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Elina Rahkonen is leaving Wulff Group at a moment of unusual strength for the Helsinki-listed worklife services and products group. Just three and a half weeks before announcing her resignation, Wulff reported its strongest quarterly result in years: Q1 2026 net sales rose 16% to EUR 31.5 million, while operating profit climbed 666% to EUR 2.5 million.
Rahkonen, who has led Wulff since 2019, will remain CEO until August 14 while the board searches for a successor. The departure closes a seven-year period in which Wulff shifted from a traditional office products company into a broader Nordic worklife services group, with staffing, consulting, and accounting services becoming increasingly central to growth.
A CEO who knew the company before leading it
Rahkonen’s tenure was shaped by unusually deep familiarity with the business. Before becoming CEO, she served as Wulff’s CFO between 2014 and 2017 and briefly as interim CEO in 2016–2017. She returned to lead the company after serving as CEO of Aallon Group and CFO of Ahlsell Finland.
Her background combines finance, auditing, and operational leadership. Earlier in her career, she worked at Deloitte and held several financial management positions between 2002 and 2011. Alongside her executive role, she currently serves on the boards of Kreate Group, LapWall, Olas Group, and Duell.
As of December 31, 2025, Rahkonen held 40,000 Wulff shares, representing 0.6% of the company’s shares and votes.
From office products to worklife services
The board’s framing of the transition reflects how substantially the company changed during Rahkonen’s tenure. Wulff’s FY2025 net sales reached EUR 122.3 million, up from EUR 102.8 million in 2024 and more than double the level when she took over. Operating profit and market value also more than doubled during the period.
“It has been a privilege to help transform a traditional workplace product company into a diversified partner for the modern workplace,” Rahkonen said in the resignation announcement. “Our growth has been made possible by our colleagues, partners, and customers.”
A major part of that shift came through acquisitions and the expansion of Wulff’s workplace services platform. Staples Finland, acquired in 2021, now operates as an integrated part of the group after effectively doubling Wulff’s net sales through the transaction. The business serves large companies and public sector organizations with contract supply solutions covering workspaces, breakrooms, and IT services.
Alongside that, Wulff’s Products for Work Environments segment provides workplace solutions across Finland, spanning offices, remote workstations, and industrial sites. Its catalog includes more than 40,000 products, ranging from office and IT supplies to cafeteria products, ergonomics, cleaning equipment, and first aid solutions.
The transformation included repeated restructuring inside the Finnish Products for Work Environments segment. Between 2024 and early 2026, Wulff conducted three rounds of change negotiations tied to the Staples Finland integration, organizational simplification, and strategic renewal. In total, 142 employees were involved, 24 roles were eliminated, and the measures are expected to generate EUR 1.8 million in annualized savings.
The pattern across those negotiations suggests a company steadily reducing legacy complexity rather than responding to a single operational shock. The first round in February 2024 focused on integrating Staples Finland, acquired in 2021. The second, announced in March 2025, centered on reallocating resources toward customer impact and sales capability. The third round concluded in January 2026 and focused on improving service capability in customer interactions.
The effect became visible in Q1 2026, when the Finnish products business returned to positive operating profit growth. Wulff also strengthened its balance sheet in March through the sale and leaseback of its Tuusula warehouse, recording a EUR 1.8 million one-off gain.
The next phase is already defined
Chair Heikki Vienola’s comments accompanying the resignation announcement read less like a reset and more like a handover between phases of the same strategy.
He credited Rahkonen with renewing the company’s strategy, integrating acquisitions, building new service businesses, and strengthening performance culture during a period shaped by the pandemic, geopolitical instability, and softer customer demand.
More importantly, the board’s public messaging makes clear what Wulff now sees itself becoming. The company is no longer positioning itself primarily as a workplace products distributor. Its 2025–2030 strategy centers on worklife services, particularly staffing, consulting, and accounting.
The targets are ambitious: EUR 230 million in net sales and EUR 20 million in comparable operating profit by 2030, nearly doubling revenue from current levels.
Worklife Services is already driving much of the momentum. In Q1 2026, the segment grew 47.4% year over year, materially faster than the rest of the group. Management has also signaled continued acquisition activity in accounting services alongside organic expansion in staffing and consulting.
Rahkonen herself directly oversaw Wulff’s accounting business alongside the CEO role, making accounting expansion central to the company’s growth strategy rather than an adjacent initiative.
A transition with continuity
The board composition reinforces the sense of continuity around the CEO transition. April’s AGM installed Heikki Vienola as chair, returning a former group CEO to a governance role during the leadership change. Petteri Kilpinen also joined the board, bringing branding and marketing experience from TBWA Helsinki and the Finnish Olympic Committee. Jussi Vienola, Kristina Vienola, and Lauri Sipponen were re-elected.
That continuity reduces some of the uncertainty usually associated with small-cap CEO departures. Wulff enters the transition with publicly defined financial targets, a recently updated strategy, and a board led by someone with direct operational familiarity with the business.
The more important question is what kind of leader the board now wants for the next stage. The recent growth narrative points toward a services-oriented operator capable of scaling staffing and consulting businesses across the Nordics. At the same time, Wulff’s accounting strategy and acquisition activity suggest transaction and integration experience may become increasingly important.
Whoever succeeds Rahkonen will inherit a company that has already completed much of its structural reset. The challenge now is execution: integrating acquisitions, expanding Worklife Services while preserving margins, and delivering against a 2030 strategy that depends less on reinvention and more on sustained operational growth.
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