Director/owner Gerko International Geri Geys:

‘Chemeter meets expectations raised during demo!’

‘I was born in 1985 in Westmalle to a fine family with two older sisters,’ says Geri. ‘I had a particularly happy childhood, where I got the right values from my parents. Hard work is one of them. As early as 14, I started working on Saturdays at the predecessor of Gerko, which operated under a different name. That company was a reseller of an umbrella European brand, with exclusive sales rights in Belgium. When I turned 18, I decided I was done with school and went to work for that company. First as a warehouse worker, but over the years I held every possible position. I was on the truck delivering products, I did the bookkeeping, took orders, kept in touch with customers and suppliers, knew the company like the back of my hand. In addition, I naturally took all kinds of studies to be able to perform all these different functions properly.’
At one point, the then manager went on holiday for one month every year and I ran the company all by myself. True, that was during the holiday period when things were not so busy and the company was nowhere near as big as it is now, but I had to do everything from A to Z myself.’

Unexpected takeover

‘The former business manager and his wife were good friends with my parents. We celebrated Christmas and New Year together; in short, there was an excellent, family relationship. The manager also wanted me to take over the business in the future and had indicated that he did not want to wait until retirement age to do so. Unfortunately, it was not to be, as nine years ago he died of a heart attack at the age of 46. Besides dealing with the grief, I had to work very hard – together with my retired father – to keep the company afloat. Thanks to the physical efforts of my retired father and I, my father’s savings earned through very hard work in the brickworks and the benevolent attitude of a number of suppliers, we managed to keep the company alive.’
‘It was only when we had the company “in safe harbour” that I started talking to the widow of the manager and she indicated that she had no interest in it. I indicated that I wanted to take over the business with all the stock for the market price and she agreed.’

The text continues under the image!

Own course

‘Over the years, I had naturally developed my own ideas of where I wanted to take the company. But only now that I was my own boss could I implement those ideas in full. In order not to scare off existing customers immediately, I continued under the old name. But I did go straight to the bank for a loan to make certain changes over time. The bank finally agreed on condition that I would make some punishing cuts. I had some ideas about that. For a start, I got rid of the truck. After all, as a business manager, I had no time to drive around and handle distribution. No truck meant no insurance, no wages for a driver, no damages, no fines. That already resulted in substantial savings. Furthermore, we had a reseller in another part of Belgium whose stock we completely pre-financed. Including outstanding accounts with his customers and the accounts for products he bought from other suppliers. While that earned us a 6-7% commission on sales, it also resulted in a constantly open, large cost with us. I found it extremely difficult to do as the relationship with him was very good. Nevertheless, I entered into a conversation with him to tell him we were stopping doing that. He could of course come to us as a normal customer, but we were no longer pre-financing anything. Eventually he did understand that and to this day he is still a good customer with us. Those were two substantial cuts that the bank finally agreed to. I got my loan and was able to move on.’

Stable growth Gerko

“’The existing clientele was my business start-up capital and I naturally nurtured them. Only after six months I changed the name of the company to Gerko. Under the old name, I was contractually bound to Belgium because there were other resellers of that brand in other countries. I didn’t have that problem under the new name. But perhaps much more important was that I wanted to market my own brand, with a much wider product range than before. I also had a website built almost immediately after the name change. If you want to be successful in this day and age, you need a website. I then started expanding our product range. Initially, still with our own customers. At that time, I had only five products, so when I offered Gerko to other wholesalers, they said, ‘why do we have to stop working with our current supplier for Gerko’s 5 products? While our current supplier can supply 600 products?’ With our existing customers, I could sell those products and so I slowly expanded it until we also became interesting as a total supplier for other parties. When that became more widely known in the market, we were actually approached by those other parties. Among others by a major customer annex distributor in the UK and later even as far as New Zealand. In total, we currently supply wholesalers in 25 different countries, where – in case their operating area is large enough – we also guarantee exclusivity. We also only supply wholesalers, never directly to body shops. We do not need to be available on every street corner, but with companies that, like us, strive for quality and service at a good price. We achieve that price by purchasing larger volumes in cooperation with the right partners and by keeping our cost structure as efficient as possible. Look, I am 100% owner and manager of Gerko. I have no investment company, bank or shareholder pushing me to increase sales and/or profits. I am not concerned with money; the growth of the business in itself is satisfying enough. One of the next milestones we recently achieved is the construction of the new premises. That came about last year and we are already in the process of expanding it. So we are indeed ambitious. Not to get rich, but to build something beautiful.’

The text continues under the image!

Why Siam

‘At the time when I took over the company, we were not doing anything with paint or other chemicals with any potential hazard classes. We dealt in things like mixing cups, sandpaper, spray and dust masks. But when we expanded our product range to include products like thinners, degreasers, primers and paints, we had to provide safety sheets with them. Of course, we could have copied our suppliers’ safety sheets, but that has a number of drawbacks. For a start, we would then have no control over the quality and care with which they were compiled. Another problem was that these sheets were often written in English, whereas it is a legal requirement to do so in the language of the country the product is going to. And finally, as a brand we want to create an unambiguous image, so the sheets should also be drawn up in the house style and feature our logo. In short, I started looking for a way to produce the safety sheets myself and ended up at Siam via Paul Robben. In fact, I already had a good relationship with Paul in a totally different context and I know him as an extremely knowledgeable and sincere chemical professional. So when he told me he was a reseller of software to generate those safety sheets, I was immediately interested. And when he had given me a comprehensive presentation of the capabilities of that software, I was excited. Not only because of the ease of use of the software, but also because it is very competitively priced. Especially compared to some other solutions. I have not yet requested a demonstration of another software, but it certainly did not compare to Siam’s Chemeter in terms of ease of use and price. That is what it has become and I must say that the software meets all the expectations that Paul raised during his demonstration.’

Would you like to find out more about GETRA? Then click here.