Johs De Kuijper & Zoon

On the 1st of May 1948 I started here as a clerk in the Sales Department were Mr van Gilst was ruling the roost under the allover supervision of the "procuratiehouder" Mr.Steenbergen. After a year or so, a position came free as a representative for the southern region of The Netherlands ea. Nth. Brabant, Limburg and Zeeland and Mr van Gilst, at his request, got that position. A clerk in the office, Mr. Landwier, was promoted to supervise the Sales Department. Mr. Hans Landwier decided after a few years to leave DE KUYPER to take up a job somewhere else. As I  had been his understudy for all those years, I got promoted to be the head of the Sales Department for sales in The Netherlands.

When I started at the DE KUYPER it was said that the division of the home trade, distinct from the export department, was losing money. After some time in this job and familiarising myself with the system I could not understand this. I found however that there were not many cross references between actual delivery and invoicing of the goods to our customers. As all sales had to go through the a system of approved documents for excisable duties and stamped by the Department of Excise (D of  E), I started a system to cross reference these with the actual invoices based on the total of the alcohol calculated at 50% (as required on the documents with the D of E). As this worked out OK, I decided to track all the invoices etc. from the past and, surprise, surprise, I found many deliveries NOT invoiced and, over the period I checked, this added up to quite a bit of money and could well have been the reason for not making money. I also started some statistics and graphs of the sales and this also gave a good picture of how the department was going. I was never asked to do all this, it was all for my own curiosity. In first instance, when I presented some of these figures they did not take much notice, but some month later, the "procuratiehouder" wanted all these statistics etc. on his desk every month! No thank you or anything.

During this time I studied bookkeeping, modern business administration, trade courses etc., all with good to very good marks.

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