The brown carpet that covered the floors of Blokkerwinkels for decades is now gone. Roland Palmer (51), who was at the helm of retail group Blokker Holding between 2011 and 2015, fought a battle about this with Ab Blokker, one of the two brothers who managed to make the household goods store great at the end of the last century. Palmer wanted to renovate and refresh the stores soon after taking office. He was unable to achieve this due to opposition from the old guard within the family business. Ultimately, Palmer had to leave the field and things slowly went downhill for Blokker.
The household chain would not make it to Christmas 2024. This week the curators issued a revealing press release, more than a month after the bankruptcy in mid-November: they had found a buyer for parts of the company. In any case, the brand name, the store concept and the webshop will have a new owner, who was not mentioned by name in the message.
It F.D was the first to report on Monday that none other than former chairman Palmer is the new owner of Blokker, after which his two cousins announced the news a day later The Telegraph to confirm.
Blokker blood
Contrary to what his surname suggests, Roland Palmer is indeed a member of the Blokker family. His mother Ans is a sister of Jaap and Ab Blokker, who turned the originally West Frisian household chain into an internationally operating billion-dollar company. Ans married a British man, Bernard Palmer, and settled in Brentwood, England, where their son Roland grew up.
After studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the prestigious University of Oxford, Palmer worked at Unilever and Coca-Cola since 2001, eventually becoming a consultant at Bain & Company. He lived in England with his wife, where he enjoyed the relative peace. Palmer told the trade magazine in 2016 RetailTrends: “My brother and I were able to be who we were in complete shelter, away from the spotlight of our famous family in the Netherlands.”
In the book Blokker: how the empire eludes the family to describe NRC-journalists Teri van der Heijden and Barbara Rijlaarsdam (now Quote) how Palmer has a close bond with his uncle Jaap Blokker on a business and personal level. So good, in fact, that when Jaap heard in 2009 that he was terminally ill, he nominated his cousin Roland as his successor instead of his two adoptive sons. Palmer may not have the family name, Jaap thinks, but Palmer does have the Blokker blood.
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No Excel
When Palmer takes charge after the death of Jaap Blokker in 2011 as a 37-year-old, major challenges await him. The store formula, which has not changed for years, is in dire need of innovation that goes beyond the carpet. For example, there are no software systems that keep track of inventories. One of the most senior financial men could not work with Excel during those years and also refused to learn it.
Palmer’s biggest concern: there is no online store. The Blokker brothers did not believe in that and preferred to invest the profits in developing new products. An attempt to ‘buy’ Blokker out of that backlog failed in early 2012. Palmer was told that the online store was for sale, and he and Blokker attempted to incorporate it. Ultimately, the listed Ahold will take away the largest online store in the Netherlands for a takeover sum of 350 million euros.
There is also a conflict in management style. While Palmer is used to a working environment with Anglo-Saxon business operations, Blokker is still managed like an old gentlemen’s club from an office villa in Laren. The bond that Palmer has with his uncle and co-director Ab Blokker is much less good than that with the late Jaap Blokker. Ab Blokker does not agree with what he considers Palmer’s renewal plans to be far too expensive.
The “new Blokker” will open in 2014. No more brown carpet, lower shelves and an ordering column with which customers can buy products that can only be found online. The conversion operation came from Palmer, but is opposed by Ab Blokker. The renewal operation eventually came to a halt after 50 of the then 600 stores.
Relations within the top management of Blokker Holding reached a low point at that time. Palmer managed to force Ab Blokker out of the board in 2014, after which he took a seat on the supervisory board. But when Palmer wants to fire another director in 2015, Palmer himself is dismissed by the commissioners – including his own uncle.
After Palmer’s departure, an ‘outsider’ took the helm in 2016 with Casper Meijer – without a family relationship with the Blokkers. This time, the stores will all be renovated under the name “the newest Blokker”, building on the innovation that was initiated under Palmer. To no avail; Blokker is increasingly short of money and sees customers running away to discount chains and online stores. After being taken over by Michiel Witteveen’s Mirage Retail Group in 2019, Blokker will go bankrupt in 2024.
Looking for the next step
Roland Palmer won’t stay unemployed for long. Soon after leaving Blokker in 2016, he started working at the Chinese internet giant Alibaba, for which he runs the Benelux branch from Amsterdam. There he had to encourage Dutch brands to enter the Chinese market via Alibaba. According to a profile in Quote Palmer does not plan to get a high promotion at Alibaba, which would require emigration to China.
It seems like Palmer has been planning a next move for a while. Last summer he resigned from his position at Alibaba’s Dutch BV, according to the trade register. It is unclear whether he also wants to take a managerial position at Blokker. The Chinese contacts he made at Alibaba will undoubtedly help him do what Blokker was good at in its heyday: sell new trendy products from Asian manufacturers to Dutch people at a competitive price.
Roland Palmer has returned to Blokker, where he can make a new attempt to transform the retail chain according to his own insights. In addition to being a director, he is now the owner, and there will no longer be any opposition or disagreements about the color of the carpet.