What a crazy year 2022 was! It flew by! Fortunately, we were able to put all the COVID problems behind us for a bit. Only we suddenly had to deal with another problem... that messed up many lives and calibrated systems; the war in Ukraine. Terrible that such a thing can still happen in 2022! And the consequences of this all over the world are once again great.

A sluggish second half

As a company, we "suffered" from this starting in the summer; in the sense of declining sales compared to last year. And since our purchase orders in the Far East have some 6-9 months delivery time, we have built up (too) much inventory in the second half of this year. How different this is from a year ago when we were struggling to get our inventory up to par due to the many problems in the supply chain and the huge increase in market demand.

We sail our own course

''We sail our own course at Hoenderdaal''; this is one of our core values. A saying about sailing is; ''if the wind changes, change the position of your sails''. But perhaps even better now is; ''if the wind changes, change your destination.''  Thus we are now sailing our own course, but with changing destination. Because against the wind nobody advances....

Proud captain of the ship Hoenderdaal

We are steering our company, now for almost 3 years, through many changes and uncertainties. And yet we stay on course! How do we do that? For that you need 3 things:

                               1) First, of course, a seaworthy ship,

                               2) with good helmsmen,

                               3) and, of course, a compass to know the right direction.

The ship is our company itself; Hoenderdaal, where our efficient logistics and our quality products in beautiful brands are the main spearheads for seaworthiness in our market.

The helmsmen, of course, are our team! Because the best helmsmen, they work at Hoenderdaal! Our team makes the difference; doing business is all about people, which is why we like to invest in our people.

Then we have the compass; it determines where we stand and thus our direction. ''To measure is to improve,'' we say at Hoenderdaal. This compass are our dashboards linked to our smart software solutions. They are the tools that give us daily insight to make the right decisions and determine our direction. Or to know where the wind is coming from to get it in our sails. We as an organization have been adapting at lightning speed to changes in the world or in our market in recent years. And as captain of 'ship Hoenderdaal' I am very proud of that!  

I wish everyone very happy holidays and a happy New Year!

With kind regards,

Bart Veldhuizen