With his private plane, Meddens travels from Amsterdam to his other facilities three times a week. He works closely with all his employees (50 in Amsterdam, 35 in London and 25 in Berlin) who can reach him directly 24 hours a day. Meddens founded Condor in Amsterdam at the dawn of the era of computer editing. After first doing largely broadcast work, Condor switched to commercials and soon became the leading post-production facility in the Netherlands.

In 1995, Condor London was launched at the center of Soho. Now offering an array of services including Discreet inferno*, flame*, flint*, smoke*, Quantel Editbox, a 3D department, multimedia and most recently a Spirit DataCine with da Vinci 2K, Condor London remains the only independent in the English market.

Not content with two sites, London's managing director Minouche Kool, in partnership with Meddens, sought further expansion into Europe with the opening of Condor Berlin in July 1999, with the prospect of opening a Brussels facility next year. Meddens considers Brussels a step further toward Paris, which will be his next big move. "When you set up your first facility, that's when you have all the problems; after that it becomes easier each time," says Meddens. "Though London was difficult as well -- there was a lot of competition."

Condor handles international accounts for American agencies, such as BBDO and McCann-Erickson, and does all the M&M's commercials for Mars Europe. Condor's London shop has recently been working on jobs for Nike, Sony PlayStation, Smirnoff Vodka, The Royal Navy and Vans shoes. Other recent clients include J. Walter Thompson, Bates Dorland, Leo Burnett, the COI, Tomato, @radical.media, Bermuda Shorts, RSA, Harry Nash, Serious Pictures, BBC, MTV and the Cartoon Network. For JWT, the London office recently undertook the flame* work for the Persil spot "Deary" with animation by the production company Sherbet, and the inferno* work on Boots "Flower Power," directed by Jan Gleie and produced by Bash Robertson through The Pink Film Company. In addition, Condor London did extensive animation, matting and smoke* work for Da Slammin' Phrogz's pop promo of the underground club hit "Something About the Music."

In Amsterdam the company is working on new media projects for Esso and Shell. As a Philips Professional DVD partner, Condor has also become part of a DVD developers' network. Condor has produced several DVD titles for Philips, Microsoft, Cineview and various agencies.

The three Condor facilities offer a similar equipment complement and mostly work on projects independently, but join forces on big projects, as they did on the Publicis campaign for the introduction of the euro in 2002 for the European Commission, set to air through next year. The idea of a European network is to share big projects more often in the future.

Given the recent trend which has seen many of the big post hitters acquired by larger public entities, Condor's independent status has become more and more conspicuous. To hear Meddens tell it, staying single has been easy: "We began in the good days, in the beginning of the '80s, and we invested all our profits in the business. That's how you grow. I financed everything in London with the profits from Amsterdam, now with the profits of London and Amsterdam I finance Berlin. This business is profitable enough to grow."

Besides, Meddens loves his freedom and independence too much to ever give it up: "I prefer to work in my own way. I don't have an office, I work with my people and stay in the middle of the business. I learn something new every day."