Curriculum Vitae Steve Badloe
Imamin Fresh Food Company BV is not Steve Badloe’s first company. Doing business is something Steve learned young. Shortly after moving from Suriname to the Bijlmer in Amsterdam at the age of twelve he was baking cookies and selling them with profit. When his mother started to complain about the mess in the kitchen he offered her 10 percent of the profit. “When I was waiting in line with a pound of flour at the checkout in the supermarket I knew exactly how much money I could make with it”.
First success Steve Badloe
In 1984 Steve Badloe started his own bakery business in Amsterdam together with the son of his former boss. This company with 6 employees and minimal turnover grew out to a large concern with 150 employees and a turnover of 43 million in only 12 years. The downside was the hard work. Twelve hours per day 6 days a week, what eventually cost him his marriage. When Steve Badloe was awarded with the entrepreneur of the year award by the Dutch bakery association he started to work less and sold part of his company. From his two bedroom apartment he used these assets to lay down the base for his new company Imamin.
Networking
Simply by being bold and straight forward Steve Badloe got himself, without any turnover, a supervisory board. The board originally consisted of 4 people, later on 3, who represented about 15 billion euro’s though their companies. “No they weren’t interested in the standard supervisory fee. I could have paid them but it was something we just didn’t discuss. It wasn’t important.”
Professionalizing company
Steve Badloe explains his success partially because of the presence of the right people. People that advise him and keep him from making mistakes. “At the start I was spending money without even thinking about it. I didn’t have a business or marketing plan and invested on intuition. When I started to run out of money the people around me intervened and corrected me”. Another explanation is his entrepreneurial attitude. “Most entrepreneurs wait for their chance but I immediately go for it, that’s the difference”.
Ondernemer Steve Badloe over succesvol zakendoen op
The upcoming months Steve Badloe and his people still have allot of work to do for the introduction of the new Halal supermarket products. But he is definitely not looking up to it. “I’ve changed the entire structure to cope with this process. The production, the supervision, the distribution and the marketing. You have to get it right the first time instead of messing around or someone else may take advantage of your situation and take away your business”.