PromZ Vak 4 · 2026 · English edition

‘I don’t like being in the spotlight’

After that, he started Goodwill. He travelled a lot in Asia and brought all kinds of new products home, which I was allowed to test as a child. So I really grew up with this trade.”

And when did you know you wanted to make it your profession too?

“I studied International Business in Eindhoven and Salamanca. When I finished, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. My father had his office at home, so with him too, just as it is here with us now, work and private life overlapped. During that period, he asked me to help organise a trade fair stand at the RAI. That was the beginning of my career, because the collaboration went so well that I never left!

My choice of study had, of course, already been focused on marketing, communication and economics, so it did make sense. But it had never been my goal to succeed my father. My father was a wonderful man, witty and intelligent, and I learned a lot from him. He could also be dominant at times, but in general the collaboration went very well. We did everything ourselves. Packing samples, administration, purchasing and sales, visiting factories and customers: whatever came our way, we picked it up. Not unimportant is that the trade was doing very well at the time.

At 62, he was done. He felt it had been enough. My two sisters had never been interested in taking over the company, and in 2003 I bought it together with Roel. I would not have been able to manage the work on my own. Roel was a programmer by profession and quit his job. It was a lot all at once then, because I had just given birth to our son Gijs, so I took over Goodwill while breastfeeding…”

Elasto

Did you make changes straight away as the new owners?

“We had quite a large production of wall clocks coming from Asia, which we assembled here ourselves. We let that go. We continued with Elasto and Walz, and later Magna Sweets. Walz supplies desk calendars that were already part of the collection forty years ago. That really is a perfect item! Elasto has, among other things, a very large and strong Made in Germany range and a great many printing options. Everything they sell in the Benelux goes through us. That is a matter of trust, and we have built that up over the course of our long collaboration.

Sometimes I give them feedback on their collection. Especially in the time when Gerhard Sperber was at the helm, the colours and design were very uniform and solid. That has changed under his sons and successors Marcus and Frank. Their showroom also looks a lot more modern these days. Another major change since we took over Goodwill has, of course, been the arrival of the online market.”

Do you notice differences between the way people work in Germany and the Netherlands?

“Hierarchy still plays a much bigger role in Germany than it does in the Netherlands. And with that comes a certain departmental way of thinking: you don’t just walk into another department with a question the way you might here. They are very pleasant factories and the people are lovely, but that still exists there, and as Dutch people we sometimes have to adjust to that.”