Schunck - Foundation of The Firm By Arnold Schunck (1874)

Foundation of The Firm By Arnold Schunck (1874)

When the German weaver Arnold Schunck (* Kettenis 11 February 1842, † Heerlen, 15 October 1905) and his wife Anna Maria Küppers (* Aachen, 20 January 1843, † 20 November 1930) arrived in Heerlen on 25 August 1874 to set up a textile factory and a cloth and spice shop in the Willemstraat ('op d'r Schramm', later housing a branch of warehouse chain Edah) they had the good fortune that the coal mining industry was on the rise and Arnold realised that those miners needed a constant supply of sturdy clothing. In March of that same year, 1874, there had been some prospecting for coal (by v.d.Slik & Co from Dordrecht) and there were many requests for concessions between 1872 and 1880, so it is quite possible that Arnold had heard of these developments and based his decision to move here partly on the possibility of a rising industry. The mines would, however, only start up around 1900, so Arnold, who died in 1905, never experienced the growth of Heerlen they caused. Still, the business managed to flourish. One important reason for this was that despite Heerlen's small size (around 5000 inhabitants), it functioned as a centre for this largely agricultural region, with several government offices, the postal service, schools and some small industries. But most importantly, the major regional markets were held here, twice a week, at the Church Square, which the surrounding businesses profited from, and it may be that especially this latter fact was another reason the young couple came to set up shop here. Also, Heerlen was already the textile centre of the region.

This first shop consisted of just one large room with rolls of cloth on one side and the herbs on the other side. Arnold, more of an artisan than a businessman, could remain focused on weaving because his wife, Anna Schunck Küppers dealt with the business-side of the shop. She had given up the spice section after just a year. With the little money they had (900 Thaler) they bought a small farm next to a brook (the then still clean Caumerbeek) in nearby Schandelen where Arnold could clean the wool he bought from the sheepfarmers. Apart from three looms for woollen clothing he had a fourth for a sturdy cloth called 'thirty' (used for farmer's clothing and sturdy skirts) . After starting with the aforementioned orphans, Schunck later hired more weavers (first Mosterd and later Merckelbach and Huub Koolen). But due to the success, still later, Schunck started buying cloth (from Aachen and Mönchengladbach) instead of weaving it all himself and ultimately he gave up commercial weaving altogether because a small handweaving business could not compete with the textile industry in Tilburg and Twente. So the planned weaving factory never really came off the ground. Instead, Arnold Schunck switched to clothes manufacturing (for which Eykeboom and Einerhand were hired), including ready-to-wear clothing (a novelty for Heerlen), and continued with the shop. With success, despite stiff competition from eight textile businesses in nearby Aachen, which regularly advertised in the local newspaper 'Limburger Koerier'. So Anna had switched from selling herbs to selling cloth (later aided by the children) and Arnold had switched from weaving to buying cloth and clothes-manufacturing, decisions that proved to be fortunate.