Roland Kahn opened his first CoolCat store in Amsterdam in 1979. Thanks in part to some smart acquisitions, he built this into an international retail concern with 500 million in revenue and 6,000 employees. His most important negotiating tip? 'Try to find out what is really important to the other party.'
You have entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs and you have Roland Kahn. The now 70-year-old retail and real estate entrepreneur could be called an outsider. Successful in business for over 50 years with many highs and lows, a turbulent private life and, since 2018, also battling an aggressive form of skin cancer. A battle he seems to have won for now. "I've been completely clean for over two years," Kahn says, "so in terms of that, I'm still in the race to turn 120.
Growing through acquisitions
Meanwhile, we take a seat in his colorful study at Cool Investments' headquarters in Diemen-Zuid. The walls filled with family photos, hung memorabilia and framed entrepreneurial awards. Silent witnesses to an entrepreneurial journey that began in 1976 with a first store on Nieuwendijk in Amsterdam.
And which really gained steam three years later with the launch of his own store formula CoolCat, hip and affordable clothing for teenagers. CoolCat would eventually grow into a successful business with over 100 branches in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Luxembourg. Partly through a number of smart acquisitions - Amici, MS Mode, America Today, Sapph and V&D - Kahn was able to build the business into an international retail group with 500 million in revenue and 6,000 employees.
Smart negotiating
Kahn usually goes straight for his goal in his acquisitions. For example, in 2001, the year he took over Amici - at that time a chain of stores with 93 branches. Kahn: "I am sitting at the dinner for the ING Retail Year Award and hear from my table mate - who is responsible for Amici within Vendex-KBB - that the stores are for sale. When I tell him I am interested, he slides me a bill with an amount he wants for it. It corresponds nicely to the amount I had in mind. A week later I am sitting at the Vendex-KBB headquarters and four months later the deal is done.
When negotiating, Kahn especially always tries to empathize well with the other party. 'You have to try to find out what the selling party thinks is very important. If you know that, then you can trade off on that. The best part, of course, is when you give away something that doesn't weigh so heavily for you, but does for the other party.
Something similar happened to Kahn when he acquired the retail chain M&S in 2010 for 55 million euros. A month after the deal, the English Marks & Spencer called asking if they could take over the European brand rights M&S.
Kahn: "I quickly realized how important that name was to their European growth strategy. For us, converting M&S stores to MS Mode stores would cost a million euros. Their first offer of 15 million euros was gleefully laughed away by us. Three months later they came back with a doubling of their first offer. After a final round of negotiations, we finally got 37 million euros for it, more than half the purchase price of the entire chain of stores. I still consider it one of the best deals I've been able to do!
Bid battle
In addition to great business successes, there were of course also low points in the past decades. In 2016, Kahn had to make a relaunch with MS Mode and in 2019 his love baby CoolCat went bankrupt - only to continue as an online store.
Asked about his biggest acquisition, the failed takeover attempt of HEMA in 2007 inevitably comes up. Kahn: "It was going to be the deal of my life. We offered 1.1 billion euros, but after a long bidding war we were outbid by 27 million by the British investment company Lion Capital. In retrospect, they would have been better off going into business with me after all, because Lion Capital would ultimately turn out to be the worst buyer HEMA could find," he grins.
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