Eric van den Berg on growth
“TNT’s mail experience in Europe gives us the tools we need to succeed here. We know how to innovate and we know how to anticipate customer demands. We can help shape China’s mail market.”
“Envision the invisible”
Listen to Eric van den Berg talk about his work for a while and you might imagine that he is some kind of new-age farmer or perhaps a biologist working to develop a new kind of crop. He speaks about sowing seeds, creating the right conditions for germination, and cultivating hybrids. In a way, you’d be right. Van den Berg is developing new products in new soil. But he’s not a farmer or a biologist—he’s managing director of TNT Mail in China—and his “crop” isn’t organic at all. Van den Berg is working to transplant TNT’s mail expertise in China, where the market for mail—at least as the rest of the world knows it—is still virtually non-existent.
It’s a big challenge, but Van den Berg—a Dutchman who describes himself as part “very responsible person” and part pioneer—is up to it. After earning an MBA from the renowned international business school at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Van den Berg joined TNT’s Mail division in 1996. There, he was part of a team that developed retail business points, a new concept for business customers in the Netherlands. “It was revolutionary at the time,” he says, “TNT Mail has always been very forward-looking, very driven to anticipate and meet customer needs.” Van den Berg later worked in Germany, where he helped build new networks in Europe’s largest mail market. Then it was on to China, the country destined to become the world’s largest mail market.
Like any good farmer, however, Van den Berg knows he must start small. “There is no growing without seeding. Our Mail business in China is now in its first stage,” he says. He also knows that he must spread his risks. After four years in his current role, he has a pretty good sense of the realities of the market. “It’s like planting on a new piece of land. Some seeds are stolen by birds. Some don’t grow at all. You have to plant a lot of seeds because you know that by the very nature of the business, some will never take root.”
The seedlings of TNT’s mail business in China include transferring its direct marketing expertise and developing a business-to-consumer delivery service. The 100employees of TNT Mail in China are working hard to create products that don’t yet exist in China, including sophisticated databases with demographic profiles of the millions of increasingly sophisticated consumers with growing disposable income. From that basis, they’re also beginning to provide package delivery in the business-to-consumer sector —a segment of China’s market completely open to competition—to meet what by all accounts will be a booming demand as China’s new consumers discover e-commerce.
Van den Berg’s position also demands that he be a bit of a visionary, a role that also comes rather naturally to the 38-year-old. He sees himself and his team battling what he refers to as “an invisible competitor”—one that doesn’t exist yet. “FedEx, UPS and DHL are all focussed on providing business-to-business delivery services,” he notes. “They’re stuck on the paradigm that to enter a market there must be a market. But dot-coms already proved that notion wrong. They stepped in and created a market for themselves. I believe we will create the market for sophisticated mail services in China.”
Van den Berg is prepared to wait to reap the harvest TNT is cultivating in China. In the meantime, his days are full. He’s become so accustomed to the fast economic development and the eagerness it has reated in China’s people that he finds it hard to imagine working anywhere else. “I’m so inspired by the people here and their drive to move their country forward. Our employees want to learn every day. They work hard every day and they’re making big strides in their development.” And like any good farmer, he’s also cultivating his own knowledge of the field. Every day I become a little less ignorant about China.”