After 27 years of hard work that has led to SHOTS being one of the market leader in the industry, founder Oscar Heijnen has decided to take a step back and hand over his roll of CEO at SHOTS Europe to Hein Schouten.
Eleven years ago, Hein started as a young, motivated Sales rep. “Oscar took me by the hand and showed me everything. We travelled the world together and I was on Oscar’s side for a long time,” Hein says. Over the years Hein worked in Sales / Product development / Purchasing / Design and Logistics. He worked the entire company and he knows it inside and out. Hein already started to manage a few different departments over the years and built structures and strategies. As a preparation for this step Hein became Sales Director in 2019 and now CEO in 2022. “I am very thankful of what Oscar has learned me,” says Hein. “Also, he is the one that has built SHOTS from scratch and made it the success that it is now. I’m more than proud that I can take over this position and I will handle it with great care.”
“Oscar made sure that the SHOTS DNA runs through my veins, so I won’t make drastic changes. But I have been working on a new structure with a management team. We already added new team members that are masters in their field and we’re also working on educating our current team so that we can make each other even better. We will continue to invest in the people because people come at first place at SHOTS.”
Hein’s vision is to take SHOTS Europe to the next level. “We will continue to grow more and more and we continue to be a one-stop-shop where our customers can find everything under one roof. This goes for our in-house designed brands, but also distributed brands. Next to the people, we are investing more in optimising systems and processes: a complete new ERP/WMS system to serve the customers and supplier on a higher level then we already do.” Of course Hein won’t be doing this all alone. “My role as the new leader is the connect all the people. But it’s the complete team that will get us a level-up.”
The last couple of years, SHOTS has been expanding and they will continue to do so. “Not only will we grow in the amount of people working here (when Hein started at SHOTS, it was a group of ten people, now more than 100 people are working at just SHOTS Europe), this expansion means new offices and bigger warehouses. We are currently creating 22000m2 of extra warehouse space!”
Even though SHOTS Europe will expand, Hein is sure of one thing: “SHOTS has always been a company with a family feel. It’s my personal goal to keep this family feeling. And even though we want to reach great goals, we shouldn’t forget that the journey is valuable as well. It wouldn’t be my style if we didn’t have fun along the way!”
