Jaap Blokker, owner of the household goods retail chain Blokker, has died at the age of 69. He had been ill for some time.

Blokker began working for his grandfather’s company at the age of 12 and was made deputy director of the company 13 years later.
Blokker has since grown into an international organisation with 2,825 shops in 11 countries. It also owns the Bart Smit, Intertoys, Casa, Leen Bakker and Xenos retail chains.
Blokker courted controversy with a number of outspoken statements. In the group’s 2009 annual report he warned about the instability of the euro, due to ‘a number of European siesta countries’.
And in 2002, he accused the government of having a lax attitude to migration and not doing enough to combat shop crime.