Old money Number 1: Erik Brenninkmeijer & family. This family is the richest one of all Dutch families, but doesn’t live in The Netherlands anymore. Mainly because of tax reasons they prefer to stay in Switzerland with E22.000.000.000 on their bank accounts. Yes, 22 billions. The family owns various companies, but the main income still comes from clothing multinational C&A, which stands for both low prices and high quality. The company uses famous endorsers like Jan Smit in The Netherlands and Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas in Mexico. The company uses slogans to both promote the low prices and the good quality. This combination of low prices and perceived relationships with famous people turned out to be very effective. Number 2: Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken. The daughter of the famous Freddy Heineken inherited 4,3 billion dollars after her father died in 2002. Currently, Quote guesses she is worth about E5.000.000.000. Freddy Heineken made the brand, which his grandfather established in 1863, one of the biggest brands in the world. Freddy was known as CEO who lead the company, but also as a person who thought about the marketing activities and campaigns of his company. Heineken mainly uses two sources of marketing activities: funny or likeable TV ads and event sponsorships, such as the Champions League and the Olympic Games (e.g. the Holland Heineken House). Number 20: Carel Nolet. One of Rotterdam’s neighbor cities, Schiedam, has been one of the largest gin and vodka producers in the world for ages. Currently, three of the four remaining distillation families of Schiedam have a spot in the Quote 500 list. Carel Nolet, 10th generation of gin brewers of Nolet, is the richest one, with E1.100.000.000 on his bank account. The others are Cees Dirkzwager (number 349 – 81 million) and Bob de Kuyper (number 357 with 80 million euros). For the foreign students: five of the highest windmills in the world can be found in Schiedam – most of them are or were owned by brewer companies. The marketing budgets of these companies used to be quite large in the glory days of gin drinking. But the demand for drinks with high alcohol percentages shrank by the year and so did their marketing budgets. Or was it vice versa? Anyway, these companies are currently mainly relying on habit-drinkers in The Netherlands and the increasing demand for vodka in the USA. But the brewers realize as well that
their positions in their home country are worsening and have therefore found a new way to promote their drinks in The Netherlands: let newspapers write about an enormous increase in the demand of gin, eventually mixed with soda. Or haven’t you ordered a Jaapie yet?
...Or haven’t you ordered a Jaapie yet?.. New money Number 8: John de Mol. This self-made billionaire became already a millionaire in his thirties, by producing TV programs for the upcoming new commercial TV stations. After his company merged with Joop van den Ende’s (number 10: E1,6 billion) company and produced the worldwide success program Big Brother, Endemol was sold to the Spanish telecom company Telefonica. This made both owners billionaires. After this, De Mol started his own commercial TVstation Talpa and bought the rights of broadcasting Dutch football and many famous TV personalities from other broadcasters, but this was a huge flop. RTL bought his media consortium (also Holland’s biggest radio station: Radio 538) in exchange for stocks of RTL. Recently, De Mol rebought 1/3 of Endemol and owns the TV-station SBS Broadcasting B.V. (owner of SBS6 and Veronica) for 1/3, which he was allowed to do after promising to sell his RTL stocks within three years. He earned a few 100 million euros by producing The Voice Of Holland. His media success mainly comes because of excellent media hyping strategies of his programs. Besides advertising on his own media stations, he also befriended some TV-shows with influence (also public ones) and can freely advertise for his programs during interviews. This format seems to work: John de Mol owns E1,7 billion. Number 40: Ben Mandemakers. This man started his kitchen selling company in his early twenties, in his city of birth: Waalwijk, Noord-Brabant. He currently owns various amounts of kitchen and furniture selling companies. 50% of all new kitchens sold in The Netherlands come from a company owned by Ben Mandemakers. In the furniture business he has a 30% market share. His companies Woonexpress and Küchen- direkt are planning a frontal attack on the market leadership of Ikea in the latter segment. The Ben Mandemakers Group (BMG) also sells kitchens and furniture in various other countries, like Belgium and Germany.
His companies uses all traditional ways of marketing: TV campaigns, advertisements in newspapers, radio commercials and sponsorship of Waalwijk’s local football club RKC, which Mandemakers also saved from bankruptcy, but usually not by using famous endorsers. For all market segments he owns another brand and all these companies have a different unique selling point and marketing strategy. It is working for him, and, according to his own words, BMG will double in 10 years so also Ben’s current value of E575 million. We will see.
...he used his relatively small budget optimal on various media... Number 52: Harold and Corinne GoddijnVigreux. Harold Goddijn is the CEO of Europe’s navigation system market leader TomTom. The company was founded in 1991 as Palmtop, and Corinne Goddijn-Vigreux joined the company in 1994. In 2001, Harold joined as well as a CEO, and the company changed its name into TomTom. When the company decided to sell stocks on the Amsterdam stock exchange in 2005, the owners received E125 million. The company grew a lot in these years. The marketing director of TomTom received various awards for his strategies: he used his relatively small budget optimal on various media. The combination of disruptive technology and optimal marketing use of this products, let TomTom rise and become the largest navigation system seller in Europe and one of the worldwide market leaders. However, recent years more and more competitors entered the industry and the value of TomTom drops drastically every year. Still, Harold and Corinne GoddijnVigreux are worth E490.000.000. Various other shareholders of TomTom made the list as well. Just like Harold and Corinne, they all were sinking on the list in the last few years. TomTom needs to come up with new innovative products to make sure they won’t completely disappear from the Quote 500 list. Number 257: Reinier Bouman. This man became rich with one of the most popular Dutch websites: www.marktplaats.nl. He didn’t establish this second hand trade website, but after the website became more popular, Bouman and his business partner Bob Crébas decided to buy Marktplaats for E250.000 in 1999 – mostly because he saw this kind of websites as a major threat for his
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