CVP bolsters European team with two experienced sales hires

Media production solutions firm CVP has solidified its investment in Europe with senior appointments to its EMEA sales team.

Sales Managers Benoit Foucault and Niels Lubbers have joined the team at CVP Belgium, launched in 2021, to cement the company’s ongoing commitment to the European market. With over two decades of media industry experience to his name, Foucault has moved to CVP from TV CONNECTIONS, where he was the sales and rental manager of the video and broadcast department. Meanwhile, Lubbers’ experience lies in film, TV, and camera sales, having built and developed CameraTools.nl for 14 years, followed by a stint with ColourTools. Foucault is based in CVP’s office in Vilvoorde, Flanders, while Lubbers works from the Netherlands.

CVP’s decision to open a hub in mainland Europe was motivated by a desire to make life easier for customers. “There were a lot of complications in terms of duty and shipping, but the main reason was really VAT,” explains CVP’s Managing Director, Jon Fry. “We were certainly guilty of missing that part when we were considering the impact of Brexit.”

To the team’s dismay, the company was finding that many of its European customers who had previously enjoyed buying from CVP, exempt of VAT due to being VAT-registered, were being put off due to the added post-Brexit complication. “We’ve spent a lot of time building a business based on the principles of being easy to do business with,” says Fry. “As soon as you make it complicated, people will go, ‘You know what, I’ll just buy from Europe…’.”

But what was it about Belgium that caught CVP’s eye? “The Belgian market is really booming in terms of film and TV,” notes Fry. “There are lots of benefits to creating content in Belgium in terms of government schemes and support that’s available. We went: ‘This is great!’ This is a real opportunity. Every time we visited, we just got more and more excited, and eventually, it’s led to where we are today.”

“It’s a small country but with lots of activity in video and cinema – lots of rental companies and production houses,” adds Foucault. “That’s why it’s very good to have a big structure behind us in CVP. You have the technical department, the repair department, and the second-hand department – so much choice.”

The Belgian hub comprises a fully-mezzanined 1,300sqm-warehouse, along with around 250sqm of office space. A showroom, like the company’s innovative Newman House and Charlotte Street premises, is in the works, as is a state of the art engineering department.

The team is currently six-strong, including Foucault and Lubbers, and Fry hopes to double the headcount by mid-2023. “We’ll be doing a lot of smaller events, working with various groups and societies like the Belgian Society of Cinematographers – just adding a bit more support into the industry,” he says.

Both Foucault and Lubbers are excellent linguists, with Foucault speaking English, French and Dutch, and Lubbers speaking English, Dutch and German. It’s a coup for customers who want to discuss their equipment needs in their native language and means CVP is better equipped for understanding the cultural nuances of the company’s international clientele. “One thing that’s especially good for my French customers is that they’re very happy to have a European phone number, because they like to speak in French,” notes Foucault.

Both have been getting to grips with CVP’s ultra-bespoke way of working. “The biggest challenge for these guys is learning what we do,” says Fry. The previous week, one of Lubbers’ customers in Vienna wanted to buy a Phantom VEO 4K. “We put people on planes to get it to the customer, that’s just what we do. Niels’ initial reaction was, ‘Someone wants the Phantom but it’s in the UK because it’s being checked over by the engineers – how the hell do we get it to Vienna?’. I said, don’t worry about that, we’ll work it out. Then it arrives the next day.”

“The customer called me at 11 in the evening to thank us,” Lubbers adds. “He was very grateful.”

Foucault has a similar story: “A French customer needed a magliner and they were shooting in Italy. But the problem was, the trolley was in the UK! So, someone from CVP took the van, got someone from DHL to take the trolley and they made their way during the night. The customer was wowed.”

It’s this creative thinking and hardworking ethos that CVP hopes will set it apart from its European rivals. “We will only let the customer down when it’s actually impossible,” says Fry. “We’ve been in existence for 36 years and I think the reason we’re successful is because we understand the demands of the industry. We will go the extra mile. Actually, on occasions, we probably lose money doing it. But I’d rather retain the customer and it’s all about making sure the customer walks away and has the same reaction – ‘How the hell did they do that’?”

Words: Helen Parkinson