Last September, over the course of one week, I was informed about the deaths of two people I had closely cooperated with over the years. First, I was informed that Olaf Zwijnenburg had passed away during his vacation in South Africa. Within a week, news reached me that Bart Horsten had died in a car crash in Germany. Last week I wrote about Bart here, and I also want to share a few words about my experiences with Olaf, which help illustrate who he was.
Olaf to the rescue
I believe Olaf was in the audience when I delivered a talk on New Retail in China for Beeckestijn Business School in 2018, as part of the promotion for a study tour. But my first real contact with Olaf was in May 2019, when I asked people on our ChinaTalk mailing list if they could help me fill two timeslots for potential tours in the Autumn of 2019 after two clients had to cancel their tours because of a lack of interest in their networks.
Olaf responded enthusiastically: ‘I see a challenge in turning this into a ‘Rabobank Retail Travel’ concept.’ Olaf was very quick to put together a flyer to promote a potential tour in September 2019, in anticipation of internal alignment.
Olaf also engaged Rabobank colleague Jeroen to organise a formal China study tour for them, including C-level employees from Rabobank’s corporate clients. Within two weeks, I was having a face-to-face meeting with Olaf and Jeroen. Unfortunately, given the short timeframe, they were not able to secure enough of those prospects to book a tour in September 2019. The tour was postponed to October and ultimately cancelled on 8-8, which is usually an auspicious date in Chinese culture.
But Olaf and Jeroen were convinced that, with more time, they would secure enough people for the Spring of 2020. After coming back from a tour with Focusplaza in September 2019, we shifted gears again on the Rabobank tour. Things went well, and they were more successful in securing tour participants this time. In December, we confirmed a tour for April 2020 after enough people had booked.
A lot of work was done in the weeks that followed. Information brochures and briefing meetings were prepared. But then came COVID, and eventually the April 2020 tour had to be cancelled, along with some other tours we had been organising in the spring of that year. We attempted to postpone the tour until the autumn of 2020, but China closed its borders for three years, and it wasn’t until 2023 that we could offer another tour.
A new attempt
In May 2023, I reconnected with Olaf and Jeroen to see whether we could resume where we left off. Jeroen replied: ‘Coincidences don’t exist; Olaf and I also talked about this last week.’ In addition to the original plan for the corporate clients tour, Olaf and I began exploring a tour for a different target group of Rabobank customers. Ironically enough, on 8-8, Olaf informed me that the machine’s gears turned too slowly to make a 2023 tour possible, so we started aiming for the spring of 2024.
Internally, the need to fly across the world had become a sensitive topic at Olaf’s company. Still, Olaf said: ‘I have a good feeling about it so far, but I am a positive person.’ He has also started asking around his network for interest in case a tour under the Rabobank flag would prove unfeasible.
By the end of October 2024, Olaf had all internal approvals and started approaching potential participants. But the China sentiment had changed, and not for the better. There was less interest from the same target audience and in January 2024, Olaf and Jeroen once again had to cancel all plans.
More attempts
But Olaf did not consider himself defeated. I think that was part of his personality: perseverance and a healthy dose of stubbornness. If he couldn’t go with the company, he would organise things himself. We met in mid-January and made an action plan. If people didn’t realise the importance of learning more about China, we needed to make it clear to them. Olaf began actively approaching people in his extensive network in non-food retail. Meanwhile, we wrote a series of blogs on China and the rise of Chinese webshops for Retailtrends, with the help of Mathijs de Boer, Head of the International Desk Asia at Rabobank.
Retailtrends also helped promote a tour, but despite the content we made and which he actively distributed, Olaf hit a wall of disinterest and negative sentiment again. And those who had said they were interested suddenly found various reasons to pull back.
Meanwhile, I had gathered enough people to organise a small tour in April 2024. Less is sometimes more, and the group was excellent. Olaf eventually abandoned all attempts to assemble his own group and, after receiving approval to use his training budget for that year, joined the tour. He was having the time of his life. He was amazed by everything he saw and the delicious food. Olaf had his birthday during the tour, which we celebrated with a surprise cake and singing staff at the hotpot restaurant Haidilao.
After the tour, Olaf remained determined to assemble his own group to join him in the Autumn of 2025 or the Spring of 2025. He sent his network a message starting with: ‘I have just returned from this trip that took place last April, and I can only say that I do not regret for a second that I went to see it with my own eyes.’ He also began promoting the need for a study tour more forcefully within his organisation.
Olaf’s approach became increasingly pragmatic to the point that it sometimes made me slightly uncomfortable. But again, there was insufficient interest from his network in the Netherlands, and my own acquisition activities and follow-ups on previous leads did not yield many new bookings either. Attempts to schedule tours in the Autumn of 2024 and Spring of 2025 were unsuccessful.
At that point, I gave up on the Netherlands and Belgium and focused on other countries that expressed interest in visiting China for a retail study tour. Since then, I have received bookings for four tours for German groups and one for a Norwegian group.
Thank you, Olaf
I got to know Olaf as a very driven and enthusiastic person. As mentioned, he demonstrated perseverance and did not give up easily. If bureaucratic red tape prevented him from achieving his goals, such as getting a group to China, he would pursue other means. He had a great sense of humour and was often setting the mood during the April 2024 tour. We stayed in contact, and I had the pleasure of speaking at some of the same events he did. I think he must have had a hand in recommending me to the organisers …
After our keynotes at the Retail Reconnect event in Antwerp, I took him to a great Chinese restaurant in the local Chinatown to try the popular dishes we had eaten a year earlier in China. He gave me a ride back to the Netherlands, and we shared our disappointment with the interest in tours, moaning about the complacency of Dutch retailers, which seemed to complain only about China but showed no willingness to gather critical competitive intelligence by going there. It visibly frustrated him that he had not gotten people sufficiently excited to join us on a trip to China.
We didn’t always agree. I remember a heated discussion about whether Chinese consumers would buy a certain product category online, where Olaf’s experience in Europe and my experience with the habitual distrust among Chinese consumers led to different conclusions. I would also note that some of his claims about Chinese webshops were somewhat exaggerated, while I preferred to stick to hard facts. He didn’t mind because he thought it helped create more awareness with his audience, even if things turned out not as bad as he predicted. But I never shunned a good crossing of swords, and I think in the end we both learned something by sharing our opinions.
As interest in China appears to be slowly recovering, I’m sorry we won’t be able to see Olaf finally succeed in bringing that group together after his previous six attempts (it’s striking to realise there were so many). I’m sure it wasn’t a lack of enthusiasm and energy on our side, but rather a general complacency, arrogance, and ignorance among the target audience. Olaf and I were convinced of the necessity to learn more about China. Still, among the target audience, there were always 1.000 reasons for people not to go: budget constraints, too little time, low priority, wanting to know who else was in the group first, etc.
I am very grateful to Olaf for all the support he gave me and his wonderful companionship during the April 2024 tour and the subsequent speaking engagements. And I can rest assured that, during his life, he himself still had the chance to experience what he tried to convince others of. Olaf was an enormously driven, energetic, pragmatic, and almost anti-authoritarian person, and I really enjoyed working with him, despite the constant frustration we faced.
I have given up hope of ever convincing a group of Dutch retailers of the need to visit China, while I am organising tours for other European countries. But if I ever do that tour with Rabobank in the future, it will be dedicated to Olaf.
Thank you, Olaf, wherever you may be.
Epilogue
One and a half years before his death, Olaf had the time of his life during the karaoke night that ended the April 2024 tour. Looking back at the footage, his choice of songs was eerily prophetic as he sang Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’. As he sang ‘And now, the end is near,’ he could not have known the truth in those words. But one thing is for sure: Olaf did it his way.