C&A
From Free net encyclopedia
- C&A is also an abbreviation for the Camden and Amboy Railroad.
C & A is an international chain of clothing stores, with its head office in Brussels. It has branches in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. Its brands include Clockhouse, Westbury and Your Sixth Sense. The company was founded by the German brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeyer in 1841 in the Netherlands as a textile company, taking its name from their initials.
For many years C&A stores were also a standard fixture of high streets in the United Kingdom. However, the company's strategy of selling budget clothes from high-rent city centre stores made it vulnerable to a new breed of competitors operating in cheaper, out-of-town locations; these included Matalan and the rapidly expanding clothing operations of supermarket chains such as Tesco and ASDA. In 2000, C&A announced its intention to withdraw from the British market; the last UK stores closed in 2001. The company faces similar problems in mainland Europe, and has recently tried to reinvent itself, by improving the quality and hence cost of its clothing in attempt to rid itself of its low-budget image.