Guido Maria Kretschmer started sewing at the age of nine. Today the 57-year-old is a successful entrepreneur and designer.
He became known in 2012 when the show “Shopping Queen” started on Vox. There, Kretschmer evaluates the participants’ outfits.
Kretschmer is also known away from television. More than 830,000 people now follow him on Instagram.
Guido Maria Kretschmer has been on German screens for more than ten years. In 2012, Vox broadcast the first season of Shopping Queen. In the show, the 57-year-old Kretschmer comments on the outfits of the participants. Sometimes more, sometimes less well-disposed – and his direct manner is well received. Only in December last year did the industry medium write “quota meter“: “‘Shopping Queen remains a guarantee of success for Vox’. Hundreds of thousands of people tune in regularly.
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This is how Guido Maria Kretschmer became famous
The format made the designer known to a broad mass for the first time. In the meantime, a fan base has developed around him. In addition to the Vox format, there is a printed magazine by Kretschmer. The name, not very innovative: “Guido”. Personality magazine has been published by Gruner + Jahr since 2018. But it should be over soon, “Guido” will be discontinued this year as part of cost-cutting measures.
But the interest in Guido as a person remains. And to keep it up, he now needs neither a television format nor a print magazine. He has 843,000 followers on Instagram alone. Kretschmer was not a celebrity for a long time.
Stitched for the first time at the age of nine: That’s how Kretschmer’s career went
His fashion career started at the age of nine. That’s when he started using his mother’s sewing machine. “When I was twelve I was tailoring orders, sewing in new lining, shortening coats – by the time I was 14 I was really into production,” he told the newspaper a few years ago.Welt“, which, like Business Insider, belongs to the Axel Springer publishing house. “When I was 16, my father said, Guido, we have to register you for tax purposes now, it can’t go on like this,” adds the designer. He never got pocket money. Instead, he set up his business in his parents’ garden shed.
After graduating from high school, he studied medicine for two semesters before he set out on his path as a designer again. In 1989, at the age of 24, he founded his first company. The name “GMK by Pepper”, the headquarters in Mallorca, in Berlin and in his home town of Münster.
The first major customers followed a little later. He designed for the airline Hapag-Llyod, Deutsche Telekom and the tour operator Tui, among others. He now turns over millions every year with his company. It was not until February of this year that he founded another company together with the fashion retailer About You.
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