Konstantin Kirchfeld is the Managing Owner of The Source.

He came to sourcing from the buying side. Trained in textile business administration, he began on the retail floor and then the buying desk at Peek & Cloppenburg — central buying and assortment responsibility across a European store network — before moving into product and collection development for an international fashion brand within the group. Eleven years running a global sourcing agency followed, with trading offices in Hong Kong, Bangladesh and Turkey, delivering high-volume apparel programmes for international brands from fabric platform through capacity booking to quality assurance and delivery.

Since 2023 he has led The Source, built to run that work as one accountable chain rather than a sequence of handoffs: design and 3D product development, supplier selection and factory due diligence, open costing and landed-cost strategy, ESG and sustainable-compliance standards, and delivery — held by a single partner, across sourcing corridors in the Gulf, Bangladesh, Turkey, Greater China and Europe.

His working focus is the set of questions currently at the centre of the sourcing agenda: country mix and nearshoring, tariff and landed-cost strategy, supplier consolidation, and speed to market — argued from current operating experience rather than desk research.

Beyond The Source, he is a managing partner across a self-financed technology portfolio. Elchai Group builds AI, digital and Web3 services. Center AI Vision works in AI compute and data centres. The Universe Eye covers digital registries and governance. Open Real is a real-world-asset platform. That work shapes how The Source approaches digital product creation, supplier data and traceability; it is run separately.

Based in Dubai. German and English.