3Go West

C&A’s Motives and Strategies for Expansion From Europe Into the Western Hemisphere, 1945–1962

Mark Spoerer

Introduction1

C&A is today still one of the world’s largest clothing retail chains. The firm was founded in 1841 in the Netherlands by two German nationals, the brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeyer. Since its beginnings, C&A has been exclusively operated and owned by direct descendants of the Brenninkmeijers (as the family name is written in Dutch), now in the sixth generation. In the course of its company history, C&A stood several times at crossroads where it had to decide whether it should expand into a foreign country. The firm took a leap into Germany in 1911, into the United Kingdom in 1922 and into the United ...

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