Her husband had it too, about four years ago: the feeling that life was rushing by. Busy, busy, busy, but where to go for what? They decided to call it a day and take their family on a one-year trip through Africa. 'Offroad Dutchies' was on their all-terrain vehicle.
Elegant solution
During the trip, Anne de Korte came up with the idea for her current business, an elegant solution to hassles with smartphones. "I sometimes lost my phone, it would end up in the sand, or I was afraid it would be stolen. I asked my mother to send a phone case with a cord to Malawi. The thing was pink - quite a statement to go with my outfits.'
It got her thinking: bags come in all shapes and sizes, from Hema to Chanel, but why don't you see the variety in corded phone cases? She saw room for a fashionable solution and so Dutchies was born: luxury leather phone cases, with space for cards on the back, on different cords. Stylish and functional. In this way she actually created a higher segment in the still fairly young product category. 'I really wanted to bring a good, high-quality product to the market,' she said.
'Having found a gap in the market doesn't mean the orders are pouring in'
- Anne de Korte
Entrepreneurial adventure
After the African adventure, the entrepreneurial adventure began: Anne started looking for suppliers and she started selling from the barn in Benschop. It was such a thrill when the first orders started coming in from people we didn’t even know: 'We think of something and it works!' Monique Smit made the first order from a Dutch celebrity, delivered with care by De Korte in Volendam. They captured the moment with a photo.
Dutchies grew rapidly when the company won the Shopping Award for best starter. And on top of that, we were named Best Product of the Year at the end of 2024. In her home base Benschop, near Utrecht, the doors of a pop-up store opened in December, which is still open.
This year De Korte expects to grow even more, half due to international orders. 'Such rapid growth also brings enormous chaos,' she says, referring to stock shortages and customs issues in recent years.
Anne now works with 15 FTEs to grow her business. Dutchies handles its own fulfillment, as well as its marketing. 'If you've found a gap in the market, that doesn't mean the orders are pouring in,' the successful entrepreneur emphasizes. So how did she manage that?
Growth hacks
Anne de Korte defines four growth hacks that have made Dutchies what it is today. At the Webwinkel Vakdagen she talked about these drivers of growth. 'Not a scientific study,' she jokingly said, but principles that other entrepreneurs might benefit from. Below they are discussed one by one.
1. Build a brand they want to belong to
Dutchies is a brand that is carefully built. Specifically, it means that the company does not compromise on product quality and is consistent: there is a Dutchies idea in everything, from the fonts to the packaging and from the influencers to the magazines that feature the phone cases. Besides being uncompromising and consistent, Dutchies is inspiring, says Anne: 'Our payoff reads, "Grab life with both hands." We want to encourage people to dare to make choices. Live your story. We named the necklaces in our Power Woman collection after female celebrities like Coco Chanel and Florence Nightingale. Do you have a dream? Just go for it, is what we want to radiate.' That also means that Dutchies gives a lot of space to employees and that the company donates one euro per case sold to a workshop in Johannesburg. 'There, too, we promote the freedom to make choices.' To encourage people to identify with the brand, the company shares a lot on various social media.
'One question I got a lot was whether Dutchies would become less fun or less ownable with staff. But our expansion has only made it better, so much talent ...'
- Anne de Korte
2. Trust the team
A second pillar of growth is in the relationship of trust with employees. De Korte: 'One question I got a lot was whether Dutchies would become less fun or less of its own with staff. But our expansion has only made it better, so much talent ...' Give freedom, get greatness, is one of Anne's mottos. For example, she let colleagues convince her to participate in the Elle Smart Shopping Day and to go live on TikTok ('We're not sixteen, are we?!?, was my first thought'). Both turned out to be a success. On a buying trip, a colleague mentioned that a certain leather piece Anne really liked was 'not really Dutchies.' The founder just liked it: 'You can’t come up with everything on your own..'
3. Create your own hype
'We have good products, but Dutchies is also the hype,' De Korte argues. And hypes are something you can create yourself: desire builds hype, another of Anne's mottos. Her company put it into practice with the first Dutchies Day, on Feb. 22 this year, highlighted with influencers, targeted ads and an email campaign. Fans of Dutchies could get early access to the sale day, to reinforce urgency and a sense of community. At a normally tepid time of year, Dutchies broke its own sales record. In addition to more than two thousand orders, revenue included three thousand new e-mail addresses. 'Our best day ever.'
4. F*ck it and just do it
Finally, Anne de Korte believes in a slogan of a well-known sports brand: Just do it. She didn't have a detailed business plan when she started Dutchies, just the feeling that there was room and, above all, a lot of desire to embark on the adventure. This is still the way how she runs her company: 'You can overthink a lot of things, I sometimes say, and then decide not to do something. We are different.' Dutchies stands for doers of good courage: 'And suppose something turns out just a little bit different, what's the worst that can happen?'
Anne de Korte is the Happy Owner of Dutchies, the elegant webshop for luxury phone cases. During theWebwinkel Vakdagen 2025 she was one of our speakers and shared her story and growth hacks to other entrepreneurs.
