Industry and wholesale in the DACH mid-market. Built by Chris Zepernick.
FatUnicorn is a small consulting firm for B2B commerce, founded 2019 in Hamburg. Ten heads in the Team Charlie roster, four partner firms across DACH (Unic, sitegeist, wilma, AD IT Systems). 25 years in IT, 14 of those in B2B commerce. No apparatus for sale — specialists come for your engagement and leave when it's done.
We are not a startup. Neither are our clients. They are industrial and supplier mid-market companies — manufacturers, wholesalers, component suppliers — with mature processes, loyal teams, and ERP landscapes that at some point stop talking to each other. That is exactly where we step in.
Founded in Hamburg in 2019, when it became clear that B2B commerce needed its own platform answers — not a consumer stack with a sticker on it. Since then, we have been at the table with established industrial mid-market companies.
Order flows, warehouse processes, sales workflows, ERP landscapes — at some point mature industrial structures fall out of sync. We sit down at exactly that table and bring them back into rhythm.
Clients, DACH partners like Unic, senior specialists in Team Charlie. No bench. No junior pyramid. No fluff: we speak plainly — direct, without corporate jargon.
Not the poster in the break room — these are the lines where we say no, even when the engagement is large. If a mandate conflicts with any of these four, the mandate gets adjusted. Not the value.
The person at the table in your first call with sales leadership has lived the platform, ERP, and order reality more than once. That same senior stays in the engagement when your inside-sales head sits across from us at the table. No bait-and-switch between acquisition and kickoff.
No reseller commissions, no vendor bonuses, no affiliate cuts. When we recommend a platform, it is because it fits your shop-floor, warehouse, and ERP reality — and when it does not, we say so just as plainly. Your platform choice must not depend on our margin.
We build systems for the people who use them every day. Shop-floor workers, inside-sales teams at order entry, field reps with clients. Automate routine, ease the day, free time for what matters. The best system is the one your people want to use.
We train your IT, sales, and inside-sales teams while we work. The handover point is clearly defined — from there your organisation carries it alone. We want to be redundant after the engagement. Not indispensable.
We earn our living through long-running engagements and referral business — not through an acquisition machine. Three experience values from our own book (no industry study, no vendor report) that show why the brand runs on relationship economics rather than volume.
The majority of our engagements are follow-on mandates with the same client — Phase 2 after a strategy phase, a rescue after an orchestration, a second programme with the same executive. A repeat order means the client knows what they are getting. That is the most honest form of quality control.
Source: Own engagement pipeline since 2019 · Experience valueMost new enquiries arrive through personal referral. Executive calls executive, architect calls architect, sales director calls sales director. No outbound machine, no sales funnel, no key-account swarm. Whoever calls us has either worked with us before or knows someone who has.
Source: Own engagement pipeline since 2019 · Experience valueThe person in the pitch is the person in the engagement — and in the follow-on. Senior anchors in our organisation are not rotated out because we are moving a client to the next engagement model. Personal continuity is what makes durable relationships possible over years.
Source: Own org structure · Structural commitmentRelationship economics is not marketing. It is the balance sheet — it forces us to deliver on every engagement in a way that earns the next one.
Seven years, a handful of anchors. No hockey-stick curve, no trophy wall — the milestones that actually shaped the business model, defined by industrial engagements in the DACH mid-market.
FatUnicorn is personal brand and scalable organisation in one. Senior anchor in the lead, management in the background, Team Charlie on call. Function comes first — the person is the consequence. Not a hero, but a clear role in a firm that has been running since 2019.
At the table in every engagement is Chris Zepernick. Senior IT Strategy & Digital Transformation Consultant with B2B commerce depth and platform expertise across multiple vendor ecosystems. The person who understands in hour one what is actually broken in the setup, and who sits with executives, IT leadership, and sales leadership at the same table. Hamburg — direct, plain spoken.
Authorised managing director of FatUnicorn Consulting UG is Michaela Zepernick. She is responsible for the firm, contracts, and organisation — the framework within which the operational engagement work runs. This keeps the firm properly structured: not "one person with a business card" but a managed organisation with clear accountabilities.
When an engagement grows beyond the senior anchor, we activate Team Charlie — our delivery organisation of 4 to 14 specialists with long-standing ties to FatUnicorn. Senior engineering, project lead, AI workflow. No bench, no junior pyramid. Whoever shows up has delivered this before — and is gone again after the engagement.
Personal brand and scalable firm are not a contradiction. The relationship with the senior carries it — the organisation behind it makes it sustainable, even when the engagement grows.
No bench, no sales funnel, no acquisition machine — because we do not need one. Repeat business and referrals are the only acquisition we afford.
How we workIndustrial engagement gaining momentum, supplier programme stalled, or just want to talk to someone who thinks order and warehouse together? Call us. We listen first, then tell you whether it's a fit.
