“Bol.com’s father” is on board with AS Adventure’s mother

In March, an agreement was finally reached that nearly half of AS Adventure was owned by a dozen banks. In return, they waived 85 million euros in debt. The company will remain in the hands of the French investment fund PAI and management, which has also implemented an additional capital injection of € 25 million.

Now that the restructuring is officially complete, AS Adventure dares to once again think of growth. This will be done in part under a new name. While overseas stores continue to carry the AS Adventure name, the parent group of the same name has been renamed Yonderland.

The company opened new AS Adventure stores in Turnhout and Waterloo in November and March and will launch a new Juttu pop-up store in Knokke next week. It is Yonderland’s ambition to open more physical stores and expand e-commerce platforms in the near future, according to a press release.

To realize these plans, major shareholder PAI has brought two big names from the e-commerce world on board. Robert Bin Susan, former CEO of online retailer LK Bennett and director of sportswear maker Lululemon, joins Daniel Ropers as a manager at Yonderland. The day-to-day management of the company, with CEO Frederick Hofkins and CFO Chris Horforest, will remain unchanged.

Ropers is the father of the popular Bol.com online store. In 2000 – at that time 27-year-old Roppers was still a consultant at Bertelsmann – he designed the online store concept on behalf of the German publisher. Bertelsmann online – later shortened to Bol.com – only sold books initially. When the dotcom bubble burst not long ago, the German publisher wanted to get rid of it quickly.

With the help of a few investment firms, Ropers were able to avoid pulling the plug from Bol.com. In the following years, Ropers expanded their web store. In 2012, the company came into the hands of the Ahold supermarket group, which has since become Ahold Delhaize

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Ropers stayed on board for 17 years as Bol.com CEO. He left the e-commerce company nearly four years ago To lead the science publisher Springer Nature. At the end of last year, Roppers, the son of a German geneticist and Dutch medical sociologist, surprisingly decided to step down from Springer Nature. It seemed at the time that the job would take too long.