Retail Recruitment Agency in Belgium

Archetype recruits for Belgian retail in two specific cases. Your sales team sells to retailers: retail key account, category management, trade marketing. Or you need the person who runs a store network or a region. Our core business is sales, marketing and management profiles, which account for over 90% of our assignments. We work in French, Dutch and English, on a retainer, with an average of 12 weeks to the candidate’s signature and a 6-month replacement guarantee. The firm has been running since 1993.

Supplier key account and retailer category manager in a supermarket aisle — Belgium had 73,020 retail enterprises in 2024, according to Eurostat.

Belgian retail: many shops, few large networks

Eurostat counts 73,020 retail enterprises in Belgium in 2024, with 324,372 persons employed, 4 per enterprise on average. Non-specialised food retail, meaning supermarkets and hypermarkets, accounts for 8,945 enterprises and 105,928 persons employed. Tens of thousands of small shops on one side; a few networks that weigh heavily on jobs and purchasing on the other. The hard hires sit at both ends: the key account who can negotiate with a buying group, and the network director who steers dozens of stores without being there every day.

Two retail jobs, two hires

Two families of retail profiles

Selling to retailers

Suppliers negotiate range, prices and promotions with the buyer once a year, then follow execution with the retailer’s category manager. A good retail key account builds the case on the retailer’s own sales data and knows when to refuse a condition that destroys margin. This applies to DIY, appliances, textiles and personal care suppliers as much as to food, which has its own FMCG recruitment page.

Running a store network

A network director or area manager steers from a distance: sales per store, conversion, basket size, staff costs, often a mix of own stores and franchisees. The hire has to show they can get store managers they see once a month to apply a decision, and whether they can hire their own teams.

We’re specialists: Sales, Marketing, Management. Not generalists. When a generalist agency recruits a Sales Director, they read the CV. We know the actual job: the real trade-offs between prospecting and farming, what it means to lead a distributed trilingual team across the Benelux, how to build a commercial strategy that holds in complex B2B. That field-level understanding is what separates a placement that lasts from one that breaks at 18 months.
The Archetype method, since 1993

Roles and languages

We recruit retail key account managers, category and trade marketing managers, sales and area managers, network and retail directors, and managing directors or country managers. A national network director must run a meeting in Dutch as well as French; English is added in international groups. Our recruitment team works in all three.

Method, timing and fees

Briefing, sourcing strategy, structured screening, detailed presentation, follow-up before, during and after the hire, with a scorecard, interview transcripts and a KOAN test for each candidate. Proposal within 48 to 72 hours of the first call. Fees are set before the assignment starts, in a written proposal, on a retainer basis: never a success fee. 6-month replacement guarantee.

About Archetype

Archetype is a Belgian family business founded in 1993 by Marc Diamant and now co-managed with Davy Diamant and Steve Diamant. A member of Federgon, it won Talent Business Innovation of the Year 2025 for its ethical and structured use of AI.

Retail recruitment: frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to hire a network director or retail key account?

Fees are set before the assignment starts, in a written proposal, on a retainer basis: never a success fee. 6-month replacement guarantee.

How long does it take?

12 weeks on average from signing the assignment to the candidate signing.

Do you recruit sales assistants or store managers?

No. We recruit sales, marketing and leadership roles: selling to retailers and running networks. For store staff, use a temporary staffing agency or post your vacancy through Forem, VDAB or Actiris.