Not buyers, but builders: Endeavour takes over Create

We often see buying or selling a company as an economic or financial choice, primarily with the aim of making money. Yet this is not always the case, according to Matthijs Kruijer, managing director at Endeavour. “The decisive factor in the acquisition of Create was primarily the corresponding culture.”

The Alkmaar development agency Create started looking for a party to take them over a few months ago. Five candidates were selected, including Endeavour. Initially, however, Endeavour was not interested. “We are not a buy-and-build company,” says Matthijs. “We pay a lot of attention to our people, our department feels almost like family. To keep adding a company to that does not fit our culture.” 

Nevertheless, Create was acquired. Why? “Of course, it’s a great opportunity when you can add 25 good, motivated staff members to your team. Create continued to grow and we increasingly found that our cultures fit well together. Then a takeover becomes a whole different story. The fact that, with the arrival of these new colleagues, we are also gaining new knowledge, fits in well with the ambitions of Endeavour. We can now take a better look at which services each customer needs. In this way, we can fulfil our promise of orchestrated digital marketing even better, both for the clients that Create is bringing along and for our own clients.” 

Meanwhile, the 25 employees of the former Create have started at Endeavour. “We want to offer all our colleagues a pleasant and safe working environment, where everyone can be themselves. It is precisely because of this that we have many employees who continue to work with us for years with pleasure and confidence. Of course, we hope that this will also be the case with these new employees.”