48 BEHIND THE SCENESwww.volkswagencamper.co.uk
sources to remanufacture obsolete
or hard to source items. Currently
BBT offers over 8000 different
components, of which 800 are in
house designed and produced under
their supervision. As a result, BBT
is now one of the biggest air-cooled
parts suppliers in the world. If there
is a need for good products, BBT will
search for a solution. Cheap stuff is
readily available but good quality is
rare.
Designing a product often
takes years, in some cases even
10 years due to the complexity
of the part or due to the wish for
authenticity and the use of vintage
production methods to fabricate
them. I saw multiple prototype
parts in Bob’s office in different
states of development which will
become ready for series production
soon. Beside reproduced parts, BBT
also has lots of NOS components
available, as well as second-hand
components. These are, however,
available only on customers request
and not offered on the internet.Although the BBT-shop in Sint-Job-
in-‘t-Goor is open for Belgian VW
classic car owners, the core of the
business is from sales via the web
shop. As BBT has their own photo
booth they are able to capture details
of the parts offered on the website
allowing for good identification of
the required component. The BBT
web shop, only accessible with an
assigned password, means that
nowadays parts are shipped all over
the world and many well-established
companies buy from BBT to
sell to their customers! Whilst
Arletta’s domain for personnel
and administrative tasks is a quiet
and ordered environment, Bob’s
office is quite the opposite! His
workspace is more like a man cave
or a museum with a collection of
steering wheels, classic car radios,
a real Indian motorcycle and lots of
scale models and books. A proper
workspace for a guy with passion for
old Volkswagens.
The warehouse itself is really
impressive; you have no clue of the- Fork lifts are
needed to access
the stacks of
shelving - Despatch area
- Bob is kept busy
ensuring sourcing
parts and suppliers
are of the highest
quality - Just a small
part of Bob’s
collection – many
of these are for
sale!
actual size of it when you enter the
building. Beside the goods reception
department and the despatch
department, there are hundreds of
metres of shelving in an organised,
dry and well-lit storage facility. They
use all the space from the floor till
the ceiling in long lines of storage
racks. The order pickers drive
forklifts to get the most efficiency
from the available space, even if the
parts are stored on the top shelf 6
metres high. Mostly BBT achieves
order preparation within 24 hours
to meet customers’ demands
worldwide.
And of course, as you might
expect, Bob also has a huge
collection of old classics; many are
for sale, some are his own personal
favourites and not for sale. They
even have a workshop to carry out
repairs and maintain these. But
that’s another story, which we will
cover in the next issue!
For more details aboutv the many
parts and services on offer at BBT
check out http://www.bbt4vw.com7
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