C&A was set up in Sneek in 1841 by the brothers Clemens & August Brenninkmeijer, but the real breakthrough that led to almost a century of success took place in Amsterdam 65 years later…

In 1906 Clemens’s son, Bernard Joseph, discovered a surefire way to make net profits snowball. The underlying Opportunity Cost and Contribution dollars system was kept so secret, that it was eventually forgotten. Today C&A has largely returned to the less profitable pre-1906 system of planning, pricing ...