Celebrating a milestone: 20 years with Jan, our Chief Innovation Officer!

Let's take a moment together to celebrate and appreciate this inspiring journey. Here's to many more years of innovation, growth, and success! We've captured some of the most remarkable moments and insights from our CINO's incredible journey in a special blog post.

What is your position within Aluvision? And how has it evolved over the years? 

Even before Aluvision was founded 20 years ago and I started my career here, I already knew Ann and Dirk as customers in the stand construction world. In 2003, when they were itching to start a new and innovative company in the development of stand construction systems, they finally convinced me to take the plunge as well. The first task was to find a good company name, and at that time a high alphabetical ranking in the “Yellow Pages” was still an important criterion. So the company name would start with an 'A'. Once knocked off 'Aluvision' - a new vision on aluminum systems - I could officially start as Product Manager. In the beginning, however, it was very much a challenging combination of R&D, purchasing, technical design, inside sales and logistics. Fortunately of relatively short duration. A tight mini-Aluvision team was soon built up and tasks could be divided more. Over the years the growth continued: the team grew steadily, new products were developed, the customer portfolio thickened and we became active in more and more countries. In 2019, as COO, I was partly given the opportunity to pull the implementation of a new ERP package within Aluvision in order to make Aluvision as a company even more future proof. Despite the Covid dip and thanks to a very driven team of 6 key-users, we were also able to successfully launch this project early this year. Today, as Chief Innovation Officer, I hope to contribute to the further development of a healthy Aluvision and a high quality and sustainable product range.

What has been your personal highlight during these 20 years? 
In general, 20 years has ultimately been a succession of highlights: winning product awards, successful trade show participations, getting to know great colleagues, ... and now we are eagerly looking forward to what will undoubtedly be the next highlight: the imminent move to our new location at Evolis Kortrijk. Personal highlight is that I can all be a part of this!

What keeps your job within Aluvision challenging?
The most challenging part of the job is undoubtedly the combination of "short deadlines - high expectations" and the fact that there is always something unexpected and new coming your way.

How have you seen Aluvision change over the years? 
At its core, Aluvision hasn't really changed that much. A healthy family business that continues to respect strong basic values and that of course grows with the needs and demands of the market. Aluvision has grown from a handful of people in a small business space into a fixed value on the international market, with beautiful company buildings, a very wide product range and over 160 colleagues. 

And how do you see the future of Aluvision? 
 "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades" is what Timbuk3 would say. The trade show & event industry continues to constantly evolve and reinvent itself. 

Interesting fact/anecdote about Aluvision?
During one of our first trade shows in the US (Exhibitor in Las Vegas), our entire trade show booth, flown in from Belgium, was detained by US Customs for inspection. Of course, we panicked like crazy! We got the message the evening before we left for Vegas, to coordinate the build-up, and thus 3 days before the start of the fair. All hands on deck to come up with a plan B and have a completely new booth produced on site by one of our local clients as a backup, over the weekend. The backup stand was just finished to be delivered when, after a lot of pushing and pulling, we managed to get our initial stand delivered the night before the start of the fair and build it up just in time for the official opening. All is well that ends well, but that weekend nonetheless I aged 5 years.