18 October 2022
By Mary Bermingham
mary@TheCork.ie
Business Feature
If I mention a successful German Retailer, what names spring to mind? Lidl, Aldi, of course! But, today I’m writing about another brand you will have heard of, but might not have realised that it hails from Deutschland. It’s called Maxi Zoo. Founded in 1990, Fressnapf Tiernahrungs GmbH is a German franchise company for pet food. With over 1,400 stores and 8,000 employees across12 European countries, it is the largest European pet product retailer. Fressnapf (pronounced ‘Frez Naff’) means ‘Food Bowl’ but is hard to say if you don’t speak German!, so the brand trades as Maxi Zoo in most of its non-German-speaking markets, such as Ireland.
A German brand with 30 stores in Ireland
Here in Ireland, the retailer has 30 stores. According to Companies Registration Office filings, ‘Maxi Zoo (Ireland) Ltd’ enjoyed a turnover of €26.68m in its most recent filed year of 2020. It’s Ireland headquarters is its Ballincollig store.
Cork man Tim Cummins at the Helm of the Irish operation
Maxi Zoo Ireland’s Finance and HR Director is Tim Cummins. Like many other Cork business figures, he has accountancy training. Tim has been working with Maxi Zoo for almost five years. He’s from the North Side of Cork City and went to the North Mon. After an Arts Degree (BA) in UCC, he worked in a small chartered accountancy firm, before moving to Dublin, where he worked with an Australian software company – he then went on to work in various roles and consultancy jobs back in Cork before having to move to the middle east during the recession, where he worked for five years coming only traveling home every 8 weeks to see his family.
55 year old Finance and HR Director of Maxi Zoo Ireland Tim Cummins lives in Shanagarry. Photographer: Gerard McCarthy
Q. What pushed you to pursue a career in this field?
Tim: From an early stage I had an interest in finance and particularly in the way businesses were organized and worked. When I got a chance to work in the financial district of the South Mall, Cork after finishing my Economics degree at UCC, I jumped at the chance. It all started from there as an office junior in an accountancy practice.
Q. What would you regard as your greatest achievement to date?
Tim: I am most proud of the fact that I started my career as an entry-level office junior in a small accountancy practice in the South Mall, Cork and now hold a CFO position for a large multinational retailer. Along the way I met many wonderful people who helped me shape my career path and I take pride in having extended the same assistance to others that I have met along the way.
Q. Career wise, would you do anything differently?
Tim: Career wise I would have liked to add a law or taxation qualification and worked for a longer period in the Middle East but apart from that no.
Q. In one sentence, how would you define success?
Tim: Difficult to define success in one sentence as it has so many meanings to every individual but if pressed I would define success as always doing your best. If you do the very best that you are capable of doing, then you will succeed at whatever task or goal you want to achieve.
Q. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Tim: Work hard and be the very best you possibly can be.
Q. What are your main priorities and goals in your role?
Tim: My main priorities now are to help develop and grow as much as possible, the great talent we currently have in Maxi Zoo Ireland by encouraging, mentoring and advising where I can the younger members of our team. The end goal of which would be to have them consider Maxi Zoo as a career and not a transitory position.
Q. What have been your highlights in business over the past year?
Tim: The main business highlights for me over the past year have been;• The successful integration of 8 new stores following the acquisition of a competitor in the pet market.
This added approx. 80 new colleagues to the Maxi Zoo/Fressnapf family.• The opening of our long awaited on-line business in Ireland which now gives our customers more
choice when shopping at Maxi Zoo Ireland.• The very generous offer by the owner of the Maxi Zoo/Fressnapf Group to grant an inflationary related
bonus to all staff members, in recognition of the current high inflationary pressures seen in Ireland at
present.
Maxi Zoo has four stores in Cork: Westside Retail Park in Ballincollig, Blackpool Retail Park in Blackpool, Mahon Retail Park, Mahon Point, and Midleton Retail Park on the Cork Road in Midleton.
