Margré van Dalfsen
G2 Shareholder and part of VC Group
My name is Margré van Dalfsen, shareholder and second generation working in our family business VC Group. Visscher-Caravelle is a large global manufacturer of car mats and active in the automotive industry. Our domestic companies M2Carpets, MCI and Vica International focus on carpet printing and finishing. The VC Group was founded in 1988 by Gerard van Dalfsen in Genemuiden, the Netherlands which started out as a regional carmat manufacturer and had an international focus and various subsidiaries around the world.
My husband, two children and I returned to the Netherlands in April 2020 after our one-year stay in Mexico. We were living in the city of Queretaro and working on a project - starting a new business unit - for our family company Visscher-Caravelle. For five years, we have been building a production site in Queretaro to supply the US automotive industry. The goal was to be in Mexico until July 2020, but because of COVID-19, we had to return home immediately. Before leaving for Mexico, I worked for 2 years as an interim manager at a German subsidiary, M2 Carpets, which produces printed carpets.
In Mexico, I reflected on my future in the family business, but also on my time at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences' Family Business Expertise Centre. From 2013 to 2017, I was an active researcher in this team and worked on several projects such as STEP and topics such as family values, culture and internationalisation within family businesses. Our own company was central to the research projects I worked on, and in 2014 I started collecting data for a potential PhD project around these topics. We collected longitudinal data and conducted interviews with key people in our company (both family and non-family) between 2014 and January 2020. The preliminary results of these studies have been presented at STEP meetings, IFERA and FERC conferences and are now being incorporated into a research paper on values-based internationalisation for publication in an academic journal.
Meanwhile, I have taken up my role in our family business within STAK and VCHolding and in addition to these activities, I also teach about family businesses at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, among others. Recently, I became involved as a family business advisor for IJsselvliet to share my knowledge and experience in and around the family business phenomenon.