Vanerum's CEO corner

The world still turns....

2008-11-10T21:15:00.002+01:00

I was travelling to New York last Saturday. You have to know that I love that city. I fell for it twenty years ago since I have worked there during a traineeship in university. Since then, I came back at least once every year.

So I was there with my first love, tried almost every hotel, stood on the WTC two months prior to 9/11, seen several Knicks and Mets games…the city always amazed me with its dynamic and growth. During these past 20 years it sure has become cleaner and safer, but also busier.

So this time I didn’t know what to expect. Would it still be the same after the past months of turbulent financial markets? A place that is the centre of financial universe? If one has read and followed the media during the past weeks, one would expect to find a dead city: no spending, no travelling, no business…. weren’t we going “down” into a financial meltdown? Recession, depression and more of these alarming statements?

Well, I found my New York still as were left it last year. Planes were full, the Ritz-Carlton was still charging 950 $ per night and was fully booked, and I had to wait in line for 15 minutes in the Apple store to be able to pay for a Ipod touch that I had to bring for a friend….

And yes it’s going to be a little “bumpy” the next months. I also expect that our economy and our business will be slow and it is going to be more of a challenge. But the world did not stop turning. We are not melting yet....

Shift Happens!

2008-01-11T11:35:00.000+01:00

One of our partners, SMART Technologies, organizes on regular basis summits and forums about the use of technology in education. During these sessions, I heard Doug Brown speak. Doug is with the Department of education in the UK and responsible for the Future Technologies Unit. In his presentation, he used a couple of slides that made quite an impression. I include a video of the presentation in this post.

It demonstrates exactly why we are developing "interactive learning environments": because the whole educational system has the adapt to the shift. With our solutions we can help in this process!

Mix business with friendship!

2007-10-02T13:56:00.000+02:00

I believe that friendship and business go together. Is this strange? Does the real “businessman or manager” have to be tough and emotionless? Never to mix business and friendship?

If yes, than I’m not the typical manager. I promote friendship throughout our company: with colleagues, with customers, with suppliers….Why? Because it is all” people business” and partnerships. And you have to want to go an extra step for somebody. This is important, because there will always be problems, always be little misunderstandings, things to be talked about and to be solved.

Last year I read the book “From good to great” by Jim Collins (www.jimcollins.com). A great book, I really loved it and it inspired me to make some changes in our company. But it also talks about how important people in general are in an organization and how they make a difference. About teamwork and yes, literally about friendship between management team members.

So call me romantic or emotional, I don’t care. Because I know that some of the best deals and things in my professional career came out of feeling, not out of figures. Take for example Jim Stelter. Jim owns and manages Stelterpartners (www.stelterpartners.com) and represents our brand in the US. He became a friend, and although sometimes we don’t talk for weeks, and we have our share of problems, we always manage to get the good things out of our relationship. And that makes it all worthwhile…..

Passion

2007-09-13T10:03:00.000+02:00

My life has taken a new turn this year. Although there were some difficult times, I also discovered new loves and passions. My passion for the game of golf is one of them. Golf is incredibly “humanizing” , it teaches you that , by playing against yourself and nature, respect, positivism and patience (the last one being without any doubt my weakest point). It is really fascinating and I learn every time I play. And I have a lot learning left….

But it’s also a mirror of what we are trying to achieve with VANERUM. With passion, we “live” our business every day. We respect the world in which we live, by actively trying improve our social and natural environment.

We look at market changes with great interest and try to develop new products that fit to our customers’ needs. Take a look at our new Optimax line with Vanerum, or the new Senteo products with VSV. Both are aimed at bringing more interactivity into the classroom, and so enhancing the teaching and learning experience.

With great love, the same love as I feel for golf and people, we will continue to try to merge tradition in furniture with new technology!

School starts again...

2007-09-03T15:53:00.000+02:00

It was a rainy day this morning in Diest when I drove my son to school. So I had to bring him into his classroom. A while back, I was told as a joke, that when somebody who died 100 years ago would return in the world today, he would be chocked with evolution, but a classroom would still basically be the same. And indeed, 34 years back, my classroom (which was by the way the very same one, same school, same building...) looked exactly the same as the one of Thomas today.

And yet, the world around us changes so much with new technology. Children today grow up with computers and overwhelming visual stimuli. Our teachers must be from another planet to be able to keep students interested with just a piece of chalk and a green board.

We also spend easily hundreds of euro's for office chairs, and yet our children spend most of their day on a chair that can only cost a few ten's of euro's....

It's time that governments start waking up and invest even more in ergonomics and new technology in education. It will improve not only the life of teachers, but even more important, the life of our future generations.

Teaching and learning is fun!

2007-09-03T15:51:00.000+02:00