I N T E RV I E W Carl Hggstrm, Group Managing Director at CFM Alliance NO GOING BACK Carl Hggstrm has travelled a career path that led him from accountancy to logistics, and from Finland to Southeast Asia, to find his ideal vocation in the moving business. Here, he speaks to FIDI Focus editor Dominic Weaver about his recent step taking on the Group Managing Director role at CFM Alliance, the parent company of Classic and The Family Movers in Singapore C arl Hggstrm jokes that he just cant shake off the moving industry no matter how hard he tries. He tells the story of how, after a few days intense work at FIDIs conference in Lisbon, he and another mover drove out of the city in search of a few days holiday from the business. After flipping a coin to determine their direction a couple of times, and driving for several hundred kilometres, the pair ended up in Albufeira, checked into a nice-looking hotel and sat down in the bar that overlooked the street to enjoy a well-earned beer. But it wasnt long before they noticed some familiar faces and realised their mystery tour had ended right next door to the OMNI moving conference. Heading up a relocation business certainly appears to have been Hggstrms fate from the outset, with every career choice he has made eliminating something else and bringing him closer to the inevitable. He started his working life as an accountant at a Finnish car dealership, which he says gave him a grasp of the basics of business early on. However, he realised quickly that his trained profession just didnt give him the human interaction he wanted. You dont get to talk much to numbers, he says. 36 FF301 Q2 21 pp36-39 Carl Haggstrom.indd 36 He approached a recruiter, who pointed him in the direction of the logistics business, where, over a period of 11 years, he worked in a series of coordination and management positions, and was responsible for moving chemicals, then parcels, followed by steel coils. These varied roles gave Hggstrm a taste for the excitement of international moving and the daily pleasures of tackling and solving problems to get jobs done. However, in 2008, when he was headhunted for the position of Sales Manager at Finnish mover Victor Ek, he accepted the job, intrigued by the challenge of moving people as well as things. He admits that, at first, he was puzzled by the concept of sales in the moving business. I couldnt get my head around it, he says, I thought Am I supposed to meet these customers and persuade them to move? I had no concept of the global scale of the industry. But it didnt take him long to get to grips with the business and, after a short bedding-in period, he was appointed director of Victor Eks Moving Division. The role brought him his first experience of attending industry conventions and other events, and the learning, networking and socialising these bring WWW. F I D I FOC U S . OR G 09/03/2021 14:45