Creative Solutions and Collaborative Design

Heitink Core Values

We strive to bring our customers’ creative visions to life with quality wood products. Here at Heitink, we have dedicated ourselves to quality, value, and the highest degree of customer service available.

Heitink Services

We work with your project from start to finish, until the owner smiles.

Environmental Standards

Environmentally conscious since our inception

Professional Team

35+ years experience, the Heitink team works together to fulfill your vision

Creative Solutions

We believe in flexibility: any quantity, any size, any thickness

Gerrit HeitinkFounder & President

After being an officer in the Royal Dutch Air Force, Gerrit started a new career in wood veneer manufacturing with a Dutch veneer company in the mid-1970s. Immigrating to the US in 1978, with his family, he worked as a log buyer for the Dutch company, then built up the export sales departments for other firms until the late eighties. In 1988 Gerrit struck out on his own, and started “Heitink Veneers” in Bloomington, Indiana.

Very humble beginnings saw many ups and downs, yet the small family company started to grow, developing the necessary resilience to survive the future. Through all the constant changes and demands of the business, Gerrit always made time to spend with family. With over 4 decades in the wood veneer industry, he still enjoys procuring nature’s most sustainable and green resource, wood, and seeing what his company’s clients can make out of it. Through his vast knowledge, and as our company’s Patriarch, he remains actively involved in teaching and inspiring the next generation.
Gerrit, and his wife Vera, are now able to enjoy more travel “together”, spending time with children and grandchildren both here in the United States and back in the Netherlands!

Jan HeitinkVice President

Jan Heitink is a Business graduate from Indiana University. Following in his father’s footsteps, he began his career in the wood veneer business in 1991, becoming employee #2 at Heitink. Jan’s veneer education is extensive and diverse. Early training included overseas internships with European veneer merchants and panel processing plants. Initially training in the procurement of both veneer and burl logs, he states, “this is where you make or break your success in veneer manufacturing.” Immersed in the languages his internships provided, Jan became multi-lingual, critical when sourcing raw materials across the world.

After 3 decades in this industry, Jan is still motivated to optimize the rarity and beauty of every piece of veneer that comes in. He champions all facets of the company and realizing his vision of Heitink Veneers’ evolution from a simple custom veneer supplier to an integrated veneer and specialty plywood manufacturer. One of Jan’s greatest joys, and strengths, is working in collaborative team settings with the millworker, and “guiding the vision” of the owner/architect to reality so everyone walks away truly satisfied.
Away from work, Jan loves spending time with his wife Nichole, while watching the boys play football, baseball, and going hiking and fishing. Inclement weather finds him working on, or detailing cars, or enjoying a good history book or movie.

John Shedivy Jr.Executive Sales Manager

John has 40 years of experience in the commercial plywood and door industries and is a true veneer expert. John started as a Veneer Mill Helper and progressed through roles as veneer lathe operator, lead person, supervisor, superintendent, manager and president of his own sketch face manufacturing plant.
John’s current role has him leading the manufacturing group in the production of high-quality plywood and commercial door skins. John’s production experience, as well as his education (BS & MBA) and training (lean, VSM, 8D, FSC), makes him a great fit for Heitink Plywood Technologies and a great resource for our factory and for our customers.

When not at work: John is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys hunting, fishing, camping and prospecting for rocks and minerals and loves spending time with his wife, children and grandchildren.

Bill BerrymanVice President Architectural Sales

With over three decades of Wood Door/Veneer experience, Bill focuses on developing and presenting Lunch & Learn training modules, for the AD, and Woodworking communities, plus Schools of Architecture & Design across North America. Following a Collaborative Design approach, his expertise with Mother Nature’s most sustainable resource is an excellent foundation to provide design assistance for selection and specification of wood veneers.
Bill’s home for over 30 years is Cary, NC where he enjoys being surrounded by his family including 3 grandchildren. When not thinking about wood veneer, he is often found embracing the serenity that only a flyrod can bring.

Bob WilliamsOutside Sales Manager - Southeast/Midwest

Bob has over 45 years of experience of Domestic and Exotic veneer buying and reselling. He has serviced the architectural market with his abundant knowledge of clipping, splicing and matching of architectural veneers into blueprint-sequenced panels as required by architects. Bob takes great pride in being able to recognize rare and hard to identify species of wood. To quote Bob directly, “I haven’t been fooled much in the last 40 years.”

When not at work: Bob enjoys spending time with his wife and family, watching his grandkids play sports, and building award winning hotrods.

Dennis Hitchcock Outside Sales Manager - Northwest / Midwest

Dennis began his twenty plus year hardwood veneers career at a small family sawmill in Northern Wisconsin purveying lumber, dimensional and moulded products. Moving to larger companies in Northern Michigan / Wisconsin, he honed his business ethics on the foundation of honesty, transparency, and integrity over dollars. A natural problem solver, Dennis is driven by counseling clients in the complexities of hardwood veneers then delighting in the satisfaction of positive results. Prior to the hardwood veneer industry, Dennis was employed as an employment and training counselor, and served in various US Army Hospital, Military Police, and Special Forces units.

Dennis hails from Mason, Wisconsin, where with thirty-one years of marriage to Susan, and eight kids later, he lives happily “almost” off the grid. Four of his seven sons are currently active military in the family tradition, with two more who desire to enlist in the near future. Hunting and fishing remain ardent pastimes, while Tom Clancy novels and books on military history keep him company when the snow gets too deep. Waxing poetic, “there’s nothing better than a John Deere tractor for reliability”, he says, … an apt comparison of his accountability for Heitink and his customers.