VIKING never stands still…

Dorte Hansen is the managing director of VIKING’s French subsidiary and is responsibile for the business area of yachting worldwide.

She is stimulated by the challenge of entering a consumer-based market and greatly appreciates the fact that VIKING’s good reputation has also reached yachting enthusiasts.

After almost twenty years at VIKING, Dorte Hansen notes that the company has lived up to all her expectations and that the trend is continuing. She still finds new challenges and knows she’ll be supported whenever she takes the initiative. VIKING has room for her drive, energy and ideas – and she feels appreciated.

Dorte Hansen started out as a trainee during her economic studies and is now the director of VIKING’s French subsidiary where she also has worldwide responsibility for the yachting market.

“When I applied for a trainee position, I made a deliberate effort to work for VIKING because it’s a global company and because I knew they were interested in entering the French market where I fervently wanted to work. Fortunately, my efforts succeeded, and after I had prepared a market analysis report, I was posted to Paris in January 1993 to start up a subsidiary,” Dorte Hansen explains.

Being Danish was an advantage
It took a tremendous effort to gain a toehold on the French market where the biggest competitors had the home-court advantage, but in retrospect Hansen thinks that it actually helped to be Danish because her “foreignness” made it interesting for prospective customers to meet her. Once she got her foot in the door, she knew how to sell VIKING’s products, because she could vouch for them. And still does.

“I like working with sales and people, and I’m proud of our products because of their excellent quality and because they save lives,” says Hansen, who, from being the one and only employee, now manages a staff of fourteen dispersed over three departments: in Paris, Marseille and Le Havre respectively.

Besides serving as the managing director for the French subsidiary, she is also charged with worldwide responsibility for yachting, VIKING’s relatively new business area primarily targeted on yacht owners.

“In developing this business area, I participate in an international task group whose members come from across the VIKING organisation. This gives me a different approach to things because we’re inspired by the different countries. At the meetings I also see how my colleagues take the same pride in our products that I do, which generates a unique sense of team spirit.”

Life is more than work
A meeting with Dorte Hansen leaves no doubt that she is dedicated to her work and is willing to make an effort and take the initiative. But life is more to her than work because she also wants to spend time with her family, and her husband Torben and two daughters Mathilde and Caroline mean all the world to her.

“My husband is self-employed so we both work a lot, and we spend all our spare time with family and friends. And, as we also want to participate in our children’s activities, we have our hands full!”

“It hasn’t always been easy to be the managing director of a company that had to be built up from scratch and a mother at the same time, but VIKING has the right approach which has made it all possible.”

“It’s characteristic of VIKING to be globally minded and take long-term strategic decisions. There are many opportunities here if you’re enterprising and adaptable, because VIKING never stands still…”

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