about the most significant legacy he has left inside the boardrooms he has worked with. The habit he is most proud of helping leadership teams abandon is the management of business through channel silos and internal attribution battles.
For years, he watched organisations define success by which channel was winning- stores versus e-commerce, wholesale versus direct, region versus region. Entire structures were built around those internal battles.
Resources were allocated, KPIs were set, and leadership conversations were consumed by questions of credit rather than questions of performance. The customer, somewhere in the middle of all that competition, received a fragmented and inconsistent experience.
What made the habit so hard to break was that it was not just a mindset problem. It was embedded into operating models- into reporting structures, incentive systems, and organisational design. Addressing it required fundamental change: shared metrics, aligned incentives, integrated data, and often, genuinely difficult decisions about leadership roles and responsibilities.
But every time he has helped a leadership team make that shift, from internal competition to unified demand management, the same two things have happened. The customer experience has improved. And the business economics have improved with it. Because an organisation that stops working against itself can finally focus all of its energy on the person it is actually there to serve.
Zero-Click Commerce: When the Brand Must Travel Without You
As generative AI platforms evolve into full commerce channels, Malte is already advising brands on the implications of what he calls zero-click commerce: a world where a consumer may discover and purchase a product without ever visiting the brand’s own website. Discovery and transaction happen inside an AI interface. The brand’s digital home becomes a secondary touchpoint, if it is visited at all.
Malte’s response to this is not alarm. It is a strategic reframe: move from destination-based branding to system based branding. Instead of concentrating storytelling in one controlled environment, brands need to ensure that their identity, values, and product narratives are embedded consistently across every data point that an AI system might access- product descriptions, imagery, metadata, reviews, and third-party content. In a mediated world, a brand is only as strong as the consistency of its signals across the entire ecosystem.
He also stresses that owned moments remain powerful. Even if discovery happens elsewhere, brands still control key touchpoints- the packaging, the delivery experience, the post-purchase communication, and the physical environment. These moments become anchors of emotional connection in a journey that is otherwise increasingly mediated by algorithms. Brands that invest in these moments will hold an advantage that no platform can easily replicate.
Since 2020, Malte has also been co-hosting a leading industry podcast that brings these conversations to a broader audience. Beyond that, he is a sought-after keynote speaker at major global events spanning retail, e-commerce, and M&A- stages where the questions are hard and the audiences are not easily impressed. He has been invited to speak and appear on podcasts with increasing frequency across international markets, from South Africa to Germany, France, and beyond. His public presence is an extension of his advisory work- grounded, direct, and built on the same principle that has guided his entire career: the most valuable thing you can offer any leader is an unfiltered, evidence-backed view of the world as it actually is.
The Strategist the Industry Keeps Calling Back
Thirty years is a long time to stay relevant in any industry. In commerce, an industry that has reinvented itself multiple times over, it is genuinely rare. Malte has managed it not by chasing every new trend or rebranding his expertise with each passing cycle, but by staying anchored to something that does not change: the belief that good strategy begins with understanding people, builds on honest evidence, and ends with clear, actionable outcomes.
Malte operates at the intersection of retail, e-commerce, luxury, AI, and M&A- a combination of disciplines that very few practitioners can navigate with equal confidence. His experience spans hands-on operational leadership, strategic transformation, and M&A-driven value creation. From guiding enterprise-scale turnaround initiatives to advising investors on commercial due diligence, market potential, and post-deal integration, his focus has never wavered: help organisations drive sustainable, scalable growth.
Malte stands for something different in a business world that moves quickly, talks loudly, and values confidence over clarity. He believes in the kind of thinking that lasts, the kind that still makes sense three years later, when the hype has simmered down and the real work of building something lasting has begun.