Work is being done in the deepest secret on at least thirty new Blokker stores that have to open in the course of this spring. These are shops of the chain itself, stores that have disappeared during the bankruptcy and are now coming back. Franchisee Ryan van Uden from Berlicum responds with mixed feelings.
Van Uden, and a number of other colleagues, were lucky. Of the 394 blockers in the Netherlands, 46 were of franchisees like him, and they fell outside the bankruptcy. His shop in Berlicum, but also those in Made, Roosendaal and Etten-Leur have never been closed. On the contrary: they are ‘busier than ever’, says Blokker entrepreneur Ronald Mol from Roosendaal.
Van Uden from Berlicum also recognizes that bustle. “The bankruptcy of Blokker also worked in our favor of course,” he admits. Now people come to his store from far and wide and turn overtime.
Disadvantage: where his orders used to walk through Blokker, he now has to arrange it all himself. “First, Blokker was a supplier and at the touch of a button all stock came in,” he explains. Now they have to order everything themselves from the sixty different suppliers and deliver them all on the other day. “It’s much harder to work.”
But he thinks it is quite like that: “Franchisees know well what is going in or out, the Blokker chain was so great that I think they had lost the overview a bit of what goes in or out, what may have led to the bankruptcy.”
Restart Blokker, but where?
Where the new stores go is still guessing. Van Uden: “They will not keep us aware of anything, because we have arranged everything ourselves since the bankruptcy, we hear nothing from the management. We also do not know where the new blockers will be.” But if he has to take a gamble, he thinks of the big cities.
“Forty stores throughout the country is not much,” says Van Uden. Certainly not if you compare it to the nearly 400 stores that Blokker first had. “They will probably not opt for villages with a few thousand inhabitants, but rather the big city, because there are more potential customers. So I am not bothered by that.”
After the bankruptcy of the store chain in November, entrepreneur Roland Palmer, a cousin of founders Jaap and Ab Blokker, bought the trademark rights. But many buildings where the housekeeping store were in use by others. For example, Wibra has concluded three long-term lease agreements for three former Blokker buildings in Bladel, Bergeijk and Heesch.
Afraid of competition
How it, if Blokker makes a restart, ends with franchisees like Van Uden is still exciting. “We think we can continue to operate under the name Blokker, but we will probably have to pay for that. We will see it all by that time,” he says soberly.
Afraid of competition from brands such as Action or Chinese web shops, which offer household products for less money, Van Uden is not the case: “You see that there is a great need for Blokker. I notice that in the crowds. Do people want cheap, they go. If they want quality, they come to us.”