Interview With Hendrik Baan, Owner Of Baan Velgen

2. Why did you start Baan Velgen? When did it all go through?
It started all as a hobby besides my study industrial design. Actually it all started on my balcony with selling second hand BMW wheels. Very quickly the balcony became too small and we rented a small garage and we shifted to selling new parts. During the time, we added more and more brands, with the focus on high quality, to the portfolio. This January we finally moved to our new facility, with a working space and a showroom space. It all started as a one hour job in the week is now more then a full time job. The move to the new facility really made us grow, we can have a larger stock, clean and up to date working area and a showroom.

4. How easy is to order a let’s say set of wheels, big brake kit and suspension from your company? How is the shipping handled? How quick can we expect delivery in Europe, for example Croatia, after ordering?
It is soo easy. Go to www.baanvelgen.com and select your car in the categorie ‘shop by vehicle’. Are you looking for a BBK from Brembo, then just select the brand ‘brembo’ and find out which kits are available for your car, add it to your shopping cart and proceed to check-out when you are done shopping.

During check-out the shipping options are displayed based on your location, select it and finish the Checkout. When the item is in stock we will ship it within 2 business days. Shipping within Europe only takes a maximum of 3 business days(besides the small islands) but also to the US the customer can expect their products within 4 business days once we have shipped the items.

5.What additional services do you offer besides an online shop?
In our shop we can install everything we sell, so wheels, tires, exhausts, coilover sets. Besides this we spend a lot of our time to our customer service. Do you have a question about fitment, don’t hesitate to contact us, we aim to answer our questions within 3 hours even in the weekends, we get a lot of feedback from our customers that they are very pleased with this up to date service. Furthermore we offer a free render service, we understand that a new set of wheels is a large investment and with so many choices we offer to make a free render of their car with the wheels they are interested in.

6. How do you perceive the Netherlands and Benelux car scene? What are the most popular wheel designs? What are your opinions of the US aftermarket industry and the way it took off in recent years?
The Netherlands is quite conservative with there cars, but luckily with the influence from the US this is changing. The US is a really big market and sometimes it seems that every supercar owner has a special set of wheels, either for track or show. In the US it evolved really rapidly, but in my opinion it has always been bigger there.

7. How are you satisfied with cooperation with our supporters D2FORGED and ADV.1? How do you like their designs?
The cooperation with both D2forged and ADV.1 is really pleasant. They really know what they are doing and the sky is the limit. Due to the fact that they produce per order they always achieve the maximum in fitment and looks. Where other brands who produces casted wheels and work with molds the freedom is less, these have the same concavity, where with ADV.1 and D2FORGED you can get a concave wheel up to 5″.

8. What is the most popular wheel design and car combination you seem to get most orders from?
The most popular wheel design is the mesh design, like the BBS CH-R, D2FORGED CV1 and ADV5.0. The mesh design refers to the motorsport wheels and for some reason this just work. Especially when the brands succeed in making it concave and the spokes elegant and long. The most popular cars at the moment in our shop are the BMW M3 and the Porsche 997, it is so close that we cannot determine which is more popular.

9. Are you more of a looks or performance type of a guy? Do you do any racing or such?
I would definitely go for the looks as long as it is in proportion. For example with the M coupe the performance was already there and didn’t needed much changes. Where the exhaust and the coilover set are both for performance and looks.