Most technology executives follow a similar trajectory: university degree, graduate scheme, steady climb up the corporate ladder. Marco Bruines followed none of these steps. The Dutchman left education early and got married, became a father at 22, and entered pro AV by accident after spotting a job advertisement for a salesman of Barco projectors. Yet at 62, he now leads INFiLED’s EMEA operations across 80 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa –drawing on a career that has taken him from the Netherlands to China, the US and now Barcelona, with roles spanning sales, integration and company ownership.
That unconventional journey has shaped his approach to team building. When hiring, Bruines prioritises personal qualities over academic success. “I’m not a university guy and I don’t think it is needed to be successful. Drive, focus and passion are more important,” he believes. “I’d even prefer to hire a non-university candidate with passion and the power to work hard over a graduate who thinks they know everything.”
UNWAVERING SUPPORT
Yet his drive could only have taken him so far without the unwavering support of his wife of 45 years, Yvonne. During the family’s stints in China and the US, Yvonne willingly sacrificed her own career to support him. “I really appreciate what she has done. I never could have done this job without her. And I’m just so lucky that she still wants me to come home at night,” he says.
Back in 1987, Bruines launched his pro AV career at Inter Visual Systems, criss-crossing the Netherlands to sell video equipment to integrators. He became so synonymous with Barco’s technology that he was known as “Barco Marco”. After 13 years in the role, he sold the first Barco LED screen in the fixed-installation market for a Dutch football stadium. This was a coup for the manufacturer and prompted Barco to offer him a global sales role in the fixed-installation sector.
The position meant moving to Kortrik, a small town in Belgium. Yvonne was supportive and the family relocated with their two children in 2001. The area was Flemish-speaking, so the language was familiar, but the children struggled to settle. “The cultures look similar on the surface, but school in the Netherlands was much more open and in Belgium it was quite strict, so they didn’t really like it,” he observes.
A new opportunity arose in 2003, when he was offered the chance to set up a new factory for Barco in China – a joint venture structured as 80 percent Barco and 20 percent Leyard. Bruines returned home and shared the offer with his family. As always, Yvonne was immediately encouraging. Best of all, their children – Mike and Lynn, then 17 and 15 – were thrilled. “They ran upstairs to pack their bags straight away!” he recalls.
INTERNATIONAL BENEFITS
The move had benefits beyond work: instead of being the odd-ones out in small-town Belgium, the children joined an international school in Beijing with 70 nationalities. Meanwhile, Bruines developed the factory from an empty shell and also found time to set up the Benelux Business Association at the request of the Belgium ambassador. It was clear that his career was taking off when he was introduced to King Albert II of Belgium, among other dignitaries and celebrities he met while in China. The whole family loved living in Beijing, he says, but after four and a half years, it was time to move on. “It was a great experience, but it’s not always easy as the culture is very different,” he says.
In China, Bruines had demonstrated a talent for setting up local operations and another offer from Barco came his way in 2006. The company wanted him to go to Sacramento, California, for a year to lead the establishment of the fixed-installation department. With their children now in higher education – his son in Queensland, Australia, and his daughter in Lausanne, Switzerland – Bruines and Yvonne experienced empty nest syndrome under sunny California skies. “After adapting to China, America came as another culture shock, but as usual my wife adapted very well and so did I,” he remembers.
Armed with diverse international and cross-sector experience, Bruines returned from the US in 2007 to rejoin Inter Visual Systems, this time as a systems integrator. He remained there for six years, but by then he was ready to strike out on his own. In 2014, Bruines founded Sight, a company dedicated to supplying high-resolution video walls and displays. “I wanted to experience owning my own business, but I felt quite alone and got dragged into a situation I wasn’t enjoying. So, after two years, when I received an offer for the business, I sold it,” he explains.
At this point, Bruines received a job offer in late 2016 that took the family to Barcelona, where they have remained ever since. He became CEO of EMEA for Leyard, a role that lasted two years, but for the first time in his career, he found himself at odds with the strategic direction of the company. As so often in his career, another opportunity was waiting in the wings. INFiLED offered him the role of senior vice president for EMEA, which he began in May 2019, moving into the CEO position three years later. “I love the job and I love the team. I could say it’s like a hobby for me,” he says.
BUILDING INFiLED
When Bruines joined INFiLED, he was the company’s lone employee in Barcelona, facing the formidable task of expanding into multiple countries. Six years on, the transformation is striking: the company posts 30 percent annual growth, with showrooms in Frankfurt, Barcelona, Dubai, Rotterdam, and London. And the team is almost ready to launch a showroom and office in Saudi Arabia.
One reason Bruines enjoys working for INFiLED is that it is privately held, unlike most competitors which are publicly traded. He appreciates this structure, as it makes collaboration with the owners far simpler and more direct: “With a public company, they might guide you in a direction you don’t want. The shareholders at INFiLED know what they’re talking about because they work every day in the business. When there’s a win, we celebrate it together.”
Bruines’ time living in Beijing has given him valuable insight into the mindset of the Chinese shareholders. As the only non-Chinese member of the management team, he has learned to adapt his communication style – and he even surprises colleagues with his understanding of their nuances. “As a Dutchman I can be very direct. But in a meeting with management, I would never disagree with the company CEO. I might say, ‘I’ve been listening to your arguments carefully and I’d just like to present another perspective’. Chinese colleagues still laugh about it. They say I know the way they think!”
The most challenging aspect of his job, Bruines says, is navigating vastly different national cultures. His territory covers 45 European countries, 15 in the Middle East, and 54 in Africa. While INFiLED is not yet present in all of them, progress is rapid. “The challenge is not only adapting externally to all these cultures, it’s also happening internally as we are working with 23 different nationalities in the INFiLED team,” he explains. “Solely in the Barcelona office, we have nine nationalities, which is challenging at times, but is going well.”
In outlining his philosophy of management, Bruines cites two key concepts from the well-known book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey. The first is ‘start with the end in mind’, which helps him to focus all his energies towards clear goals. The second is ‘seek first to understand, then to be understood’. “If you don’t understand the other person, you can’t expect them to understand you. This requires careful listening. Many people think a good sales person is someone who talks a lot. But they also have to know when to keep quiet and really listen before talking,” Bruines believes.
Something that irks him about the industry today is the aggressive low-pricing strategy of some competitors. Inevitably, quality suffers with potentially disastrous results: “It’s not our strategy as we want the quality to be extremely high. The tech is used in critical environments like control rooms for surveillance, but also in corporate and rental staging environments where reliability is a must. It’s never a great idea to go for a cut-price option and then have it fail in front of an audience.”
INFiLED’s strategy is built around developing high-quality, long-term relationships with systems integrators and partners. And Bruines expects the whole industry to shift over the next decade towards a greater emphasis on servicing. ”It’s the most important thing. A new product is lovely, but it needs to be installed and serviced in the correct way, or customers won’t experience the full benefit,” he says.
FAMILY MATTERS
Bruines and Yvonne are happily settled in Barcelona. Reflecting on their life, he takes a moment to show off the spectacular view from his office window. Although Yvonne’s Spanish has outpaced his own, that’s largely because he rarely needs it – English is the common language at work, shared by colleagues from all over the world.
Even in restaurants, Bruines’ attempts at speaking Spanish are usually answered by staff in English. At home, he speaks Dutch with Yvonne, but English has become the family’s lingua franca. His son, 39, lives in Tenerife with his Brazilian wife and their daughter, and his 37-year-old daughter is in Geneva, married to a Swiss man. “The one language everyone in the family speaks is English,” Bruines says, with a smile.
With everybody in the Bruines family spread across Europe, regular gatherings are less frequent than he would like. But when they do come together, quality time is a priority. This Christmas they’ll all be together, and last year they went on a safari in Africa as a family. Bruines and his wife also make sure to travel when they can – next year it’s another safari, in Botswana with just the two of them, and they’ve just returned from two weeks in Thailand to relax and recharge.
After 40 years in pro AV and 45 years of marriage, both partnerships are continuing to flourish.
