tonies appoints Dr. Christian Sprinkmeyer as new CPO

• Current Chief Digital Officer (CDO) taking over as Chief Product Officer (CPO)
  
• Change effective as of 15 September 2023
  
• tonies decided to merge its Digital and Product units to further unleash the power of its technology and products for great customer experience and innovation.

LUXEMBOURG, 18 September 2023 // tonies, a leading international digital audio platform for children with the award-winning Toniebox, announced today that Dr. Christian Sprinkmeyer is the new Chief Product Officer (CPO), effective 15 September. This announcement signifies the culmination of an ongoing organizational transformation initiated by the company in late 2022. At that time, the Management Board made the decision to establish two C-Level roles responsible for overseeing the fundamental pillars of the company, ensuring distinct leadership for both, top-notch products and exceptional content.

tonies’ former CPO, Markus Langer, took over the newly created role as Chief Content Officer (CCO) to push the successful content and licensing business further. He is now spearheading areas such as license management, global partnership management, as well as tonies’ own audio and franchises. The next step is the implementation of a more broaden CPO setup with a strong leader to unite physical and digital product development.

Marcus Stahl, Co-founder and Co-CEO of tonies, explains: “Physical products such as the Toniebox and Tonie figurines, and digital products such as the app, the mytonies audio library and our latest AI innovations become increasingly intertwined. We want to leverage these synergies further by merging our Digital and Product units in a new CPO setup with Christian Sprinkmeyer as a strong leader. Christian has a deep expertise, great leadership style, and proven track record of aligning teams, refining processes and developing innovative products.”

Christian Sprinkmeyer, who previously served as tonies' Chief Digital Officer (CDO), was responsible for the growth of digital revenues, the digital infrastructure to scale the fast-growing and internationally expanding company, and for the AI story generator, which has just been successfully tested in the UK. In his new role Christian Sprinkmeyer will remain part of the C-level-Management and continue to report to the Management Board.

Patric Faßbender, Co-founder and Co-CEO of tonies, emphasizes: “We truly believe that Christian is the best CPO for tonies. He has demonstrated his ability to think customer first and push our products to the next level. We are absolutely delighted that Christian was willing to step into the role of Chief Product Officer, which once again demonstrates tonies' ability to develop great leaders from within. Under Christian's leadership, we are bringing the digital and physical product teams under one CPO umbrella. I look forward to the synergies of his digital experience in our new CPO setup.”

Christian Sprinkmeyer joined tonies in April 2020 as Director E-commerce and was promoted to CDO in January 2021. Before joining tonies, he worked as a consultant for Bain & Company and as Managing Director for an online marketplace. He holds a PhD from RWTH Aachen.