Welcome to the Fur Group Website!

On our extensive website we describe who we are, what we can offer, how we work and how you can find us. Also, we have added many interactive applications where you can view examples of our work. An overview of the projects that we have executed so far is listed in our portfolio. Over the past 9 years we have published numerous articles, which we have posted in our special News chapter.

On behalf of the Fur Group, I kindly invite you to browse our website for all the information we have to offer.

Kind regards,

Ferdy (Fer) Rozenberg

Senior partner
Fur Group

[ Note: for more information in English, just visit the Fur Data site: www.furdata.nl/english/ ]

12 ½ years Fur Group | History

When I started Fur Data, back in 1994 (which, by the way, makes it one of the longest standing internet businesses in The Netherlands), I had no intention whatsoever to expand the company by hiring personnel. I did not really feel like taking on the responsibility that comes with having personnel and, moreover, in those days it was as good as impossible to find employees anyway. The few HTML programmers around were all starting their own businesses. The decision to look and find motivated programmers was easily made.

By 1996, my goal was to start a business that could offer a full service program, which was what people were looking for. Until then service was mainly limited to corporate home pages.

As we now know, Internet use went off the charts and so did the demand for homepages. Not only the demand caused a high-pressured workload, staying up to speed with the technical developments on everything that had anything to do with the Internet added to that. Back in the pioneer days, it all came down to ‘staying up to date’ with the technical developments involved. I soon found out that this business wasn’t going to be only about technique.

A homepage was merely a digital business card. But the homepage that merely ‘communicated’ a message evolved into a fully-fledged website.

The Fur Group not only invented the six basic rules that apply for a website, even today, they were also the first to apply them. These six rules are: “V.I.S.I.O.N.”
“Findability (retrieVability), Interest, Speed, Interaction, Originality and Navigation”

The word findability/retrievability wasn’t even listed in the dictionary let alone in search engines such as Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, Ilse en Google. Back then; Google wasn’t even a major player in the search engine game.

During the second half of the nineties the ‘digital highway’ was being promoted ‘at the speed of light’ by many (un)known parties.
Making use of the attention it was receiving, I gave a presentation, after a hesitant start during a corporate meeting organized by the Chamber of Commerce, on Internet and its many applications.

After my presentation on homepages and websites I found out ‘what not to do’. Many of the people in my audience, owners and corporate board members, were not familiar with the World Wide Web, let alone with using email. Correspondence was still done by letter and/or fax. To give a presentation using a flash application and adding sound effects was a bridge too far for many of them.

The Fur Group’s presentations and lectures have changed radically since then. They are no longer focused on ‘what can you do with Internet?’ but aimed at ‘what do you do with it and what is its added value?

The Fur Group still applies this pragmatic approach. During the second half of the nineties the Fur Group built a large network of relations from all lines of business. The majority of them are still loyal relations and have actually become ambassadors for the Fur Group.

This ambassadorship is a direct result of the Fur Group’s working ethics: “On time and excellent work’ and we make sure we deliver a consistent level of quality. No advertising campaign can beat a recommendation for a company by another company.

Due to our extensive experience of ‘reading in’ and ‘digging into’ the matters of the various fields of knowledge, the Fur Group has accomplished a large advisory role when it comes to setting up a website. Why? Because websites are all about Internet and communication.

In addition to the Fur Group’s external network, they also have access to a large internal network: our own partners! This flexible network is capable of supplying specialism’s that are needed to find the best possible solution for our customers. Neither size nor complexity of an Internet solution poses a problem for the Fur Group. However, if our group has insufficient capacity and/or knowledge to meet a deadline or offer a solution, the Fur Group partners have access to an extensive network that can fill any gaps.

Nevertheless, the partner that operates as primary supplier and project leader, always remains responsible throughout the project. This is a simple and transparent way of doing business. The customer gets what he expects and the partner knows exactly what to deliver and/or supply, always keeping in mind the high level of quality that the Fur Group stands for.

Besides the above described formal work method a lot of inspiration is involved. It is a lot of fun and very satisfying to complete a project successfully. Time after time we must prove and endorse our good name. This is a healthy way to guarantee our high quality and excellent service.

In the mean time, 12,5 years down the road, I can say without any hesitation that the Fur Group has definitely met their goal of becoming a valuable and professional Internet and commercial service provider and has earned a respectable place in ‘internet land’.