DAVID BIJLSMA: "THERE IS NO BETTER INVESTMENT THAN A ROLEX"

David Bijlsma was still in school when he was already working at GASSAN. In the warehouse, unpacking boxes. Today he sits on the company board as Chief Commercial Officer. His career can be seen on his wrist: from Casio to Rolex.

Text: Bart-Jan Brouwer | Online Editor: Natasha Hendriks
Image: John van Helvert

When your mother married another man in 1982, could you have imagined that one day you would be on the board with him?

"Not right away. I wasn't very interested right away either. As a child of parents with their own business, of course you do get to know a lot at the dinner table in the evenings. And I also always had a fascination for watches. In 1983, Casio introduced a watch with a calculator. I found that fascinating. I did job after job to be able to buy that watch, which cost 99 guilders at the time. That Casio was my first watch. That sparked my love for watches. Shortly thereafter, the Swatch watch first came on the market. That was launched in America. I asked my uncle Guy, who was already living in New York at the time, to purchase such a Swatch for me."

What makes a watch special to you: the technology, the design, the story?

"I have always found marketing particularly interesting and that plays a big role in watches as well. Every watch brand has a certain mindset attached to it, people always immediately have an idea about it. I find that fascinating. Only later, during my internships, did I start to see how much technology goes into it. That is unprecedented. High-end watches are all made and polished by human hands. That is craftsmanship of the very highest level."

Within GASSAN, what was your path to the position of Chief Commercial Officer?

"I learned to grind, worked as a goldsmith, went through all the departments within headquarters... I know the company inside and out. At Schiphol, I went into purchasing and became a member of the management there. And in recent years I have been allowed to lead the overall company together with my father and sister. Still every day I benefit from having experienced all those disciplines."

That team expands naturally: both your children are also already working within the company.

"My daughter Giselle has her own jewelry line, By Gigi. That came all by herself. She felt that for girls of sixteen, seventeen, there wasn't that much in the way of jewelry. Either it was fake or it was expensive. So she came up with the idea of making affordable jewelry, but made of real gold and with real diamonds. A gap in the market. In the summer of 2018, she started creating all the designs. She then coordinated these further with her aunt. The result came on the market on Valentine's Day 2019. She is very successful with it. In the meantime, she has come up with several new collections, so that is an ongoing project."

And together with your son, you started your own watch line.

"Guy got that passion for watches from me, I think. His first watch was a Flik Flak, Swatch's children's line. I think I bought it when he was two. That's what you get with a watch-crazy father, haha. When he was seven, we developed the first collection: affordable mechanical watches, quite classic. "Won't we also develop a nice sports watch that you can go on the beach with?" asked Guy. Then we started making that. My son has a gigantic eye for detail. Either he doesn't like the stitching in the strap or he wants a different hand or a different color dial. And he is always right. So much fun! We have been doing this for ten years now. The watches are on display at GASSAN."

Your wife Gytha also works at GASSAN.

"She is responsible for the entire service center. That has taken on an increasingly important role. We had a service center at Schiphol Airport, at Dam Square and in the main office. Only they couldn't communicate with each other computer-wise. If someone handed in his watch at our Dam branch and wanted to pick it up a week later at our head office: that was inconvenient. So we decided to centralize the entire service center. Gytha did that. And she's still leading that."

What are family dinners at the table about?

"It's always about the business. Outsiders might think of us as a strange family, because not only do we work together 365 days a year, but we also vacation together. That's precisely when private matters come up. We are very close as a family, we also all live close together and my children enjoy looking after Debora's children."

What have you learned over the years from Benno?

"Being extremely open. We are a fairly open book, both internally and to people outside, suppliers and customers. Very direct. And also in terms of leadership, I learned from him. I sometimes jokingly say that I learned the most from him in bad times. The diamond robbery in 2001, the SARS outbreak in 2003, the credit crisis in 2009... Then he stood up, he was the great motivator, he stood on top of the barricades: shoulders to the ground and we all went for it."

You have a lot of soccer players as customers. Is that because of your enthusiasm for the game or because of soccer players' enthusiasm for beautiful watches?

"Both. I played soccer at AFC until I was sixteen, always in selection teams. Then I broke my leg and it was sort of over, partly because I liked going out even more than playing soccer. And I wasn't a real talent. But because of that I knew a lot of guys who later went on to play professional soccer. They came to me automatically when they wanted to buy a watch. That spread like an oil slick. And of course we are soccer crazy. Under normal circumstances, you see us in several soccer stadiums every week. Dad goes there, I go there."

75 years of Gassan. What does that do to you?

"I think it's a very special milestone. Last year we worked hard on a special jewelry collection. And we single-handedly developed a watch with a special movement, the Valjoux 7750 caliber, which is only used by major brands such as TAG Heuer, Breitling and Tudor. The very first GASSAN logo is on it, as a kind of tribute to Samuel Gassan. A fantastic watch at a fantastic price: 1,945 euros, the founding year of GASSAN."

How far ahead are you looking?

"Looking ahead five years I think is long enough. Let's get out of this situation first and then get back to building the GASSAN brand. That will automatically mean trying to expand the number of branches. Now a family business is fundamentally different from a large corporate. All we really have to do is make sure that the company remains ultra healthy for the next generation. And personally, I would really like to see the 100th anniversary."

Click here for the interview with President-Director GASSAN Benno Leeser.

Masters #44

MASTERS #44