PPDS made several personnel announcements including the retirement of 30-year veteran Peter Vinke and the creation of its third regional business cluster in Europe. The new structuring combines the strengths of its Nordics and Benelux teams to facilitate new, enhanced growth opportunities.
The Godfather of Philips
Hailed internally as the ‘Philips Godfather,’ Peter Vinke’s career and association with the Philips brand spans more than 30 years. He successfully positioned Philips professional displays into the global hospitality sector, including all major international hotel groups, since 2005. The company confirmed the long-serving PPDS sales director is to retire in September.
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“Peter has been an integral part of the Philips professional displays story in the hospitality sector across all regions, and his enthusiasm for building our brand has always been exemplary," commented Franck Racapé, head of global commercial at PPDS. "Peter is also a great contributor to the positive team spirit here at PPDS, welcoming colleagues, motivating our teams, and energizing the marketplace.
“His boots were always going to be difficult to fill, and in Mikael da Fonseca, we have a natural leader with already proven passion, skills, and an exceptional track record. This leaves me with no doubt that he is the outstanding candidate we need to build on Peter’s achievements and to lead our hospitality display business forward during our next phase of growth.”
Global strengths: Mikael da Fonseca promoted
da Fonseca, previously sales director for the Nordics at PPDS, has been promoted to international key account director hospitality as Vinke prepares for retirement in September.
da Fonseca, who will begin his new role on July 1, has been with PPDS for more than 10 years and has been instrumental in guiding the company’s dramatic rise in the Nordics region, achieving and extending market share for Philips hospitality TVs to a commanding 55% in 2021. Based in Stockholm, da Fonseca joins Simone Gagliardi, Frank Trossen, and Valeriia Polovkova on the IKAM team.
PPDS’ unique IKAM approach was created to provide global consistency combined with local expertise for large-scale, multinational project installations, working with its network of trusted system integration partners serving more than 200-plus countries. The IKAM team is formed of dedicated market specialists—including corporate, hospitality, and retail—to deliver complete support from pre to post-sales, encompassing strategy, pricing, contracting, operations, and services.
Stronger together
Part of PPDS’ ‘Business Without Boundaries’ strategy, and mirroring recent positive geographical clustering in PPDS’ other burgeoning markets—including Iberia and France, and Central Eastern Europe and Poland—the latest phase of PPDS’ evolution sees the business magnify the existing strengths of its Nordics and Benelux sales teams to support the company’s ambitious growth target.
As part of the new structure, Roeland Scholten has been promoted to the newly created position of sales director BNL and Nordics. Based in Amsterdam, Scholten will see his responsibilities extended to lead and drive sales opportunities in the Baltics, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway, as well as his existing territory in Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.
“Roeland’s drive to succeed is well-known within our company and the industry and I am very pleased to expand his role, harnessing his energy to capture the incredible opportunities ahead in this combined market space," said Racapé. "I have huge admiration for the hard work of our teams in both the Nordics and Benelux and we have designed this new structure to support them both in achieving their individual goals and our business ambitions.”
Since joining PPDS in 2016, Scholten has shown incredible leadership in the Benelux region, with PPDS experiencing record sales across both its Philips digital signage and developing direct view LED portfolios during his tenure. He will be tasked with managing and further accelerating this growth across all products within PPDS’ evolving portfolio of display solutions in the combined markets.
