Arjan Smeulders: a creative innovator with managerial clout

The resume of strategic management expert Arjan Smeulders reveals two core factors: an innovative spirit and a rare breadth of skills and ambition.

Currently co-director of Nash International, a Rotterdam-based garment design, production and buying house founded by fashion virtuoso and life partner Dhyana van der Pols, Arjan combines his rich managerial experience with the instincts of a creative innovator to develop new business and smart concepts. Already an established name in Europe and in many supplier countries, Nash International, under Arjan’s management, is rapidly developing into a global player in fashion production and sourcing. Recent successes attributable to Arjan include the design and implementation of ‘Showroom’, a successful trade fair concept that invites selected manufacturers from a single supplier country to present their work to buyers at an intimate, multiple-day fair in a European buyer country, and the One Stitch Ahead online software tool, which, uniquely, will enable producers to fully integrate bi-annual up-to-date fashion forecast information in the creation of commercial sample collections. ‘It’s an online tool that integrates workflow with e-learning, and a global fashion community with a hotter-than-hot news agent,’ explains Arjan.

A former Dutch athletic champion with a double major in business administration
A former Dutch national athletic champion who runs an emerging record label on the side, Arjan studied Business Administration at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University with a double major in Strategic Management and Management of Technological Innovation. Early on in his career he gained a wealth of managerial experience with consumer goods multinational Unilever, DCE/Altran management consultants and London’s EMI/Virgin International. With the latter, he cultivated his love of jazz music while implementing a new business structure for the firm’s entire European jazz catalogue (including the infamous Blue Note catalogue and the Capitol Jazz catalogue).

The common theme is managerial work and innovation
Since leaving the beaten track in 2005, Arjan has founded an interior design business, set up record label Alive! Modern Savior, started managing a jazz band, organized hiking trips in Lapland and the Andes Mountains and rediscovered his passion for developing creative concepts and managing their advancement. ‘The common theme throughout my career is managerial work and innovation,’ he says. ‘I love developing and managing new ideas that will bring together great products and keen customers. I guess it’s all about enabling people to experience success and real enjoyment.’


interview by Stephen Teeuwen