No other country has more car brands, models and types than The Netherlands. Frans Snijders was already selling Brake Parts in The Netherlands, but only for Renault, Citroën and Peugeot. His contacts could only supply parts for French car brands. This was for Frans a trigger to start selling parts for cars that actually drove on the streets, instead of what factories could produce for him. Frans started ABS with his brother-in-law (Peter Lit) who had an old barn in Nijkerk. This barn eventually became the first warehouse.

Frans lived in Utrecht, but there was no highway to Nijkerk. The commute was horrible, so he made the decision to move the company with his family to IJsselstein and business started to grow. The range of ABS was already very extensive because of the Dutch market, so when ABS started exporting in 1981, no new articles were added to the range. Increasing stock levels of existing articles did the trick to meet the growing demand from export markets. Today the range of ABS has the best coverage of many European car parcs and many other markets worldwide.

In 1986 ABS started exporting articles abroad for the first time. Not to Belgium, Germany or France, but to Iceland! The stock we had at that point, was more than all our clients in The Netherlands needed. This, automatically led to more foreign customers. The demolition of the wall in Berlin in 1989, only accelerated this change ending up with customers in many different European countries.

The first catalogue was produced in 1990. And when we say catalogue: we mean it! This book (also referred to as Brake Bible), had over 1,000 different pages. But that’s not all, there was another catalogue specifically for hydraulic parts of another 800+ pages. This catalogue mostly contained drawings of the articles included with some dimensions and an ABS reference number.

After two fires at the old office and the need for a bigger warehouse, a new location was on the agenda for 1998. Because Frans was in close contact with the mayor, he knew about the plans of a new industrial area in IJsselstein. Fun fact: before ABS started building the new office, the location was actually used as a car racing track!

Martijn started working for ABS in 2001 as Marketing Manager. 13 years later, he took over the company from father Frans. In order to keep on growing with ABS, processes needed to be automated and further digitized. A perfect moment for a younger generation to take over.

After quite some years it was time for a new corporate identity. For this project we needed to rebrand many different elements, among others: A brand new company logo, the complete office building and all the packaging design in many different formats.

ABS All Brake Systems has grown considerably in recent years. In addition to the head office and warehouse in the Netherlands, two other warehouses (Hungary and Poland), have been added to the ABS distribution network in 2022. With the addition of these two warehouses, ABS can be more flexible, reliable and faster in the future.

This project was started with a positioning session, asking ourselfs who we really are and if people are able to see that well enough. The outcome was translated into multiple new designs and content like: a new website, POS materials, presentations, ads and a new brand video.

With the 2022 IT migration, ABS made a big step forward in improving the overall service level. The project has been carefully prepared and planned with a dedicated team of ABS and IT professionals. It makes ABS an even better equipped company, ready for the future. Systems are now dynamic, adjustable and easy to scale up. Through this, we want to broaden and improve our future services and expand the relationship with our partners.

In line with the Marketing Materials update in 2022, the new website, webshop and portal are based on the latest design trends and technology. In this project we layed down a foundation of a brand new customer journey. Navigating through these three platforms is easy and user friendly. Read all about it in our latest news article.