Rogier Wentink was driving to the Tour de France with his commercial director when a casual remark from a client changed the trajectory of his company. “A client of mine was asked to make an introduction to a possible buyer for Bischoff+Scheck, a German manufacturer of bespoke mobile facilities for Formula 1 teams,” Wentink says with a laugh, recalling the moment. “I called one of my brokers and said, can you please check whether Bischoff+Scheck is indeed up for sale?”
It was. And that serendipitous conversation led to the acquisition that catapulted Wentink’s Movico Group – a Dutch specialist in mobile event logistics – into the world of Formula 1, serving teams such as Ferrari, Haas, and McLaren.
Today, having built, grown, and exited Movico over nearly a decade, Wentink has joined All Interests Aligned (AIA) as an operating partner, searching for his next management buy-in (MBI). He is what AIA calls a “repeater”: an experienced operator who has been through the full cycle of acquiring, building, and exiting a business – and is ready to do it again. For AIA’s founders, repeaters like Wentink represent the vanguard of a model that goes beyond single transactions. AIA’s vision is that repeaters become the guiding voices for the future – people who have done it and who then become part of the cycle, part of the community of serial entrepreneurs, supporting future generations of MBI operators.
Wentink’s path to entrepreneurship through acquisition was hardly typical. He spent more than a decade in corporate finance – first at Fortis Bank in Amsterdam and then in Singapore, followed by five years at Bunge in Asia, where he worked on cross-border M&A, turnarounds, and distressed asset investments. The work was intense: 10-hour days, six days a week, months consumed by a single transaction. But something kept nagging at him.
Instead of continuing to build Excel models and PowerPoint decks about businesses he would never run, Rogier wanted something he could, as he puts it, “touch and knock on, smell, feel, taste.” After returning to the Netherlands from Asia with his family, he set about looking for a company to acquire. But he had been away for years. His Dutch network had gone cold. So he hired consultants – an accountant, an M&A advisor, and an MBI specialist – to help him assess his own strengths and match them to potential targets. He screened 10 to 15 companies before one of the advisors introduced him to Movico.
Movico, based in Deurne in the south of the Netherlands, was a specialist in mobile event logistics – providing stages, pavilions, VIP hospitality units, and mobile production facilities for major sporting events, including the Tour de France, the Dakar Rally, and cycling classics across Europe. Its founder, then 62 years old, had led the company for some two decades. His two sons were too young and inexperienced to take over and had no interest in succeeding him. Meanwhile, a very capable management team was eager to grow the business, but the founder, content with a comfortable income and annual dividend, saw no reason to actively pursue growth.
It was a classic succession situation: a good business with clear growth potential, an owner ready to step back, and no family successor in sight.
Wentink sourced and structured the deal on his own. He supervised the due diligence, led the negotiations, arranged the acquisition financing with banks, and brought in private investors willing to back him. The process took close to a year. “It was very time-consuming, challenging and sometimes quite lonely.”
But if the process was lonely, the motivation was personal. Rogier was drawn to Movico not primarily as an investor assessing returns, but as an operator who fell in love with the company. “They were active in the sports area, and I really like sports,” he says.
Over nine years as CEO and owner, Wentink pursued a dual strategy: organic growth in Movico’s core cycling business and roadshows for corporates, and inorganic expansion through targeted acquisitions. The first bolt-on was Racetrailer.com – technically a one-man company, but one whose owner had an extensive network in motorsports. The acquisition opened doors to an entirely new market. “He was able to introduce Movico to his clients, and that catapulted our business into the motorsport world,” Wentink notes. Crucially, he also acquired the assembly activities from Racetrailer’s supplier, transforming it from a trading operation into a manufacturing business.
Then came the Bischoff+Scheck deal – born from that chance conversation en route to the Tour de France. The German company, with more than 25 years in the business, was the market leader in high-end bespoke trailers for Formula 1 teams. The founders stayed on with a minority stake and seats on the board. “One of our co-investors was a race driver himself. There was a connection from the start.” The combined group became a vertically integrated European leader in mobile event solutions, with operations spanning the Netherlands and Germany and clients ranging from the Tour de France to the Formula 1 paddock.
The biggest crisis came from the most unexpected direction. When Covid-19 shut down live events across Europe, Movico – a company that earned 95% of its revenue outside the Netherlands, deploying mobile infrastructure at sporting events across the continent – was suddenly at a complete standstill. “I had no experience handling a crisis of that magnitude,” Wentink recalls. “We looked at each other as management and said: now what?”
Rogier’s response was characteristically practical. He told employees not to bother with face time at the office. Instead, he urged them to take care of their families and neighbours and to tackle the operational improvements they had always said they never had time for. Then he asked a more fundamental question: how could Movico help?
The company offered its fleet and logistics expertise to hospitals across the Netherlands, deploying mobile units as triage posts outside emergency departments to prevent infected patients from entering the building. The work was done for free. Employees, many of whom had been restless at home and eager to return to work, threw themselves into the effort.
The lesson Rogier draws from Covid is quintessentially Movico: a can-do mentality, rooted in an intrinsic desire to help, that ended up also being good business.
By 2025, Wentink had built Movico from 16 employees to 40 at the parent company and 120 across the group. Under his leadership, the group grew ninefold in revenues and profitability. He had completed multiple acquisitions, expanded across borders, and navigated a global pandemic. But something had shifted. As the group grew, Wentink had moved from the operating side to the holding company level, establishing independent management teams at each subsidiary and stepping back from day-to-day involvement.
With the Bischoff+Scheck onboarding complete, and his strategic initiatives largely in motion, Wentink realized he had made himself redundant.
What pulled Rogier back was the memory of the ride itself. “The reason I joined AIA is because the first MBI was such a good ride. I have no regrets whatsoever. And I’m looking forward to my next one.”
But this time, he chose not to do it alone. He joined AIA as an operating partner in February 2026, attracted not only by access to capital – though that is, as he acknowledges, the most obvious benefit – but also by the entire ecosystem: the investment committee, the standardized legal documentation, the network of fellow operating partners, and the ability to brainstorm with seasoned entrepreneurs who share the same goal.
In the Netherlands, Wentink is one of three active AIA operating partners. When he visits a broker or intermediary, he follows up by introducing his colleagues and their sector profiles. “If you come across something in their sectors, reach out,” he tells brokers. “That works very well.”
“The reason I joined AIA is because the first MBI was such a good ride. I have no regrets whatsoever. And I’m looking forward to my next one.”
Wentink is candid about the difference between his two searches. In 2016, he was a one-man show, facing uncertainty on every front. Today, he describes AIA as “a very ambitious, fast-growing, MBI platform powered by entrepreneurial family offices with lots of firepower.” The brokers he meets notice. “When you tell the AIA story – the investment approach, the succession issues we’re tackling, the community impact alongside the financial returns – brokers really like it. It’s different from private equity, which is purely financially driven. And it’s different from a search fund. We’re experienced CEOs with financial backing. That takes away a huge uncertainty.”
He is also clearer about what he is looking for. His first acquisition was driven largely by instinct and personal affinity – “I just loved the company,” he admits. This time, with AIA’s value creation team, he is building a structured plan before acquiring, with predetermined targets for revenue growth, profitability, and operational improvement. “When I acquired Movico, that was non-existent,” he says. “With AIA, it’s more structured, more professional.”
But for all the additional structure, Rogier insists that instinct still matters – perhaps more than ever. “When your instinct tells you something looks fishy, just leave it and move on to the next target,” he advises. “On the other hand, if you find something that is genuinely appealing and you really like it, go for it.”
When asked what success looks like five years from now, Wentink offers a vision that extends well beyond a single transaction. Financially, he wants to double the acquired company’s revenue and profitability. Personally, he hopes for a smooth transition with the departing owner, one where nobody leaves the company unnecessarily. He wants to invest in people, create career opportunities, and – above all – preserve the DNA of the business he acquires.
But there is a telling addendum. “The most important thing, for me, is that with the experience gained in my second MBI, I would be thrilled and ready and energized for a third MBI – hopefully with AIA,” he says. He envisions co-investments alongside newer operating partners, board positions on portfolio companies, and the chance to mentor first-time acquirers. “That is something I truly look forward to.”
It is a vision of serial entrepreneurship not as a solitary pursuit, but as something embedded in a community – a cycle in which each successful exit creates not just financial returns, but institutional knowledge and human connection that flows to the next generation of operators.
The most important thing, for me, is that with the experience gained in my second MBI, I would be thrilled and ready and energized for a third MBI – hopefully with AIA
For now, though, Rogier is firmly focused on the short term. “Right now, I am fully focused on making sure there are a lot of teasers and information memoranda, and getting the first offers out,” he says. And then, with characteristic understatement: “Hopefully in the next six months, I will have made an acquisition and that will be the start of a longer journey with AIA.”
Given his track record, it almost certainly will be.
Mukul Pandya is the founding editor of Knowledge@Wharton and a former Associate Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. He writes regularly about entrepreneurship through acquisition for All Interests Aligned.
