The company
Since 2013, Daniël Salimian, Kevin van der Veer, and Jeroen Westerbeek have been running their business, WoodWatch. The company sells wooden watches through their own webshop. Kevin: “We came up with the idea because we thought wooden products were really cool. You already saw wooden sunglasses around, but not wooden watches. We decided to jump on that opportunity.” And it clearly resonated — in 2017, WoodWatch ranked number 3 in the Emerce Top 50 of fastest-growing webshops. Achieving a turnover of over half a million euros was a huge milestone! We met up with Kevin van der Veer at WoodWatch’s office in Rotterdam to talk about his experience with hiring employees.
Employees
Kevin explains: “In the very beginning, we worked with a payroll company simply because we didn’t know how else to handle it. After registering as an employer, we immediately started receiving letters from pension funds. We didn’t really know what to do with them, and we didn’t have the time to dive deep into it either. That’s why we decided to partner with a payroll company.”
When asked about the cost, Kevin says: “We were paying a factor of 1.7 to 1.8 times the gross salary. As our team grew, it simply became too expensive. That’s when we started looking for alternatives.”
WoodWatch foundersWhy did you choose Employes?
We asked Kevin why he chose Employes. Kevin:
“Besides the price, ease of use was a major factor for us. Even though you’re more or less handling your own payroll with Employes, it’s not difficult at all. This has made it easy for us to hire new people without worrying about the administrative side. That’s a huge relief!
We’re a young, fast-growing company, and we want to focus on what we do best — and payroll administration isn’t one of those things. But it still needs to be done right.”
Room for improvement
Kevin also shared a helpful suggestion:
“I once had a situation where I needed to arrange insurance for an employee. I had to submit all kinds of documents manually. How great would it be if Employes allowed you to insure your employees with just one click?”
"Employes took away the barriers for us to hire people ourselves."
Final Note
During our visit to WoodWatch, we had the chance to see some of their watches up close — and they look just as amazing as they do on their Instagram page. We highly recommend checking them out!
Kevin van der Veer
Owner
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