"Despite everything, we are busier than ever before"

Wim van de Noort runs GroenRijk Tilburg, together with his wife and son. While it used to be only a brick and mortar garden centre, in the past year, the focus has shifted more and more to the management of their webshops. “We now have three completely separate webshops, which means we can deliver the right products to a wider target group”, says Wim van de Noort. This interview is part of our new whitepaper, you can download the full whitepaper with 8 interviews in total for more inspiration!
 

Family-owned business

The garden centre has been around for a long time. In 1986, it started as a nursery for garden plants, lawn turf and Christmas trees. This business grew into an extensive garden centre and, in 1997, it was officially launched as GroenRijk Tilburg. Wim and his wife have agreed on a clear division of responsibilities between them, "She is responsible for the green area and I am responsible for the other items, such as garden furniture, canopies and barbecues.” Recently, their son Luc also became co-owner and the company is run with the help of about 80 employees. “It is quite a demanding challenge to run a company with your spouse and it also involves giving up a lot of free time”, says Wim.

Online

Thanks to their various webshops, the garden centre offers a very wide range of products online. “Previously, most of our customers came from the Tilburg region, now our webshops mean that we deliver throughout the Netherlands. Sales through the webshops have increased enormously compared to the beginning of last year.”

Wim says that the company uses the normal delivery services for most orders, but has its own courier service available for larger orders such as garden furniture and canopies.

"We distinguish ourselves from competitors by always delivering quality and by really knowing our products.” GroenRijk Tilburg specialises in canopies: “We can increasingly improve this online.” 

Wim shares that the family still has many plans. "But the important thing is that we must continue to manage our online growth properly.” The centre is closed at the moment due to Covid-19, but, with the new relaxation of measures, the garden centre can welcome customers again. Wim is very happy with that, but he hopes to be able to receive more customers in his 6,000 square-metre garden centre very soon. "Despite everything, we are busier than ever before and we have experienced tremendous growth in the past year.”

Garden Connect

At the beginning of last year, Garden Connect developed a new webshop for us and we are very satisfied with that. GroenRijk Tilburg has been a customer of Garden Connect for eight years. “It is great to see that Garden Connect, despite the growth they have experienced, is still doing a very good job in a customer oriented way. I really hope they can maintain that for the foreseeable future since it really helps everyone.”