After 5 years, I decided to stop my vanBLIK journey to make room for new ideas, inspiration and creativity.
End 2015 I quit my job as Market Insights Consultant at Vodafone to start my canned-food business; meals that are tasty, nutritious, easy to make and environmentally sustainable. This journey provided me so many exciting moments and new learning opportunities that I never thought possible!
The challenges I faced when building the supply chain from scratch and turning a homemade meal into a scalable shelf ready concept. The excitement when entering the supermarket to find my cans on the shelf, in 950 supermarkets, including those in Curacao. Feeling proud when spotting my head full page in the national newspaper. Often people asked for the marketing department as many assumed my company was way bigger than a one-man band.
I have been able to establish a new brand and a small but steady loyal base of fans. Yet sales volumes were not sufficient to turn vanBLIK into a scale up success that I was aiming for. Still I believe that vanBLIK inspired the category to revalue the use of metal packaging while acknowledging the need for a healthy, convenient ready meal. Time has come to focus, and so I quitted vanBLIK to pave the way for my biggest adventure so far, expanding my Blik Insights success. In a nutshell, Blik Insights helps companies refine and enhance their business strategies by capturing relevant customer insights.
You can read all about it on my website and in my next story I will dive into the need for customer centricity and how market research can help your business be more successful.
Curious? Let’s catch up over a virtual coffee.