Koen Lisman

Dutch forklift wholesaler Lisman celebrates its 50th anniversary this week with festivities at its three sites in IJsselstein, near Utrecht.

Lisman's history dates back to 1967, when Anton Lisman Sr. established  Lisman Vorkheftrucks BV in Groenekan, near Utrecht.

"Originally, he was trading in building materials, but, by coincidence, he bought some used forklifts in a package among other items and found out that these products were more profitable than the goods he was trading before," says Koen Lisman, his grandson and current CEO. "So, from then, he decided to specialise in trading forklifts."

By the time Anton Lisman Sr. retired in the '70s, his two sons had transformed the business with a strong export focus and a move from retail to wholesale. "Lisman Vorkheftrucks started buying and selling used forklifts all over Europe (and) moved to a larger facility in Utrecht City," the CEO adds.

By 1987, the Lisman Team had grown to approximately 35 members and had to move to new premises in IJsselstein to accommodate the growth.

Koen Lisman took the reins of the business in 2004, taking over the 50% share capital and CEO position from his father, Jos Lisman, who later retired in 2009.

The new millennium has seen Lisman expand beyond Europe. The first offshore operation, Lisman Forklifts Asia, has been trading out of Malaysia since 2012.

In 50 years, the business has grown from three staff to 75; inventory has swollen from 20 machines in 1968 to 1,600 in 2017; and sales have grown from 48 machines in 1968 to more than 6,000 in 2016. The Lisman reach has stretched from two countries to 81.

Koen Lisman sees long-lasting relationships as key to the business's success, and that includes its staff with an average tenure of 17 years. He cites staff like Dries van Dieren who has been with the company for 48 years "and stills arrives every morning at 6.45 am to open up the facilities and prepare everything for another day of work for the team".

Looking ahead to the next 50 years, Lisman sees the greatest challenge as "sustaining our role as  leading wholesaler of used materials handling equipment in a market where product lifecycles shorten in general, gravity in product range rapidly moves away from traditional, multipurpose counterbalance forklift trucks to warehouse machinery and AGVs, and cost leadership and continuous upwards pressure of critical mass become continuously more important to be successful and allow Lisman to keep on investing and innovating in new business processes and ICT".
 
"We are confident that we can overcome these challenges by sticking to our DNA and staying very close to the market, which are mainly our suppliers and our customers with whom we keep very good relationships," he says.

Lisman will be catching up with many of those suppliers and customers this week at the company's celebrations.