ONP5 is 5 years old🍻🥳

A brief review...

Five years ago, I came up with the idea of opening an online shop for non-alcoholic beer. During my time at ING, I learned that the best way to start a business is to think from the perspective of a customer problem and start small. This "problem" was obvious, as there were (at the time) few tasty non-alcoholic beers available, and I myself abstain from alcohol for a period every year. And I really like good beer. I've written dozens of business plans for other ideas and created one for this concept too.

Then I launch a website where I offer five beers. I buy these first beers from another specialty store and present them online with beautiful photos and descriptions. The first order comes from my friend Fred, who continually encourages me to persevere. Orders from friends and family soon follow. After four weeks, I receive my first order from a "stranger" in Enschede—my first real customer!

What follows is an exciting and educational journey: the search for good packaging, clever shipping solutions, and, of course, the tastiest beers. I travel all over the country to breweries, which even led to a book about craft beer breweries in collaboration with Mo'Media . After six months, our house is full of crates and boxes of beer, so I'm looking for external storage space. Due to the coronavirus lockdown, a space at the NDSM shipyard in Amsterdam that is normally used for workshops has become available. It's refrigerated, spacious enough to store beers, and ideal for packing orders—with Sam's help.

After a few months, the lease expires, and I have to find another location. I find it on Hellingweg in Scheveningen, less than 100 meters from our house. After installing air conditioning (because our beer needs to stay cool in the summer), we're ready to move in. David joins us and is tasked with packing all the orders and continuing to set up the shop.

We're continuously developing the online shop, for example, with the introduction of the Advent calendar in 2021 and surprise packages for customers who are having trouble deciding. We're discovering new, delicious beers and, for the first time, importing beers from England and Poland ourselves. It remains a magical moment when I see a pallet full of new beers in front of the warehouse.

Then Janine enters the scene. She's just moved from Utrecht to The Hague and is looking for a job. Her question comes just as I'm starting a new interim assignment at Achmea. Together with David, she's continuing to develop the webshop. She makes sure the site looks great, introduces subscriptions, and ensures good communication via social media, Google, and the weekly emails. Customer-focused work is her absolute talent, and this is reflected in the over 200 5-star reviews on Google – we're very proud of that. I continue to take care of purchasing and administration.

After two years, Janine is moving to Venlo, and we have to end our collaboration. The (web)shop is now running smoothly, all processes are optimized, and it takes up (relatively) little of my time. Bas has taken over, and with the help of Zoë and Fenna, we're managing to keep the webshop running and make it profitable for the first time (although "running pretty well" is probably a better description).

My most important lesson from the last five years is that you shouldn't be afraid of new challenges. From handling transport for beer imports to registering deposits for new cans, anything is doable if you take a moment to consider it. And that only works if you approach it with genuine enthusiasm. I would therefore like to close with the quote from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel that appears at the end of my CV:

“Without passion, nothing great has ever been achieved in the world.”