After the the integration of Roels in Ahrend was completed, I continued to professionalize the Lounge & Acoustics assortment in the role of Category Manager within Royal Ahrend. This meant that in addition to the collection of ahrend, the collection of Gispen also fell under my responsibility.Lounge and Acoustics became a substantially larger part of the interior with far-reaching requirements. Space in Space applications in particular was taking a flight. Since this was a fairly new area for companies such as Ahrend and Gispen, it was a huge challenge to further develop and professionalize this category. In addition, I expanded the softseating range with a number of new product lines that were designed by various renowned designers and architects.

In my role as Commercial Director at Roels I had the assignment to further shape and reinforce the Activity Based Working concept. Besides that, I had the responsibility to integrate Roels, as a 100% subsidiary of Ahrend, into Ahrend.In the 2.5 years, the entire Roels product range, including the privat label products from Ahrend, has been integrated in the Ahrend systems and we have further improved and optimized the products. At the same time, turnover has risen substantially, with the growth of Lounge and Acoustics within the total layout.The integration of Roels meant that we sold the retail branch and had to give the Roels employees a new role within Ahrend and Gispen. All of this was ultimately successful, so that the focus can be placed on the further growth of Lounge and Acoustics.

My role at Gispen was Manager Seating. Responsible for the seating product group. Tasks were product management, coaching, guidance and training in the field of sitting. In addition, sales responsible for the seating section within Gispen.At the start, the assignment and objective were very clear: Gispen wanted to become more successful with the sale of chairs and grow 50% within two years. I started by studying all scenarios in the market and estimating which scenario could lead to success. Ultimately, that was the development of a completely own chair range with the introduction in 2014 of Gispen's own office chair line the Zinn, designed by Justus Kolberg, and conference chair line Turn, designed by Paul Brooks. These two collections led to a 50% growth within two years. Because of this success, we have expanded the range of chair collections in 2016 with a beautiful plastic shell seat "Nomi" designed by Just Meyer.After 4 years the "chair train" was on track and I handed over the baton to start a new challenge at Roels to further improve the concept of Activity Based Working.

From 1998 till 2012 I have worked at Interstuhl NL & BE. Interstuhl is one of Europe's largest Chair manufacturer. Interstuhl NL & BE is responsible for the distribution of the chairs from Interstuhl, and the sub marks Prosedia and Bimos, in the Netherlands and Belgium.I started in the role as dealermanger. In this function I maintained the contacts with the dealers in the north of the Netherlands. After several years I became Sales Manager Interstuhl. Next to this function I was part of the management team rogether with the Managing Director and Sales Manager Prosedia/Bimos.The most important success was achieving growth by the acquisition of large accounts both within the dealer market (Gispen) and the end-user market

Gispen is one of the biggest office furniture companies in the Netherlands. I worked very shortly at Gispen. This was because I was asked to work at Interstuhl NL & BE what included a bigger challenge for me at that time.

I started in the office furniture business at Demmenie. Here I learned the ins and outs of the office furniture business and followed several courses and trainings.I started as supporter of the sales team and grew to the function project advisor/sales employee for several regions.Demmenie was one of the biggest players in the office furniture market in the province Zuid Holland. We worked with several manufactures like Interstuhl, Gispen, Drentea, König & Neurath and many more.

In deze functie was ik samen met twee mede bedrijfsleiders verantwoordelijk voor de gehele voortgang van de voorstellingen met het dienstdoende team. Daarnaast werkzaam als operateur voor de montage en het draaien van de films.