Director-owner of ETC Design Center Europe, Len de Koster, tells MASTERS why ETC is unique and how he and his wife, Linda, got started.Text: Bart Jan Brouwer | Online Editor: Natasha Hendriks
Image: John van Helvert
Luxury department store
"In 2008, my wife and I bought the current ETC building in Culemborg. Interior design was on the rise at the time, but designers needed somewhere to get their furniture. That's where ETC Design Center came in, and that led to the fact that today ETC offers a total concept where the interior design professional finds 120 showrooms spread over 15,000 square meters. All aimed at the high end of the interior/exterior industry. What ETC has to offer cannot be found on the European mainland. The interior center can be seen as a very upscale interior department store with all exclusive and expensive items. The only difference is that ETC focuses on Business-to-Business and not on the private market. However, an interior design professional can bring his or her client here to make choices together. The professionals who come here are mainly high-end retailers, stylists, architects, hoteliers, the project market and designers from the maritime market. This attracts both national and international guests with very different goals. Some come just for a sofa, others come for miles of wallpaper or upholstery. All in all, we find that ETC Design Center Europe is becoming more and more European in scope."
Gut feeling
"My wife does the creative part - she set up the ETC Design Café, for example - I mainly deal with finding the right parties.
As a center, we don't allow just any exhibitor. Quality and craftsmanship are very important, but we also let our gut feelings speak for themselves. I myself have a preference for beautiful materials. Here we have blinds made of leather, wallpaper made of wafer-thin wood and carpets of all shapes and sizes. Some label our products as expensive, but that is the wrong term: they are expensive. Something is expensive when the value for money is out of proportion. Something becomes expensive when one knows that a carpet, for example, is completely hand-knotted and has been worked on for nine months. As a center, we have had the honor of hosting many special guests and some exhibitors have worked on very special projects. Without going into detail, we can say that the center has been visited for the realization of several royal projects."
Homeworkers
"It is very crazy: there is a crisis going on that many businesses are suffering tremendously, but here we have only entrepreneurs who are happy. As a center, we sometimes even have the luxury of having more requests than we can accommodate. Also visitor numbers have only increased after the first wave of the corona virus, it seems everyone is busy with their interiors. The trend you see now is that, because of the increase in home workers, the old-fashioned workroom is coming back. Very nice desks are being developed for the home. And we are seeing the rise of the fabric Boucle. It's all becoming more airy, less pompous. To share such developments, we organize the ETC Design Experience. On these days, interior design professionals can immerse themselves in the latest trends, colors and inspiration. In addition, ETC also offers various training opportunities under the name ETC Academy: a range of courses, trainings and workshops given by various cooperation partners."
Alpe d'Huez
"This spot used to be the clubhouse of the cycling club, of which I was a member as a ten-year-old boy. Here lies a piece of my childhood, and it goes back even further: as a four-year-old boy, I caused contamination in the ground here when I hit a lever of an oil tank with my go-kart and oil spilled out. The oil tank belonged to the rubber factory where my father worked as a plant manager. I later bought back my own problem and then fixed it myself. I still do cycling. I have climbed the Alpe d'Huez twelve times with Friends Team Culemborg and am in the organization of Alpe d'HuZes. Part of this building has been made available to the Alpe d'HuZes as storage for catering, merchandise and facilities, among other things. Every year in May I take three weeks off, then thirty trucks come here to load everything and drive to France. And then I go up that mountain again; on my carbon bike. My wife is always laughing. Look at my stature. And then I come home with 'honey, I have carbon pedals, 50 grams lighter'."