What’s your secret?
Caroline van den Berg, owner of ‘de Baronet 1993’, ‘Bij/93’ and ‘van den Berg schoenen’ in Geldermalsen. Just like us, they recently celebrated their 25th anniversary and started this off with a store make over, completely in line with the latest trends.
How it all started
My in-laws owned a shoe store where I started working from the age of 15. I have always enjoyed combining fabrics and creative styling to make the shop window and the overall shop gorgeous. It is something I have a feel for and still do to this day. Later, we took the shoe store over and started with ‘de Baronet’, a living and gift store. Here, our shop window was the real invitation for customers to come have a look and see what our concept was and still is.
We used to sell a lot of furniture. However, the demand decreased as many large hardware stores and garden centers are buying their products from Asia.
The style of 25 years ago
The interior style was full of folkloric print, old pine, replica antiques, chandeliers and excessive decoration. At that time we sold a tremendous amount of lumi lamps, pompadour squares, dolls, bears and hans and gretel figures. People had a lot of decorations in their home and furniture was always bought at local stores. These two factors together ensured that we sold our collection very quickly!
Keep up with the times
As time passes by, a lot of things simply change. I had to adapt to the modern days, I believe that is is a true power to not stay the same and to embrace change. You can always see future trends popping up if you keep an eye on the urban youth. There you will find the ‘out of the box’ fashion styles and colours, many of which you will find over the rest of the country later on. Nowadays we sell less furniture but this has been replaced by fashion in our stores. We choose our own style by mixing and matching brands by colour.
Makeover
As we celebrated our 25th anniversary, we thought it was time for a makeover. The recent renovation has given the store a contemporary look / concept store feeling. Our love for mixing & matching brands fits beautifully in the new store. During the renovation we moved into temporary building, which we enjoyed so much, that we kept it and created a whole new store around the marvellous building, it is called “Bij / 93”. This is a place where we present a different style and thus appeal to more people.
