1970
FLEXIBILITY AND CAPACITY Within two years, more than half of our work was related to new builds. There was a clear need for a reliable supplier of boat interiors who could respond to the specialised requirements in a flexible way. For decades, the yards had had their own carpentry workshops, sometimes employing more than a hundred people. Other materials now supplanted large-scale woodwork, eliminating the need for yards to maintain costly carpentry workshops of their own. To stay ahead of the competition, yards had to make everything faster and more efficient; their carpentry workshops barely had any work for large parts of the year. These departments were now cut and the yards hired external capacity when there was a need to absorb peak demand during large projects. This represented an opportunity for us as we were already accus tomed to going from yard to yard. While functional, our workshop was not actually suitable for welcoming partners, so we decided to look for a new and
Onze werkplaats was functioneel, maar feitelijk niet geschikt om
more representative workplace. This was no simple matter in
relaties te ontvangen. Daarom besloten we uit te kijken naar een
1969, as various restrictive
nieuwe, meer representatieve werkplaats. Dat was in 1969 geen
investment measures had been
eenvoudige zaak, omdat bij de wederopbouw van Nederland allerlei beperkende investeringsmaatregelen genomen waren die dit soort gebouwen schaars maakten. Uiteindelijk konden we met veel overredingskracht een loods
implemented during the post-war reconstruction of the Netherlands and these made such buildings scarce. Eventually, after much persuasion by Jan Hamerslag who had
huren aan de Molenvliet in Zwijndrecht, enkel en alleen omdat
his place of residence in the
Jan Hamerslag in die gemeente woonachtig was. We kregen een
municipality, we were able to
huurcontract voor maximaal één jaar en dat werd later op ons
rent a shed in Zwijndrecht. We got a contract for one year at
verzoek coulant met een jaar verlengd. Zo hadden we de tijd om
most and a request by us for a
actief naar iets definitiefs te zoeken, want we hadden genoeg
further year was accepted later.
van ons rondtrekkend bestaan.
This gave us the time to actively search for something definitive, as we had had enough of our nomadic way of life.
33