First Month on the Job - Trial by Fire

Although Holland Winkel has been around since 2002, and I’ve been working in the background for years on the technical side of the store (I’m originally a programmer) I only really became a full time member of our family business starting last Christmas. This is my first month on the job.

The Holland Winkel (Winkel is Dutch for “Store”) started during a conversation on a terrace in Taiwan sometime in 2002. I was still living in the Far East, and my family often send boxes full of canned stew my way. It is possible to survive by eating only rice and noodles every day, but occasionally you want potatoes with cabbage and sausage. Those cans were nearly too convenient. Working in Asia means having little spare time each day, and the stew was quickly heated in the microwave.

The web shop was thus almost called “stampotwinkel.nl” (stew store). The first version of the Holland Winkel in 2002 was soon online. Still hosted on a web server at my home in Taiwan and at first using an embarrassingly slow internet connection to an apartment on 5th floor in Taiwan. From the house of my parents in the Netherlands the orders were packed and shipped to customers worldwide. That stew was amazingly popular.

Occasionally we had a typhoon, causing power outages. My job was to quickly run to the roof to kick start the generator. Sometimes an earthquake, and once even a flood. The flood caused the website to go down for a whole week.

After moving through Taipei and Texas the website arrived a few years ago in the Netherlands. Now safely humming among thousands of other servers in a massive data center. The chance that a typhoon disturbs it is now unlikely, but this is the Netherlands so maybe there is a flood risk.

Meanwhile Holland Winkel grew briskly. We are selling more souvenirs and delft blue. The stew is no longer available, so with hindsight we are quite happy with the choice of name. What began as a desk in an attic (as captured on TV by the Dutch World Service), followed by a garage, has grown into a company with its own warehouse, packing facilities and office.

Customers still come from around the world, and whether it is gifts for a wedding in Australia, a t-shirt for a distant friend, or gifts to bring. We provide it all.

As mentioned, my first full working day was just before Christmas day 2015. And this first month became a real baptism of fire. In the aftermath of a very busy December month there were a lot of phone calls to answer, e-mails to write, and to assure customers that their shipment would really arrive.

We are also busy upgrading the website, adding new products and maintaining our inventories. The life of a web retailer seems in that respect to be very much like that of a real merchant.

Because without satisfied customers, you don’t exist.

Martijn