About the episode
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From hospitality to high-tech: what do 12 years of working in hospitality, e-commerce, electronics, teach you about building a business that truly understands its customer?

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In this episode of Retail Re:Mix Stories, we sit down with Sabrina Würfel, Head of Direct to Consumer (D2C) Business at Samsung Gulf Electronics who went from semi-professional figure skating to an early-2000s internship answering car repair questions for a secondhand dealer's online community, to running e-commerce for a 200-year-old German hotel, to building Samsung's D2C business from scratch in a region she'd never set foot in.

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This conversation dives into it all. We're talking how a towel-swan A/B test was proven wrong by a head of housekeeping, how Samsung launched its e-commerce platform across 8 countries in 8 months mid-pandemic, why "no one reads emails here" upended everything she believed about marketing in Europe, and how she balances supporting Samsung's omnichannel presence while still giving customers an added value proposition  to buy direct.

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Sabrina also breaks down what customer loyalty really means beyond a points program, why personalization should start from your first click and not your first purchase, why data silos are the real enemy of a D2C business, and her take on AI as an "Agent Maestro", powerful, but only as good as the humans who train and direct it.
Plus, she's been doing this for 12 years and still says she's learning every day. She loses more sleep over enabling her team than hitting targets, and her rule for problem-solving is simple: don't bring her a problem without three solutions.

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If you're building D2C in the GCC, scaling e-commerce inside a big organization, or just want to understand how to lead through constant change, this one's for you.

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About the guest

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About Sabrina Würfel

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Sabrina Würfel is a regional digital commerce and product leader with over 12 years of experience across MENA and Europe, including 7+ years in senior leadership. She is the head of Direct to Consumer Business for Samsung Gulf Electronics and has experience across 13 markets in the Middle East and North Africa, owning regional P&L, platform strategy, localisation, payments, and customer experience. Her work sits at the intersection of commerce, product, and platforms, scaling ecosystems, launching regional apps, and turning global capabilities into commercially successful regional execution.

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About your host, ⁠⁠Dharmendra Mehta

⁠⁠Dharmendra is the Managing Director, MEA at Fynd and a retail-tech veteran with 20+ years. From startups to global giants, he’s all about bold moves, smarter tech, and building brands that mean business

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