When it comes to ‘buy and build’ John Fentener van Vlissingen is a veteran. He spent more than thirty years pursuing a ‘string of pearls’ strategy, acquiring companies of various sizes, and built BCD Holdings into the global market leader in the travel industry. Here the entrepreneur who excels at building companies explains the seven key ingredients in his recipe for success.
Plan
“I started out in 1975 with a seed capital of 40,000 dollars, two employees and a business plan written on half a page of A4. The business plan said we would concentrate on sectors of the service industry that were ripe for consolidation where technology was still in its infancy. We always stuck to that plan. I didn’t have an ultimate aim in mind. I certainly didn’t foresee the creation of the company that would become BCD Holdings. It happened in phases. We started out as a travel agent that specialised in organising business trips to the southeast of the United States. At that point our ambition was simply to become one of the top ten companies in that region. We planned to achieve this through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions, and it wasn’t long before we fulfilled that ambition.
We then set our sights on covering the whole of the United States. “The opportunity to acquire a loss-making competitor twice our size enabled us to achieve our goal sooner than we expected.” We suddenly found ourselves among the top five travel agents serving the American market and quickly realised that large customers wanted global services. This led to further acquisitions. The rest, as they say, is history. The scale and aim of our operation changed from one phase to the next, but the essence of our business plan always remained the same. We stayed ahead of the consolidation curve through advances in technology and by securing purchasing benefits. These were the driving principles behind every step we took.”
