Profile

I am Ruud Steenvoorden, President and owner of Steenvoorden Consulting, born on 25th July 1950 in Nieuwer Amstel in The Netherlands. I am now living in Cape Town, South Africa.

After finishing high school in 1968 and studying English, German and French, I started my business career as a buying-assistant with a professional tools and automotive accessories company, called W.F. Harrems B.V. in Diemen, The Netherlands.

Five years later, I was asked to join the Fetim Group in Amsterdam. At that time Fetim was an importer and distributor of building products, mainly wood, for the Dutch market. I started as a trainee and studied wood technology, but quickly realized that I enjoyed the buying side more than any other part of the business. Later Fetim introduced a new channel strategy to move away from commodity marketing and divided their efforts into separate retail and commercial / professional divisions, each with its own differentiated marketing and innovation strategy. At the time, this was a unique concept when compared to our competition but proved to be very successful !

During the 80's Fetim (www.fetimgroup.com) determined to be an important player in both laminate and wood flooring categories. Our effort resulted in Fetim gaining a major market position in both the Benelux countries and throughout Europe. Today Fetim remains a dominant force and plays a major role in Europe; in the Benelux for laminate flooring and in Europe for solid and engineered wood flooring through the product group Solidfloor
(see www.solidfloor.nl).

In 2005, I co-founded the European Federation of Parquet Importers (EFPI) with Fetim B.V.. The organization brought importers from across the EU together for the purpose of addressing common business issues and interests. Based in Brussels, the EFPI developed a strong lobby to draw attention to the flooring industry in the governing body of the EU. I served as Vice-president of the EFPI from its inception until late 2009.

While representing the EFPI, I helped Mr. Thomas Baert of Chinafloors Shanghai Timber Ltd, establish the SINO-US-EU Wood Flooring Summit. In its third year, the International Wood Flooring Summit brings together government representatives and associations from around the world to address regulation and environmental issues challenging the wood flooring industry. This supports my slogan that I would “rather talk with each other rather than talk about each other.”

Until July, 2006, I served the Fetim Group as their Director of Corporate Buying, at which time I decided to move to South Africa. I continued to consult Fetim B.V. on their strategic buying of wood flooring until early 2009. In February, 2010, I was invited to join the Floor Covering Institute LLC (www.floorcoveringinstitute.com and www.blog.floorcoveringinstitute.com), an international floor covering consultancy based in the USA. My experience with Southern African countries, Europe and Asia will build FCI’s footprint and expertise that already has consultants based in the USA, England and Germany.

I am excited to work in the new and growing African markets as part of the global flooring community.

There is still a lot of opportunity to grow the world’s flooring business; I look forward to working with companies facing the challenges of growth in this dynamic industry!