Eric Kooistra: from Blokker stock to 220,000 Paris soft toys

- (https://kooistra.com/2025/09/29/)

### ‘Paris 2024’ is printed on the plush soft toys. Eric Kooistra didn’t buy a few of them, he bought 220,000 in one go. But that was after the Paris Olympic Games, when tourists in the French capital were still paying 30, 40 or 50 euros apiece for them, writes the _AD_.

_By: Jurriaan Nolles_ (Article in ‘de Ondernemer’, Monday 22 September 2025)

https://www.deondernemer.nl/actueel/eric-kooistra-opkoper-blokker-big-bazar-bmw-china~b1f5604

But who is still interested in them once the world’s biggest sporting event is long over? Who would be mad enough to store thousands of these outdated mascots in a warehouse in Leeuwarden, hoping that someone will come and buy them one day?

Soft toys with Paris 2024. Kooistra has 220,000 of them. Photo: Corné Sparidaens

Eric Kooistra, that’s who, owner of one of the largest stock buying companies in the Netherlands. Since he bought 202 shipping containers from Blokker, then bankrupt, he has become the best-known stock buyer in the country.

His profile grew a little further, against his will, when it turned out that his cousin Heerke Kooistra had bought the bargain chain Big Bazar and gone bankrupt with it. Eric had a large notice put on his website saying that ‘this Kooistra does pay his bills’. “People easily mix you up when you have the same surname and come from Friesland, but we simply do our work properly,” Eric explains.

Who is this stock buyer from Friesland, who made sure that dozens of franchised Blokker shops could stay open? The man who buys up all the coats from last year’s winter collection at C&A? Who sees potential in 250 written-off BMWs that will never be driven?

On a Thursday morning he walks into his premises. It is an office, bar and showroom in one, on a drab industrial estate in Leeuwarden, with a huge warehouse full of goods behind it.

He is wearing white Nikes, jeans and a navy blazer over a T-shirt. His phone keeps going off. It is still early, but he already has 49 unread emails and ten WhatsApp messages to answer. “We often have to be quick. We bought those soft toys within ten minutes.”

And at a good price, of course. He can’t say exactly how much they cost him, but you can assume 50 cents to a euro apiece. “Look at it like this: in our trade we usually pay between zero and twenty percent of the normal value. So if something normally costs one euro, we pay about ten cents.”

> For the 202 Blokker shipping containers Kooistra paid ‘a few million’. It was 10,000 goods, 1,600 different items

For the 202 Blokker shipping containers he paid ‘a few million’, he says. It was 10,000 goods, 1,600 different items. All the typical Blokker things are in there: throws, mixing bowls, scales and lunch boxes, in an endless row of cardboard boxes. “The factory in China had a problem once Blokker no longer existed but the goods had already been ordered. Part was already in port, part still at sea. It was only going to cost them money.”

And then along comes Kooistra: “We pay quickly, and the Chinese had to get rid of it.” The deal, closed by his business partner Tjitse Lawerman within a few days, was really only the start of the work. Because where do you find the space to store 202 shipping containers of goods? And who is going to unload all of it?

“We were in the media quickly, so people knew there was work here. And we are Frisians: they don’t mind working.” Through some friendly business owners, five large warehouses were rented on top, and staff holidays were cancelled: “We’ll pay them double holiday afterwards,” they reasoned.

“Sometimes we just put two containers side by side, one team here, one team there, and off we go. Whoever is empty first wins. Sweat on your forehead, a bit of graft, a bit of fun, and at the end a meatball and a beer. Yes, then it is actually quite a nice job.”

It is as if Kooistra lives in an almost old-fashioned world where trade is based on trust. “The Chinese wanted 140,000 euros for five trailers of luggage sets, but we wanted to pay 100,000. Then you end up at 120,000. Then everyone can carry on.”

He has a hundred stories, for example about the lot of a hundred thousand winter coats from C&A, models from previous winters that could no longer be sold in the shops. “What do you think a Romanian woman thinks of that? She says: ‘Fine coat, nice and warm.’”

Kooistra’s warehouse, completely full of Blokker goods. Photo: Corné Sparidaens

His company buys those coats for about 5 euros each and then sells them on for 6 euros to contacts in countries such as Poland or Romania. He has a customer in Poland with twenty small shops, for example, who can sell 250 per location. “That man says: _Dobre_, let’s do it. And if you have a few contacts like that, you sell a hundred thousand coats just like that. That’s why I would rather have a hundred thousand than a thousand. We have the customers.”

He sells ‘everything’, he says. Well over 90 percent of his range costs less than 2 euros. “From shoelaces to apple sauce, and from Christmas baubles to novelty candles. But we also have furniture and cars.”

Speaking of which: it has just been in the news that 260 unsellable BMWs are standing in Moerdijk. They come from the Fremantle Highway, the cargo ship that caught fire in the North Sea in July 2023. BMW will never allow them back on the road, but Kooistra would still like to have them. “Then we saw them in half and make a garden set out of them. Or a garden tractor.”

What Kooistra means is this: anything can be sold, as long as you haven’t paid too much for it yourself. “You have to dare to buy cheaply. Look, if you want the very latest thing, it won’t work. But we buy everything after the trend. We buy the Christmas baubles once Christmas is over. And when summer is over, we buy the paddling pools.”

Read also: New Blokker boss is decisive and committed: ‘If anyone can save Blokker, it’s Palmer’

It often happens with surplus stock after a bankruptcy. Isn’t he the vulture waiting for someone else’s misfortune? “Look, if Blokker goes bankrupt, of course we go for it. Then we take action. But it’s not a case of: great, they’re bankrupt, we get another house out of it. That’s not how we are. Bankruptcy stock is often a one-off. You put loads of energy into it and afterwards everyone is gone. Then you’ve lost your customers. I would much rather deal with a company that is simply doing well and changes its collections. That is worth something in the long term.”

Blokker throws. Photo: Corné Sparidaens

Take a walk with him through the showroom. There are thousands of plastic straws and plastic balloons, items that have long been banned in the Netherlands on sustainability grounds. “But should we throw them away then? Somewhere in the world someone still wants them, you know.”

Then more seriously: “If you open the wardrobe of the average Dutch person, everything comes tumbling out. That’s how spoilt we are. But there are so many people in the world who are happy with what we throw away. Go and stand in India or somewhere in Africa with a thousand of those Paris soft toys. Within ten minutes they’re gone. We make sure goods don’t end up in the incinerator, but with people who need them. And sometimes that earns something too.”

Christmas goods for sale at Kooistra. Photo: Corné Sparidaens

His company now employs twenty people. Annual turnover is 10 million euros. “There’s no swearing here either,” he says, pointing to a sign above the canteen door. It says that God’s name may not be taken in vain.

“That’s not right. We like to have a bit of respect for everyone. It’s the same in trade: if you have no respect for people, nobody will want to give you the business. And we don’t sell at the highest price, so that goodwill is very important.”

> > ## “There we were in old factories, sorting, selling and organising goods. Putting everything in rows, and then the people from the village came by”, Eric Kooistra

He learned the trade from his father, who learned it from his father. “Grandad once started with a cargo bike, the dubbeltjeskar (the dime cart), and rode through the Frisian Woods around Damwoude with small lots of clothing and textiles. He did a bit of trading and made his profit a dime at a time.”

His father was also in trading, albeit on a smaller scale. In the 1980s he drove through East Germany by car. On one of those trips, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. “He thought: what is this? Normally it was drab and grey there, but now it was one big party. He went to Berlin and simply stood among the people who were breaking down the Wall with pickaxes. He even took a piece home.”

The fall of the Wall proved a breakthrough. At first his father went east to sell Western goods, but what he found was at least as interesting: enormous stocks of products that had been produced for years but never sold.

Read also: How buying up surplus stock led to a successful supermarket format

“An East German family got, so to speak, three toothbrushes a year from the communist regime. But there were still millions of toothbrushes simply sitting in storage. And sledges and porcelain too, all in warehouses. Everything was there, but nobody was buying it.”

His father not only bought up stock, but sometimes even whole factories via the Treuhand, the agency tasked with selling the communist state enterprises. “That was a real growth spurt. In turnover, in volume, in everything.” Kooistra was 15 or 16 years old at the time.

“We just went along. My friends too. There we were in old factories, sorting, selling and organising goods. Putting everything in rows, and then the people from the village came by.”

The Kooistras made their fortune with preserving jars and army uniforms, with Blokker and the 202 shipping containers as the next big breakthrough. When Blokker went bankrupt, there were still 45 independent franchisees who simply kept their shops open.

They never ran out of Blokker goods because Kooistra simply sold to them. Now that the new owner Roland Palmer has taken over Blokker again, Kooistra simply sells his goods to the new Blokker. He still has half of the stock left.

Yes, looking back this was the deal of his life, especially given all the media attention. But he finds the 220,000 Paris soft toys just as much fun. “Maybe I’ll take the little logos off and stitch a new logo on.”

He is sure of it: then they will sell in no time.