From My Dad's Shed to a Warehouse in Spain: The Golf MK2 Parts Story

1. It Started With a Car I Bought at 14
2. From Shed to First Warehouse
3. The Problem With Selling Used Parts Online
4. Products We Made Because Nobody Else Did
5. The Move to Spain
6. How Hector Joined the Team
7. The Cars
8. The HQ We're Building
9. Where This Is All Going

I bought my first Golf MK2 when I was 14.

Not old enough to drive it on the street yet. But me and my dad fixed it together and I learned how to drive on our own plot of land. That feeling of freedom never really went away.

Five years later I was 19, done with school, studying international business, and looking for something to do with that obsession. My dad had a shed. I had a list of MK2s I wanted to buy. That's where this whole thing started.

It Started With a Car I Bought at 14

The Golf MK2 has always been my car. The shape, the community, the way you can build it into any style you want — it clicked with me early. By the time I was old enough to actually act on that, I knew I wanted it to be more than just a hobby.

In 2018 I started buying and selling MK2s out of my dad's shed in the north of the Netherlands. Nothing fancy. Just me, some cars, and a lot of Facebook messages.

Here's the thing about buying whole cars — they usually come with some  parts. A boot full of spares. A box small pieces. Stuff the previous owner never got round to fitting. Over time I ended up with a serious parts inventory without really planning to. People started asking if they could buy from me directly. That changed everything.

From Shed to First Warehouse

I'd studied international business, so the logic was clear: parts are easier to ship than cars, higher margin, and I could sell them worldwide. I wasn't a trained mechanic either — I could fix certain things, but I was outsourcing too much on the car side. Selling parts only just made more sense.

I sold off my car stock and put the money straight back into inventory. Over the next year I bought out four complete warehouses' worth of parts — thousands of items, used, rare, new old stock. My dad's shed wasn't going to cut it anymore.

In 2020 I rented my first real unit: 75m² in Zwolle, center of the Netherlands. Small. Packed to the roof. Office upstairs. Completely mine. Scary milestone — but a big one.

Back then I ran everything through social media. Just me, all day, answering messages. "Is this still available?"  "Do you have any more pictures?"  My screen time was well over 12 hours a day. Every time I cleared the backlog, people would reply and it'd fill straight back up. That model had a ceiling on it and I was already hitting it.

So we needed to build a webshop. List it once and let people order.
— but I couldn't do it alone.

That's where Vincent came in. I listed a spoiler for sale on Facebook, and Vincent came by to pick it up. While he was there we got talking — about how messy and inefficient it was to sell parts through social media alone, and how there had to be a better way to do it. That conversation was the start of the webshop idea.

Vincent worked as a front-end developer, so he knew how to build it. I had the vision and the parts. Between us, we had what we needed. He spent his evenings — on top of his full-time job — building Golf MK2Parts.com from the ground up, and he did it without asking for anything in return. He believed in where the business was heading, and his passion for the MK2 was reason enough for him. That kind of support, for free, because someone genuinely believes in what you're building — that's not something I take lightly, and it's a big part of why Golf Mk2 Parts is where it is today. 

Vincent still maintains the webshop and helps out with any technical questions customers run into. Solving tough problems is what he enjoys most about the work — and it shows.

The webshop made sure the business was scalable and it solved the message problem — but it also created a new one problem. 

The Problem With Selling Used Parts Online

Every part we sold was 30+ years old. They're all in different condition. And customers need to know exactly what they're getting — a tail light in used condition might be good enough for one build and not at all good enough for another. Selling used parts online without being able to properly communicate condition is a headache for everyone involved. We found a way to do it. But that pushed me toward a different direction: finding new parts I could restock consistently. That let me to more volume, steady profits and again scalability. But I wanted to sell parts that solved real problems. Parts that weren't available anywhere else.

Products We Made Because Nobody Else Did

Two products came out of that thinking early on — the Airvent Cupholder and the Roof Gutter Rubber Replacement Kit  both hit immediately. They solved problems Golf MK2 owners had been sitting with for years — the kind of thing you'd search eBay for on and off for months without ever finding a decent answer. That's exactly the gap we wanted to fill.

The webshop started growing properly after that. Orders coming in consistently. Happy customers across 65 countries. On Saturdays the street outside the warehouse would fill up with MK2s — people stopping by to pick up parts, help pack orders, or just talk avout cars. That community side of it wasn't something I planned for. But it became one of my favourite parts of running this business. Many of my friendships were created because of this car.

After a year in the 75m² unit we outgrew it. Moved to a new 150m² warehouse two floors, high ceilings, one street away. Another jump in space, costs, and responsibility. For five years I ran everything alone, then brought on two interns — trading business knowledge for their time. It worked well. 

The Move to Spain

In 2024, everything changed.

My wife and I had always wanted to move to Spain — I already had family there. So we made the call. I sold my entire used parts inventory to a friend who wanted to launch his own business in the MK2 niche. He took over the Dutch operation: buying, stocking, and shipping used parts from the Netherlands — still listed on the webshop, still going out to customers every day. I took the new parts and all the product development ideas to Spain.

It meant making a couple of steps back in most ways. New country, house to renovate, a business to legally close in the Netherlands and rebuild in Spain — all while keeping the webshop running normally. No downtime for customers. That took some doing.

How Hector Joined the Team

I wasn't really looking for a business partner. It just happened.

Shortly after arriving in Spain I posted a story on our social media — I needed help collecting some parts for a client. Hector had been following Golf MK2 Parts for a while. He saw the story, offered to help, and I invited him over.

We ended up talking for hours. His ideas, his values, the way he thought about business and product development — it all lined up. That first meeting turned into a second, then a third. Eventually the answer was obvious: Hector came on full-time.

Having him here changed what was possible. Not just an extra pair of hands — someone who genuinely sees where this can go, and pushes just as hard to get there. Things sped up massively once he was on board. Ideas that used to sit in the back of my mind as "maybe one day" suddenly felt reachable — bigger plans, faster execution, 
two people bouncing things off each other instead of one person carrying it all. 

The Cars

Spain opened up car opportunities fast. GTI's are more commonly found in Spain. I went from never owning a GTI before, to having 3 at the same time. These deals I simply couldn't pass by. So we decided we wanted to do cars again. 

Right now we have a Jetta MK2 and three GTIs in stock. And we're in the middle of a full ground-up restoration on a 1985 GTI 8v — early type, completely repainted, being rebuilt from scratch. That one's a proper project.

With multiple car projects going on, we needed more space again. 

The HQ We're Building

We found a 100-year-old building in town — abandoned for over ten years, it used to be a stone and marble warehouse. 200m² workshop at the front with a 6-meter ceiling and original wooden beams. Multiple rooms behind it totalling 450m². Plus 300m2 outside space on top of that. Way too big for what we need at this time, but we made an offer to buy it and that got accepted. 

Here's how it's being laid out:

Front — the workshop. High ceiling, the original beams, room for cars. This is where restorations happen, and it doubles as our content creation space. 

Behind the workshop — offices. A proper place to work, not a desk squeezed into a corner of the garage.

Rear of the building — warehouse and packing. Dedicated space for inventory and order fulfillment, completely separate from everything else.

The lab. A separate room purely for product creation and development — 3D printers, laser engravers, and whatever else we add as the operation grows. This is the one Hector is most excited about. A proper R&D setup built into the Headquarters. 

We're documenting the whole property renovation on Instagram Reels, step by step. If you want to follow along, that's the place to be. 

Where This Is All Going

More own-brand parts — designed, tested, and made in-house. More B2B, working closer with resellers to move more volume and reach customers we'd never find through the webshop alone. More collaboration with content creators and sponsors. And once the HQ is ready: cars. Buying, restoring, and exporting MK2s and GTIs properly — back to where it all started, but with the space, the team, and the tools to do it right this time.

Over 2,000 parts in stock. Customers in 65 countries. A full HQ taking shape in Spain.

It started in a shed and we're just getting started.

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Want to see what we have in stock?
Browse the full catalogue at golfmk2parts.com/collections/all

— or get in touch if you're looking for something specific. New parts in every day, and if we don't have it, we'll help you track it down.

FAQ SCHEMA

Q1. Who started Golf MK2 Parts?
A1. Golf MK2 Parts was founded in 2018 by Jayjay Klingenberg, a Golf MK2 enthusiast from the Netherlands. He started buying and selling VW Golf MK2s from his dad's shed at age 19, then moved to parts only — eventually growing into a business shipping to over 65 countries worldwide.

Q2. Where is Golf MK2 Parts located?
A2. Golf MK2 Parts originally operated from the Netherlands, running for several years out of warehouses in Zwolle. In 2024 founder Jayjay relocated to Spain, where new parts are now shipped from. Used parts are still handled by a partner in the Netherlands.

Q3. Does Golf MK2 Parts break cars for parts?
A3. No. Golf MK2 Parts does not break cars for parts. They buy large lots of parts from people leaving the hobby or closing their own businesses. The goal is to keep MK2s on the road — not strip them down.

Q4. What kind of parts does Golf MK2 Parts sell?
A4. Golf MK2 Parts sells used parts, rare parts, new old stock, and their own in-house reproduction parts — including the Airvent Cupholder and the Roof Gutter Rubber Replacement Kit. They currently have over 2,000 Golf MK2 parts in stock.

Q5. Does Golf MK2 Parts sell complete Golf MK2 cars?
A5. Yes. Golf MK2 Parts currently (June 2026) has a Jetta MK2 and three GTIs in stock, including a 1985 GTI 8v being fully restored from the ground up. Once their new Spanish HQ is complete, buying and selling cars will become a bigger part of the business.