Angélique Van Gils

Angélique Van Gils returns again and again to the idea that a business, however successful it looks from outside, is still early in its real growth curve. Her image of the tape measure that runs to 150 centimeters while her company sits at "1 cm" ¹ is not false modesty but a working principle: she treats scale as something still to be earned, and she is explicit that the hardest stretch is the very beginning, because "van nul naar 1 miljoen is de heavy lifting" ¹. That conviction comes directly from having rebuilt a career from scratch after leading an established company, trading a comfortable managing-director salary for zero and discovering how much heavier the early climb feels the second time around ¹.

The family history of Van Gils sits behind almost everything she says about growth and financing. She describes the original brand as having effectively grown itself to death, expanding internationally and scaling faster than its financing could support, a story she links explicitly to the Nike "Shoe Dog" pattern of growth outrunning capital ¹. That lesson resurfaces later in her own career: after winning a fastest-grower award and hiring aggressively, she had to retrench when Ukraine and energy costs hit, refocusing on costs, margins and a single market. Her verdict is blunt: awards for fast growth reward the wrong behavior ¹. This is one of her clearest, most transferable takeaways, that speed and recognition are not the same as health, and that an entrepreneur who has actually done the work knows "het niet alleen maar de bling bling is" ¹.

On partnership and family business, her thinking is unusually procedural for someone talking about emotional territory. She argues that trios of shareholders work well because a third person can always break a deadlock, provided each partner has a distinct identity and talent ¹, and she insists that "what if" scenarios need to be formalised the way a prenuptial agreement would be, precisely because early enthusiasm makes people forget to plan for exits ²³. She applies this to her own family: even founding Pursuit Femmes with her two daughters, they wrote shareholder agreements and exit scenarios from day one ³. She is candid that she learned this the hard way, having once changed roles, remaining a shareholder at Café Costume while joining a competitor, without thinking through the conflicting interests upfront ¹. A second, later share sale, negotiated directly and with attention to the emotional side of the transaction, cost her far less stress and preserved the family relationship, reinforcing her belief that the "soft" side of a deal is not optional ¹. She has even built a physical ritual around keeping roles separate, a bracelet made from a tape measure that she removes at home to switch from entrepreneur to mother ²³.

Her account of leaving the family business The Makers is the clearest articulation of what she calls her "why." She frames vision as something almost bodily, "je koplamp op je voorhoofd," and argues that a leader who does not share that vision leaves everyone else unable to see what she sees ¹. When, as managing director, she felt the shareholders no longer stood behind her, she treated the role as untenable, since ownership ultimately decides the vision, and resigned specifically to protect family relations rather than fight for the position ¹. Her own diagnosis of that period is stark: "ik was gewoon mijn why kwijt" ¹. She generalizes this into a personal rule that many people in family businesses stay out of obligation rather than honesty, and that the only person owed lifelong loyalty is yourself ³.

Resilience, in her telling, is less about optimism than about repetition and habit. Falling and getting back up is described almost mechanically: "wat doe je nadat je van je paard valt? Terug erop en doorgaan" ¹. She reduces setbacks to a ratio, "10% is wat je overkomt en 90% is hoe je ermee omgaat" ³, and treats crisis as material rather than misfortune, quoting "never waste a good crisis" ³ and noting that COVID border closures, far from derailing Pursuit Femmes, let her launch it appointment-only from her garden house in Essen in a way that fit the pandemic's constraints ³. She is equally clear that momentum requires steady direction rather than constant pivoting: "ondernemen is echt wel gewoon focus vooruit, af en toe je doel wel links of rechts bijstellen, maar blijven gaan" ³.

With Pursuit Femmes she extends these convictions into a stated business philosophy about craftsmanship and consumption. Made-to-measure, in her framing, is the direct opposite of fast fashion, since garments are produced only after a customer chooses them, eliminating overproduction and extending how long a garment is used ³. She has made that philosophy visible inside the company itself, hanging a print with 1,200 workers' signatures at the factory entrance as a daily reminder that a suit is made by real craftsmanship, not "at the push of a button" ³. Network, in her account, is not a soft add-on to this model but a hard input, "de kracht van het netwerk is extreem" ³, and she pairs that with an admitted personal pitfall, her own enthusiasm, which leads her to say yes too quickly and then have to walk commitments back once she has thought them through ³.

Taken together, her recurring positions form a consistent, practical philosophy rather than a set of slogans. Growth must be matched to financing or it becomes self-destructive ¹. Partnerships, even loving family ones, need contractual exit logic decided before emotions are engaged ¹²³. A leader's vision only functions if it is shared, and a role becomes untenable the moment ownership's vision and the leader's diverge ¹. Setbacks are treated as data to act on rather than events to mourn, "het concert des levens heeft geen program" ¹, and business is judged less by speed or awards than by whether it still answers to a personal "why" ¹³.