1939
Passion
The story of our company starts at the same time as a legendary history in Palo Alto, California, USA. In 1939, from their garage, Bill Hewlett en Dave Packard set up their Hewlett-Packard (HP), in what is still seen as the birth of Silicon Valley. The business partners supplied an oscillator to Walt Disney Studios and so laid the foundations for international success.
At the same time in the Netherlands, Cornelis Nicolaas Rood was working to make his passion for electronics his business, and decided to introduce the Hewlett & Packard equipment to the Dutch market. CN Rood was also a great music lover. For that reason, he launched his own record label, which still exists today under the name CNR Records.
1980
Multi talent
You could therefore confidently call CN Rood a multi-talent. That is shown by the many activities that he developed, with the common theme of modern electronics. After a number of years, he formed a business trading in instruments and components. That, in turn, led to customer demand for testing equipment.
CN Rood therefore also began to supply this. In 1963, he took the step into Belgium, where he formed a new company, in order to be able to supply the entire Benelux region.
In the 1980s, the Phoenix group acquired his test and measurement equipment business, which was followed by years of growth. In the meantime, our former CEO, Ivo Kauffmann, had started work as a sales representative at the Belgian company. He says: ‘We worked closely together, as Dutch and Belgian representatives, but at the same time, we each had an independent position. In those years, I took great pleasure in creating a stable basis for what CN Rood is today.’
2012
Smart Minds
Stability and continuity are of vital importance for us. That applies for both our business relations and our employees. It is important to have a loyal team of employees, who can each contribute towards the business and its customers with their own technical expertise. Commitment is a key term in this, and fortunately, there are many people who stay and work for us for a long time. Such a close team has many advantages.
When we gained an opportunity in 2012 to buy the business with a group of employees, we did not need to think about it for long. We asked everyone to take part and almost half of the people actually became shareholders. With the other people, we reached agreements that amounted to them also sharing in the results of our joint efforts
2015
New Markets
The acquisition of T&M Systems (2015) and ABtronix (2022) made us the largest independent supplier of testing and measuring equipment in the Benelux and gave us access to new markets. In 2017 we made the the leap into the Nordics and in 2022 into the Baltics. Via presence in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania we are now offering a wide range of brands. For as a technical partner, we always want to offer our customers something extra. Service and personal assistance, for instance, or as now, the opportunity to try out equipment in peace, and to discover together with CN Rood which equipment best meets the needs and requirements. After all, a great deal of equipment is costly. It is therefore worth testing in practice which solution is the most suitable.
