Stefan's career began not on the water but in banking, training as a Bankkaufmann with Vereins- und Westbank in Lübeck in the early nineties. It proved a useful grounding: an understanding of how deals are structured and financed has run through everything he has done since.

His first move into yachting came in 2004, when he worked as an independent broker with Yachting Partner in the Hamburg area, handling pre-owned motor yachts between eight and twenty-five metres. A year later he moved into premium automotive sales, and spent the next eleven years there, becoming a certified BMW senior sales executive, a BMW business customer specialist and a BMW M specialist, and selling around eighty new cars a year.

"Cars and boats are not so different at this level. People are buying something they have thought about for years. The job is to understand what they actually want, not what is easiest to sell."

In 2017 he returned to yachting, joining Argo Yachting as Sales Manager for Germany and taking on the task of establishing a British luxury business as a lasting presence in the German market. He was appointed General Sales Manager – Germany in 2023.

He now leads the German business from Neustadt in Holstein, with responsibility for day-to-day operations and for developing the territory: building the dealer and client network, representing the Princess range, seeing owners through from first enquiry to handover and beyond. Neustadt sits on the Lübecker Bucht, at the heart of one of Europe's busiest cruising grounds, with the Danish islands, Fehmarn and the Mecklenburg coast all within a comfortable day's run. It is a market with deep boating traditions and demanding, knowledgeable owners, and Stefan knows this as well as anyone.

"A first yacht is rarely a customer's last. If you get it right, you are looking after that family for a very long time."

Away from work he is a qualified open water diver, and the Baltic coast on his doorstep means he is rarely far from the sea.