RTL Z - Frisian stock buyer sells stock from shipping containers to remaining Blokker shops

- (https://kooistra.com/2025/03/26/)

The bankruptcy of Blokker and its warehouse are giving Eric Kooistra ‘a very good year’. The Frisian stock buyer managed to get hold of a large stock of items intended for the household chain. He is now a ‘regular supplier’ to the more than forty franchisees that are still open, and he hopes to supply new Blokker shops as well.

Kooistra said this in an interview with RTL Z.

Last December, just after the household chain went bankrupt, Kooistra bought more than 200 shipping containers packed with Blokker items for ‘a bargain’. The entrepreneur is now using them to supply part of the remaining Blokker shops run by franchisees.

The remaining shops belong to independent retailers who carry the Blokker range and pay to use the name. These shops fell outside the bankruptcy, but were left without a parent company and without central supply.

“We made a deal with the franchisees, they order from us online and we deliver the goods,” says Kooistra, who stepped into the gap. By his own account he fills around 30 percent of the shelves, with things like baking tins, luggage sets and candles. The rest comes from suppliers such as Tefal or Brabantia.

The entrepreneur set up his business in Friesland ‘specially’ as a distribution centre and now handles a large part of the shops’ supply himself. “Lean and mean,” says Kooistra. He and his staff drive pallets of goods to the shops every day. Only the far corners of the country are handled by hauliers.

“For now we can keep going for a while,” says Kooistra about the stock he still has to sell to the shops. The shipping containers full of goods, now stored in three different warehouses, are not empty yet. He is also aiming for more, and new, business with Blokker.

By his own account, Kooistra had dinner yesterday with Roland Palmer, the Blokker family member who wants to continue the chain and who bought the brand name and online shop for 1 million euros after the bankruptcy. Palmer wants to work with the franchisees and open new Blokker shops.

“And tie in with what we are doing. Once our goods are sold out, he takes over the supply and importing again.”

Isn’t Kooistra getting in Palmer’s way, then? The Frisian entrepreneur sees opportunities instead: “Palmer wants to build his own chain, with his own warehouse,” he says. But if we can help build it, that is a gain for us in the long term. In other words, Kooistra hopes to get a share of the business with the new shops.

When will they open? Palmer himself could not yet be reached for comment. Kooistra predicts, however, that ‘dozens’ of new shops will open before the summer. Meanwhile, his year can no longer go wrong financially: 2025 is a profitable year, says Kooistra, who does not go into detail. “If you want healthy trade, you have to be flexible.”