Brenninkmeijer is a German-Dutch family. Two members of the Brenninkmeyer family founded C&A, an international chain of clothing stores. Today, the family owns the Cofra Holding AG, which in turn controls the C&A fashion business, a private equity company, a real estate fund and two banks. Across their businesses, the Brenninkmeyers employ more than 80,000 people worldwide. A carefully designed rulebook ensures that Brenninkmeyer sons and daughters enter the business in leadership positions at an early age, guaranteeing that the company is fully controlled by the family.
History
In 1841, the brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeyer founded the textile shop C&A, which sold, unusually for that time, ready made clothes. The two brothers, peddlers originally from the small village Mettingen in Westphalia, traveled each year to Friesland to sell their textiles to farmers. In 1861, they stocked their goods in a warehouse in Sneek. This small town in the north of the Netherlands became the location of their first store. A branch was opened in Leeuwarden. In 1906, Clemens' son, Bernard Joseph, started discounting in Amsterdam and by 1910 there were ten stores in the Netherlands. In 1911, the company opened the first German store in Berlin and today there are more than 400 stores in Germany. In 1922, the company started a store in Great Britain. Today C&A and other related companies are located in 16 countries throughout the world. These companies are linked through the COFRA group, based in Zug, Switzerland. The company closed its stores in the United Kingdom and Denmark in 2000. Recently, many new countries have been entered in Eastern Europe and the company has also opened stores in China. More recently, the company has focused its efforts on real estate and financial services. C&A Online launched in Germany in 2008. For a period of time Eastern Mountain Sports, Steinbach, Ohrbach's, Maurices, Miller's Outpost and others were owned through the American Retail Group. In the 1980s and 1990s, they owned the Comark group in Canada, which included Bretton'sdepartment stores, Clark Shoes and Collacut luggage stores. The Canadian operations were sold in 2005 to KarpReilly, LLC of Greenwich, Connecticut.
Fortune
In addition to textile retailer C&A, the Brenninkmeyers own and control several companies in the private equity, real estate and financial services industries.
