The 221 Year Old Company That Reinvented Itself Four Times
This is some story! How did the D’Ieteren family of Belgium - which started out in 1805 making wooden buggy wheels - manage to see the future and avoid being wiped out by new technology, new consumer trends and ever changing world events. Can their incredible success be attributed to one or a small handful of factors?
Please tune in this week as Wayne details the incredible story of founder Jean-Joseph D’Ietern and how the family’s visionaries managed to always stay at the cutting edge of business evolution. Can their success really be attributed to a simple family mission? What do you think? Please email me at [email protected] with your comments.
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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors where We Build Better Contractors.
This week I want to talk about the 221-year-old company that reinvented itself four times. I can make the argument that it's more than four times, but let's just stick with the script. Okay? Before I dig in, Boot Camp in Charlotte in November of this year, it's our final Boot Camp of '26. Get your folks registered, contact our Charlotte for more information. And let's dig in.
This came from a website called The Big Think, and the article's by Eric Markowitz, and it came from July of '26. He starts off with, "We think that horse and buggy makers were wiped out by the automobile, and that's generally true. But in this case, a horse and buggy maker adapted over time." And this story is quite illustrative. Contractors have to reinvent themselves by this.
Now technology and time, this is a 221-year-old story. Maybe you're not there yet, but contractors have to reinvent the SIMs periodically. When they get to 25 million and then they're shooting for 35 or 40 million, they got to reinvent. When they hit 50 and they're trying to shoot for 75 or 100, they've got to reinvent. And this is a story about reinvention, incredibly successful reinvention as a matter of fact. And I'm going to butcher this name. The D'Ieteren Group today has businesses in 40 countries. They have 32,000 employees, $8 billion plus of sales, and they are the wealthiest family in Belgium. What about this? Why do you care? Horse and buggy maker, Belgian? What's Wayne talking about? Follow me along. And I think you'll see.
In 1805, Jean-Joseph D'Ieteren, again, I'm probably mispronouncing that. At the age of 14, started making wheels. Eventually that became work in building carriages. Following that, they got into custom auto bodies, custom carriages, custom auto bodies. Eventually they got into importing automobiles. They became the biggest Volkswagen distributor in Europe. They became the world leader in automotive glass. You've seen those ads on TV here in America. They're in the auto parts business and of course they're into real estate. So what's the story? How do they go from making carriage wheels to being in automotive glass and real estate and all these other things? So in 1898, Jean-Joseph D'Ieteren was still making custom carriages, but they got asked by a famous Belgian race car driver to make some custom car bodies for him. Following that in World War I, Lucien D'Ieteren observed thousands of American cars coming off of ships. Now these are old cars, Packards, Fords of course, Studebakers. There was nothing custom about them. These were mass-produced automobiles and he saw the future. He saw the future.
Custom car bodies for race car drivers. Yeah, that could be a nice little niche business, but mass-produced, that was the way to go. The catalyst was 1929 for this family. The stock market crashed. At that point, they decided to get out of custom work and they began importing autos into Europe. Lucien's brother Albert made the opposite choice. '29 Crash comes, he doubles down on the legacy family business and ultimately they were wiped out.
For the D'Ieteren family, according to Markowitz, he said it wasn't about what they did, it's about who they were. They were entrepreneurs. They were focused on the customer and the needs of the consumer. They had a quality obsession, which is inherent in any business. If you have poor quality, you're not going to make it. They had a long-term view. Okay. I saw these cars coming off the ships in World War I in 1918. It was 11 years later when they made that pivot to getting into the auto import business. This part was really important to me. They were devoted as an entrepreneurial family to finding better ways for people to move through the world. Right?
Custom carriages, automobiles, mass-produced automobiles, a better way for people to move through the world. That was their focus. It could be carriages, that's fine, but they always were focused on the needs of the consumer, a better way to move through the world. That was the key for them. If everything you did became obsolete tomorrow, custom carriages and all those things, if construction somehow, because of technology or AI or whatever, became obsolete tomorrow, what would still be true about you and what would that allow you to do going forward?
He gave the example of a lawyer, a lawyer who writes contracts. Well, AI may be able to somehow in the future replace lawyers who write contracts, but he said AI will never replace the advisors who help people make important decisions and counsel them over time. AI is not going to replace those people. And so, that's how a lawyer would make the transition from the past to the future. How would a contractor make that transition from the past and the future?
Email me, [email protected]. This is Wayne Rivers at PCA where We Build Better Contractors.
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