C&A

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C&A Mode GmbH & Co. KG

logo
legal form Limited partnership
founding 1841
Seat Vilvoorde , Belgium Düsseldorf , GermanyBelgiumBelgium 
GermanyGermany 
management Edward Brenninkmeijer
Number of employees > 35,000 in Europe (2017)
sales 6.8 billion EUR (2011/2012)
Branch textiles
Website c-and-a.com

1841-2016
Historic logos from C&A

C&A is a clothing company based in Vilvoorde, Belgium, and Düsseldorf . It has over 2000 branches in 23 countries and employs more than 900,000 people in production alone. The company operates around 1400 branches across Europe, around 450 of which are in its core market of Germany .

history

Brenninckhof in Wiehe ( Mettingen ) in May 2006

In the 17th century the trade in linen and the so-called Töddenhandel began in Mettingen in the Tecklenburger Land . In order to create an extra income from farming, residents went to the nearby Netherlands as migrant workers, traders and peddlers .

Both 20 years old, brothers C Lemens (1818-1902) and A ugust Brenninkmeijer (1819-1892) founded with the financial support of her father, the company C & A Brenninkmeijer 1841 in the Dutch village of Sneek . There they opened their first shop, one of the first to offer clothing in ready- to- wear sizes .

The Brenninckhof in the Mettinger farming community in Wiehe is considered the original farm of the family . The farm was first mentioned in connection with the name Brenninkmeijer in the 17th century, namely as a fief of the Orange in Lingen , awarded to a Johann toe Twee, called Brenninkmeijer then Brenninckhove. After DSK Anthrazit Ibbenbüren GmbH bought the historic building and the neighboring restaurant due to damage in the mountains , there was initially fear of demolition in the summer of 2005. The following summer, however, the DSK announced that it would renovate the Brenninckhof and convert it into a meeting center.

Information about the beginnings of the company can be found in the "Tüötten Museum" in Mettingen.

The first letters of the founders Clemens and August can also be found in the names of other subsidiaries and products from C&A, such as the asset company CORA, the COFRA-Holding, the Cunda clothing factory (1958–1970), the own brand Canda or the CafeteriA.

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

In 2009, the Brenninkmeijer family founded the “ Draiflessen Collection ”, one of the largest private collections in Europe in Mettingen. The private museum has 800 square meters of exhibition space. The location is on the former site of C&A, which housed the first production and administration after the war. The new buildings were partly planned and rebuilt based on the existing buildings, and the so-called “Haus Overgünne” villa, the former administration building, was rebuilt as an almost complete copy using old components.

In August 2020, the company announced that IKEA manager Giny Boer will take over management of the European business from January 2021.

Companies

C&A has more than 2000 branches in 24 countries and employs more than 900,000 people in production alone. Sales in Europe amounted to 6.59 billion euros in the 2010/2011 financial year. C & A's core market is Germany with 500 houses. In the 2010/2011 financial year, C&A achieved sales of EUR 3.01 billion in Germany. The winning numbers were not published. In 2006, C&A returned to Berlin's Alexanderplatz . It rented a room in the Berolinahaus (built by Peter Behrens in 1932 ). The first German C&A store had been located near Alexanderplatz on Königstrasse since 1911.

structure

On September 1, 1998, a European headquarters was created, into which ten national companies flowed. The companies in Denmark and Great Britain were completely closed in 1999, and a few years later in the USA and Canada. The various national companies were merged in October 2001 under the Cofra Holding AG .

The company is divided into several countries that operate independently. At the end of the 1990s, some technical areas were merged into newly founded companies across countries, such as C&A Buying for purchasing or C&A Services for IT and logistics. In Brussels, the European Executive Board leads the company internationally and plans strategies. The German administration is located in Düsseldorf.

The shareholders' council, which met four times a year in Amsterdam until the founding of Cofra Holding AG , is still called Sneeker Kring , in memory of the Dutch roots.

Central and Eastern Europe are supplied from the two logistics centers in Enns and Nové Mesto nad Váhom . In July 2017, C&A announced that it would close both centers and build a new one in Trnava , Slovakia, which should go into full operation in 2019.

Brands

C&A branch in Kassel
C&A branch in Barcelona
C&A branch near Buenos Aires

The branch portfolio includes so-called family stores , small family stores , kids-women stores and kids stores . C & A's brand portfolio includes over ten own brands (e.g. Yessica, Angelo Litrico, Clockhouse, Westbury, Your Sixth Sense, Canda, Rodeo, BabyClub, Palomino and Here & There) as well as licensed brands such as “Disney” and “The Dome Collection”.

C&A Bank

At the end of 2006, C&A founded a further corporate division in the financial services sector with the subsidiary C&A Money GmbH . The existing C&A branch network in Germany offered C&A Money savings products and installment and overdraft facilities. In cooperation with DA Direkt , car insurance and other property insurance were also offered. The subsidiary, last trading as C&A Bank GmbH , was taken over on September 1, 2013 by Bank11 für Privatkunden und Handel GmbH from Neuss. The Bank11 belongs to the family of Wilh. Werhahn KG . With the takeover, C&A Bank GmbH was renamed Bank11direkt GmbH and the headquarters were relocated to Neuss .

Corporate responsibility

With increasing criticism, C&A reinforced its strategy with regard to its own corporate responsibility . This includes a large number of initiatives for environmental protection and society as well as social and environmental responsibility. The company's CSR strategy also includes the C&A Foundation, which finances a number of social and ecological projects in the countries where the products are manufactured. The aim of this foundation is to promote sustainable development and create better long-term prospects for people in many different countries.

expansion

Since mid-2002, C&A has been expanding with around 120–150 branches per year in Europe.

The Austrian headquarters are in Vienna . The first branch was opened in Wels . The distribution warehouse is in Enns , from which the branches in Central and Eastern Europe were also supplied. In Austria, C&A took over 54 houses of the children's fashion chain Flic Flac from DM in 2004 and converted them into C&A kids stores.

In Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany, C&A took over a large part of the branches of the discounter Marca with 75 stores. In Switzerland, 24 Oviesse branches were bought from the Globus group in March 2005 and turned into C&A branches.

Outside of Europe, the first branch in Mexico opened in Puebla in 1999 . In the summer of 2009 the company withdrew from the Argentine market after twelve years of presence.

In Turkey, after opening the first branch in Istanbul (2007), C&A last operated a total of 26 locations. Despite increasing sales, the group abandoned all of these in the course of 2016. 24 of the branches were handed over to the local dealer DeFacto .

Online shop

The European fashion company opened the first C&A online shop in Germany in September 2008. This brought the range to the mail order business for the first time. The C&A online shop is now one of the 100 online shops with the highest turnover in Germany and was ranked 79th in 2016 with an annual turnover of EUR 77.3 million.

The company also operates its mail order business through online shops for Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and Poland. The online shop in Switzerland started on October 1, 2014. In March 2018, C&A expanded its online offering to include an English-speaking European shop, in which orders can be placed from eleven other countries, including Croatia, Portugal, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece and Sweden.

criticism

Role in National Socialism

During the Nazi era, the company profited from the Aryanization of Jewish property - at least half of 16 properties acquired in Berlin in 1937/1938 came from previous Jewish property - and made use of the labor of slave labor : the slave laborers of the Jewish ghetto in Lodz C&A was the largest private customer in September 1944; a subsidiary of C&A deployed around 60 “Eastern workers” in Germany from 1942 onwards. In addition, senior executives were advertised for membership of the NSDAP , and high-ranking National Socialist politicians were given valuable gifts.

In 2011, the owner family commissioned the economic historian Mark Spoerer to review the company's history, the results of which were published after five years of research.

Working conditions at suppliers

According to research, in 1996 C&A had suppliers manufactured by children who work in their Indian production facilities.

In December 2007, C&A obliged its suppliers not to use any cotton from Uzbekistan for C&A products, as the participation of children in the cotton harvest was widespread in this country.

In September 2010, two Dutch NGOs wrote of "work that is hazardous to health, slave-like working conditions, labor law violations and child labor " in Indian textile factories that produce for C&A, most of which were employed under the Sumangali principle . In the same year, C&A was accused of producing in England under dubious conditions and of using so-called sweat shops .

Committed behavior

The Stiftung Warentest certified C&A in August 2010 in the CSR test of T-shirts "committed" behavior. The textile manufacturer thus performed relatively well as a comparatively inexpensive supplier.

Contaminated clothing

In 2012 Greenpeace had 141 items of clothing from 29 countries tested for the detergent substance NPE , plasticizers and carcinogenic amines , which can only be used to a limited extent in Europe and for industrial purposes . All branded articles contain NPE, which is detached from clothing during washing and broken down in sewage treatment plants into nonylphenols , which are toxic and hormone-active for aquatic organisms , with the highest concentrations being found in C&A clothing in particular. Plasticizers and amines could not be detected in C&A products.

owner

C&A belongs to the Brenninkmeijer family , which in 2007 was one of the richest families in the world with an estimated 25 billion euros.

Martijn Brenninkmeijer heads the European Executive Board C&A Europe.

In January 2013, the company took 20th place in the ranking of the 500 largest family businesses by the German magazine Wirtschaftsblatt .

Before Dominic Brenninkmeijer came to C&A Germany in 2001, little was known to the public about the family company.

According to a report by the news magazine Spiegel in early 2018, the sale of the company will be imminent. The interested parties come from China.

advertising

In the 1930s, the C&A march was used for advertising purposes on the German market.

The yellow dog with the red dots with the name Schnuppi was developed in May 1976 by the designer Jimmy T. Murakami in Ireland. The fashion house advertised with him until the 1990s (“trial prices at C&A”). The Schnupperhund also starred in a series of commercials under the title Schnuppi's Adventure . There were also other promotional items such as cuddly toys and plastic figures.

In the 1990s, C&A caused a sensation with commercials that were backed by songs that were not known until then. This should attract the younger clientele.

literature

  • Gisa Ortwein: Governance in networks in the clothing industry. A structural theoretical consideration using the example of the clothing company C & A. Verlag Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8300-4631-8 .
  • Mark Spoerer : C&A - A family company 1911–1961. CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-69824-8 .
  • Tüötten Museum Mettingen: A museum within a museum. Museum guide . Heimatverein Mettingen e. V. Concept and editor: Bernhard Nonte. Heimatverein, Mettingen 2002, ISBN 3-932959-25-6 .
  • Bettina Weiguny: The mysterious gentlemen from C&A. The rise of the Brenninkmeyers. Unabridged paperback edition. Piper, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-492-24760-3 (with 25 b / w illustrations).

Web links

Commons : C&A  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ C&A homepage. Retrieved June 21, 2017 .
  2. ↑ C&A, press release of April 25, 2012. (PDF; 230 kB) (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 7, 2016 ; Retrieved July 12, 2012 .
  3. ↑ Lexicon entry C&A in the Handelsblatt ; Lexicon entry C&A in Wirtschaftswoche ; both accessed on December 20, 2019.
  4. ↑ Jürgen Hendrichs: C&A comments on the Brilon location. In: WAZ . December 19, 2019, accessed December 20, 2019 .
  5. ↑ C&A apparently wants to close over 100 branches - that's behind it. In: Watson . December 19, 2019, accessed December 20, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Malte Pieper: Closed and worth billions. In: Deutschlandradio . November 15, 2019, accessed January 26, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Beginnings. Retrieved August 12, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Vera Konermann: The Wiehe peasantry is losing its distinctive face ( memento from April 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), in: Ibbenbürener Volkszeitung, July 16, 2005.
  9. ↑ Vera Konermann: Brenninckhof plans are taking shape ( Memento from April 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), in: Ibbenbürener Volkszeitung, August 5, 2006.
  10. ↑ Mark Spoerer: C&A - A family company 1911–1961. CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-69824-8 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  11. ↑ a b c Tödden, collect and show -. Retrieved August 12, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Dr. Stefan Lüddemann: The “little black dress ” and “No. 5 ”: Mettinger“ Draiflessen Collection ”presents the“ Myth of Chanel ” . ( noz.de [accessed on August 14, 2018]).
  13. ↑ The new head of C&A Europe comes from Ikea. Retrieved August 29, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Stefan Weber: C&A is already dusting itself off again. The fashion retailer changes its logo, is looking for younger customers and continues to invest in new houses. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . 21./22. April 2011, p. 20.
  15. ↑ a b “Clothes make the man” , Manager Magazin 10/2007, September 21, 2007, p. 90.
  16. ↑ COFRA Holding AG ( Memento of 21 November 2008 at the Internet Archive ), cofraholding.com.
  17. ↑ Enns: C & A closes logistics center, 215 employees lose jobs in Standard from July 11, 2017, accessed on July 16, 2017.
  18. ↑ money.c-and-a.com  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / money.c-and-a.com  
  19. ↑ kredit-pfadfinder.de
  20. ↑ Goals & Progress C&A Corporate Responsibility. Retrieved November 7, 2014 .
  21. ↑ C&A takes over all Oviesse locations ( Memento of December 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Joint media release Globus Group / C & A of July 16, 2004.
  22. ↑ C&A branch in Puebla ( Memento from June 29, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  23. ↑ C&A withdraws from Turkey TMTextilmachrichten from June 28, 2016, accessed on April 20, 2017.
  24. ↑ EU companies concerned about Erdogan harassment ( memento from April 21, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Deutschlandfunk from April 20, 2017 (mp3 audio contribution) accessed on April 20, 2017.
  25. ↑ Top 100 online shops with the highest turnover in Germany . In: EHI Retail Institute . November 29, 2017 ( ehi.org [accessed August 14, 2018]).
  26. ↑ C&A starts online shop in Switzerland. (PDF) In: Press release C&A. October 1, 2014, accessed November 7, 2014 .
  27. ↑ C&A expands e-Commerce: New online shop for eleven additional countries. In: Press release C&A. 2018, accessed March 23, 2018 .
  28. ↑ Christoph Eisenring: C&A fashion chain - protection money for Nazi greats. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . 23rd September 2016.
  29. ^ Textile discounter C&A: "For leaders, people and fatherland". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. May 13, 2011.
  30. ↑ Mark Spoerer: C&A - A family company 1911–1961. CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-69824-8 .
  31. ↑ Götz Hamann, Uwe Jean Heuser: Maurice Brenninkmeijer - C&A owner: "We are more than a thousand". Interview in Zeit online , July 28, 2016.
  32. ↑ a b active against child labor ( Memento from June 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  33. ^ Marcus Bensmann: Child labor in Uzbekistan. To the cotton field instead of to school. the daily newspaper , January 12, 2010, accessed on August 8, 2013 .
  34. ↑ Retail giants shamed by UK sweatshops (English, as of November 2010)
  35. ↑ Stiftung Warentest: Corporate Responsibility Test for T-Shirts , August 2010 edition, p. 84.
  36. ↑ The toxic scam of fashion brands , Greenpeace Germany, accessed on January 16, 2018.
  37. ↑ Ursula Schwarzer: Clothes make the man. In: Manager Magazin . November 27, 2007. Quote: "... his family with an estimated fortune of more than 25 billion euros is one of the richest in the world"
  38. ↑ C&A Europe: Martijn Brenninkmeijer becomes boss  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.textilwirtschaft.de  
  39. ↑ Top 500 - The largest family businesses in Germany (PDF; 307 kB). In: Wirtschaftsblatt 1/13
  40. ↑ C&A is apparently about to sell to the Chinese. Retrieved January 14, 2018 .
  41. ↑ Schnupperhund-Online-Museum
  42. ↑ Approval for a private trial dog website from C&A Mode KG from October 26, 2004.