Blokker Brand Guidelines: An 1896 Hoorn Hardware Shop, a Retail Group and a 2025 Restart

A married couple, a shop on the Breed and four sons.

Blokker began in Hoorn, in North Holland; Dutch Wikipedia places its head office today in Amsterdam. On 25 April 1896, Dutch Wikipedia says, Jacob Blokker and his wife Saapke Kuiper opened a shop called De Goedkoope IJzer en Houtwinkel, the cheap iron and wood shop, on the Breed, one of the town’s main streets. The trade newsletter RetailDetail gave the same founding story in November 2018, and NOS, the Dutch public broadcaster, dated the very first Blokker shop to Hoorn in 1896 when it reported on the chain in November 2024.

The shop grew along its own street. Dutch Wikipedia says the business took over several buildings on the Breed and in 1923 bought an old building on the corner of the Breed and the Veemarkt, which was pulled down and replaced by a shop building of several storeys, large for its day. That Hoorn branch stayed on the site until March 2016, when it moved to the Gouw.

The chain itself was built by the next generation. From the 1930s, according to Dutch Wikipedia, the four sons of Jacob Blokker and Saapke Kuiper opened shops in the Randstad, the ring of cities in the west of the country, under the name Gebroeders Blokker, Blokker Brothers. Their descendants carried the habit on, and the family business became a national chain and later an international one. The sources used for this guide do not say how Blokker operated during the occupation of 1940–1945.

By the 1980s, RetailDetail wrote in 2018, the company had grown into a retail empire whose chains included the toy shops of Bart Smit, the furniture chain Leen Bakker, Xenos and Marskramer. NOS put the group’s peak at nearly 3,000 shops across all of its chains. Under its own name, Dutch Wikipedia says, Blokker had more than 800 shops in 2015, in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Suriname. In the second half of the 1990s some Blokker fronts carried a picture of a gnome in a red pointed hat, Dutch Wikipedia adds, as a sign that the branch had a toy department.

Reorganisations, sales of chains and a new owner in 2019.

The group spent its last decade as a family business reshaping itself. Dutch Wikipedia says the holding company started a large reorganisation in 2014, placing its online marketing and webshops in a separate business, and that Blokker shops were refitted and modernised; in 2016, it adds, the American actress Sarah Jessica Parker appeared in television advertising meant to refresh the brand’s image. In Belgium, according to the same source, 69 of the 190 Blokker shops closed.

In May 2017 the group announced a much larger change. DutchNews reported that about 100 Blokker shops would close, that the Xenos, Big Bazar, Leen Bakker and Intertoys chains would be sold, that Marskramer would become a franchise and that the distribution centre at Mijdrecht would shut. The sales followed over the next two years. In December 2017 RetailDetail reported that the 63 German Xenos shops had been sold to the German discounter TEDi, and Dutch Wikipedia says Intertoys, Toys XL and Bart Smit went to the British investor Alteri in October 2017.

On 12 November 2018, RetailDetail reported, the family put Blokker itself up for sale, after 122 years. At that point the chain had 430 shops in the Netherlands and 128 in Belgium, according to the same report. In April 2019, Dutch Wikipedia says, the holding’s chief executive, Michiel Witteveen, took over the Blokker chain on his own, and in July that year the holding company was renamed Mirage Retail Group. Its other chains Marskramer, Prima, Novy and Toys2Play were sold to the investor Audax the same spring.

Belgium went next. In February 2020, according to Dutch Wikipedia, all Blokker shops in Belgium and Luxembourg were sold to the Dutch Retail Groep, which continued them as discount shops under the name Mega World; a court declared Mega World bankrupt on 22 December 2020. The remaining Blokker shops were in the Netherlands and Suriname, Dutch Wikipedia says, and a new chair was appointed to give them and the brand fresh impetus.

Fascias, folders and family names.

The Netherlands and Belgium have a dense network of discount, home, fashion and grocery chains, and many of them present themselves first through the shop front. A fascia on a shopping street is often the most visible part of the brand: when Blokker restarted in 2025, NOS reported that the old logo, in block capitals and without its full stop, went back up on the fronts of the reopened shops, and in April 2024 RetailDetail reported that Xenos would put its logo on eight former Casa shops it had taken back.

Websites carry the rest of the identity. Xenos groups its range online into departments such as furniture, garden, cooking and table, household and party goods, with trend pages and a customer club called Xtra Xenos; both Blokker and Xenos publish a folder, the retail leaflet, on their sites next to a shop finder. Xenos says it follows trends closely and buys new ranges in large volumes, so the assortment changes quickly.

Ownership is part of the story, and the companies describe it plainly. Some of these chains grew up inside family groups: Blokker Holding, built by the descendants of a couple who opened a shop in Hoorn in 1896, once owned Xenos, Leen Bakker, Bart Smit and Intertoys before selling them off between 2017 and 2019, and Xenos now describes its owner, Nieuwgeluk Group, as a Dutch family office. Restructurings, bankruptcies and restarts have reshaped several familiar names, and corporate pages and the trade press record those changes with dates.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it, how its shops, ranges and logos have changed, and what has happened to it. Company statements are marked as such, and counts of shops and countries are given with the date of the source.

The old logo, without its full stop.

The end of the old company came quickly. On 4 November 2024 Blokker applied for a suspension of payments and closed its webshop, Dutch Wikipedia says, and on 13 November 2024 it was declared bankrupt. NOS reported that day that the chain had nearly 400 shops plus 45 franchisees, who bought the Blokker concept but ran their own businesses, and that its parent company was Mirage. On 15 July 2025 NOS summed up the causes as rising debts, including tax debts, and falling sales in the face of growing competition. The company-run shops closed at the end of December 2024, according to Dutch Wikipedia, and Mirage Retail Group itself was declared bankrupt on 10 December 2024.

The name did not disappear. According to NOS, for weeks there seemed to be no restart, until Roland Palmer, a member of the Blokker family who had led the company between 2011 and 2015, bought the brand name. In May 2025 NOS reported stickers on the windows of former Blokker shops announcing their reopening, and noted that the old Blokker logo was coming back, in block capitals but without the full stop after the name. Dutch Wikipedia dates the first twelve reopened shops to 18 June 2025 and says each new branch is a separate private company under a holding owned by Palmer.

The franchisees had to choose. On 15 July 2025 NOS reported that 12 of the 36 independent shopkeepers would keep the Blokker name and 24 would not, which left the restarted chain with fewer than fifty branches at that time; the old logo was back on the fronts and the range was focused on household goods again, the broadcaster said. Dutch Wikipedia says 23 former franchisees formed a cooperative and trade under the name Allesz. As of July 2026, Dutch Wikipedia counts 61 Blokker shops, including those of 12 franchisees. In November 2026 the Blokker website offers a shop finder, a folder page and a careers site.

For a design guide, Blokker shows how a retail name can outlast the company behind it, and how a restart can lean on an older version of its own logo. Compare Xenos, a chain that grew up inside the Blokker group, and Wibra, another Dutch discount chain. For this guide we use an ink blue, a brick red and a warm white with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Blokker’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.