Rossmann Türkiye names a purchasing and marketing director, how do the two jobs fit?
Melis Erel Onay is Rossmann Türkiye’s new Purchasing & Marketing Director (Perakende Türkiye, 1 September 2026). Her career starts at Metro Cash & Carry, runs through commercial operations and category management at Atelier Rebul and Rofoods Micro Market, and most recently includes the Commercial Director role at Yemeksepeti Market. The report does not give her start date, her reporting line or whether the seat is newly created.
What it means for you: the desk that decides which product gets onto the shelf and the desk that tells shoppers about that product now sit under one title. In autumn 2026, supplier brands in Türkiye’s cosmetics and personal care retail will talk shelf space and campaigns with a single direction at Rossmann. Ask the same at home: does your buyer look at the same numbers as your seller?
Who is Rossmann Türkiye’s Purchasing & Marketing Director, and what does the report say?
The report rests on one fact: Melis Erel Onay takes the title of Purchasing & Marketing Director at Rossmann Türkiye. According to Perakende Türkiye, a Turkish retail trade publication, her areas of experience are category management, purchasing, supply chain, marketing, pricing strategy, retail media, brand management and e-commerce. No separate appointment notice appears on the company’s own website.
What changes at a chain like Rossmann when purchasing and marketing share one director?
BU BÖLÜMÜN ÖZETİ
- Category management gets a shared language
- Pricing is set together with the campaign calendar
- Retail media becomes part of the buying conversation
Speed and consistency of decisions shift in three places: the category plan, pricing and visibility on the shelf. A buyer listing a product can think about how it will be promoted at the same table. Marketing can build a campaign knowing the margin and the stock that purchasing has negotiated.
Category management gets a shared language
Category management treats the shelf like a portfolio: which SKU drives traffic, which one leaves margin, which one just takes up space. Purchasing answers that from the cost side, marketing from customer demand. When both views meet in one person, the product that gets listed and the product that gets promoted are chosen with the same logic.
Pricing is set together with the campaign calendar
In a cosmetics chain, price cannot be separated from the leaflet and the in-app promotion. Marketing plans a discount, but if stock is not ready for it, the goods either sit on the shelf gathering dust or never arrive. When purchasing and marketing work from the same calendar, that gap gets smaller.
Retail media becomes part of the buying conversation
Retail media means a retailer selling advertising space in its own channels to supplier brands. That space is often discussed in the same meeting as listing fees, shelf share and campaign participation. Onay’s experience list names retail media explicitly; the report says nothing more about how it fits into the role.
Who does Rossmann’s appointment affect, and how?
The most directly affected group is the cosmetics and personal care suppliers that sell to Rossmann. Next come brands that buy advertising space in the chain’s channels. Indirectly affected are neighbourhood cosmetics shops, pharmacy retailers and small e-commerce sellers of personal care products on marketplaces, all selling to the same shopper.
What does Melis Erel Onay’s career path say about running the two jobs together?
The path shows the two jobs intertwined at different scales. There is buying discipline in wholesale, category management at a brand company and commercial growth responsibility in quick commerce. At each stop the role looks at both the supply side and the customer side.
Wholesale teaches buying discipline
In a wholesale format like Metro, purchase volumes are large and a cost mistake grows fast.
Quick commerce turns data into daily decisions
In a quick commerce operation like Yemeksepeti Market, you can see in real time which product goes into the basket and which comes out. Commercial growth and category strategy are managed on the same screen.
What should a business owner do this week after Rossmann’s appointment?
BU BÖLÜMÜN ÖZETİ
- Review slow stock with marketing in the room
- Walk into supplier meetings with one shared file
- Read similar appointment news through the same lens
This week, test whether purchasing and marketing in your own business look at the same numbers. If there are two people or two teams, open last month’s ten best sellers and ten slowest sellers together. If the product list, campaign calendar and ad spend do not live in one document, building that document is job one.
Review slow stock with marketing in the room
The stock purchasing is stuck with and the products on marketing’s campaign list are often different items. Put the two lists side by side. Is the campaign budget going to clear stock that is not moving, or to push products that already sell? The comparison gives you the answer.
Walk into supplier meetings with one shared file
Put the campaign support, price discounts and ad contributions you get from each supplier on a single page. In the meeting, that page lets you talk about buying terms and promotion plans at the same time. We build this kind of purchasing and marketing alignment with businesses as part of our digital marketing agency work.
Read similar appointment news through the same lens
A job title shows which decisions a company puts in one pair of hands. Beymen Group’s monobrand sales appointment, reported the same day, ties a sales channel to its own executive. The management change at Anatolium Marmara mall raises a similar question on the tenant side. Our retail page, where we interpret retail news for you, keeps these stories in one frame.
How do Rossmann’s retail media and e-commerce show up in a small brand’s digital work?
BU BÖLÜMÜN ÖZETİ
- Product content has to be ready for the digital shelf
- Measure search data in your own channels
- Local visibility protects the physical store
A chain’s digital storefront is a second shelf for supplier brands. The app, the website and search results are negotiated through share and visibility, just like the physical shelf. To earn a place there, a small brand needs its product content, images and search terms ready.
Product content has to be ready for the digital shelf
Product name, ingredient list, usage information and images should be consistent and complete. Rossmann’s anniversary campaign page is one example of how the chain builds a campaign online.
Measure search data in your own channels
Türkiye’s e-commerce volume grows 52.2% in 2025 to TL 4.567 trillion, and 56% of spending comes from women (Ministry of Trade). Without knowing which searches turn into sales on your own site and marketplace store, sitting at the same table as a chain gets harder.
Local visibility protects the physical store
For a neighbourhood cosmetics shop, a map listing, current opening hours and posts about what is in stock are the cheapest defence against a chain’s campaign power. If your name does not come up when a shopper searches “near me”, campaign-week traffic goes to another door.
Quick Summary
- Melis Erel Onay became Rossmann Türkiye’s Purchasing & Marketing Director (Perakende Türkiye, 1 September 2026).
- Her career runs through Metro, Atelier Rebul, Rofoods Micro Market and Yemeksepeti Market.
- Her start date, reporting line and whether the units were separate before are not in the report.
- Rossmann Türkiye had 208 stores in 43 provinces (Habertürk, October 2025).
- Businesses can use this news to test whether buying and marketing run from one shared table.
Short Glossary
- Category management
- Category management is the retail method used to plan a product group as a single unit based on turnover, margin and customer demand.
- Retail media
- Retail media is the term used to describe a retailer selling advertising space on its own website, app and in-store channels to brands.
- SKU
- SKU, or stock keeping unit, is the code used to track each product variant separately in stock.
Frequently Asked Questions
Next Step
If you want to check together whether your buying and marketing decisions rest on the same data, fill in the consult your expert form.
Sources: Perakende Türkiye, 1 September 2026 · Rossmann Türkiye scale and market data: Habertürk, October 2025 · AYD mall data, April 2026 · Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Trade, 2025 e-commerce data · Rossmann Türkiye official website
Updated: October 2026
Sık Sorulan Sorular
The path starts in wholesale retail at Metro Cash & Carry. Next come Atelier Rebul and Rofoods Micro Market, where the job covers commercial operations and category management. The latest stop is Commercial Director at Yemeksepeti Market, with responsibility for commercial growth and category strategy.
Rossmann Türkiye’s corporate statement says it believes the appointment will make “important contributions to the company’s growth targets”. It names no spokesperson and does not spell out the targets.
We do not know when she starts, who she reports to, who held the role before, or whether purchasing and marketing were separate units until now. So there is no basis for calling this a merger or a restructuring. The one firm fact is that both jobs sit in the same title today.
Walking into a listing meeting with only a price list is not enough. Who the product is for, how it will be presented in a campaign and how it will show up in digital channels should sit in the same file.
The same shopper walks into the chain and into the shop down the street. When a chain tightens its category and campaign planning, the small shop sees customers walk back out the door. Rossmann Türkiye reached 208 stores in 43 provinces in its 15th year (Habertürk, October 2025). A campaign at that scale touches the average basket of the counter around the corner.
In the same Habertürk report, Rossmann’s Commercial Director Hakan Ejder puts the beauty market at TL 158 billion for 2024 and expects it to pass TL 200 billion by the end of 2025. In April 2026 data from AYD, Türkiye’s association of shopping centres and retailers, mall turnover in personal care and cosmetics rises 55.5% in nominal terms.
The report says nothing of the kind. What is certain is that both jobs sit in Melis Erel Onay’s title; whether the units were separate before is not disclosed.
Since listing and campaign talks fall under the same director, it helps to present price, promotion and digital visibility together in your product file.
Yes, at small scale this is already common. What matters is that buying decisions and the campaign plan rest on the same sales data.