When I ‘accidentally’ became a shop owner almost half a century ago, I was actually too young to have my own business so my dad had to put his signature on my first lease contract. Back in those days they’re where no huge concepts like H&M or Primark yet. The casual and jeans demand was very high and there was little supply. In those days you could find endless lines of customers waiting for my stores to open every morning.

Over the years things changed a lot. In the 80’s and 90’s we expanded our stores all over the south of The Netherlands. But as time went by, the competition got bigger. Large companies opened up stores in almost every town and the middle class retailers faced hard times. I was forced to follow this trend and had to close my stores in the smaller towns and develop larger stores in the bigger cities. After 2010 we started to expand much faster. Opening up new popup-stores under a whole new leasing plan, allowed us to expand from the south and hopefully cover the whole country by 2025.

Last year we introduced the retail market to our new Family Store Philosophy. Two stores are currently running successfully. Also this year, we are opening up our 22’Th store in Germany.