Schunck - Peter Schunck and The Glaspaleis (1905)

Peter Schunck and The Glaspaleis (1905)

Although Arnold Schunck was the founder of the firm, his son Peter Schunck (* Hauset, 31 October 1873, † Heerlen 13 July 1960) is regarded as the embodiment of the firm and even of the modernisation of Heerlen in general. When Arnold Schunck died in 1905, his son Peter Schunck took over, although, as before, his mother kept playing an important role and three of his sisters helped out in the business too. The business already had 60 employees and thanks to Peter's sense of business it kept expanding (300 employees in 1950 and 600 in 1960, the year he died), despite two world wars. A much quoted story to illustrate his business sense is that, when he was just a schoolboy, on one morning he sold 25 smocks. Apart from the clothes shop, he also had several other businesses, such as a steam laundry in Valkenburg, a marl and limestone quarry (because of the cement shortages in the war) and a company named the 'Meerssener Kalkwerken' (lime). He was also shareholder and secretary of the insurance company NV Heerlensche Glasverzekering-Maatschappij. Several of the businesses that were not part of the core business were sold after the First World War because they often turned out not to be profitable. (Later, in the 1970s, such diversifications almost caused the family to lose the company.) One company that was not meant to be directly profitable, but which aided the core business was the 'Zuid-Limburgsche Autobus Maatschappij', which by 1908 already owned three buses (on solid wheels), to transport customers for free from surrounding towns and Sittard and Valkenburg to the department store three to four times per day on a schedule, effectively providing Heerlen with its first regional public transportation. These were kept running for half a century. The city would only buy its own two buses in 1923, and then only for the immediate vicinity of the city.

A major boost for the region was the accelerated development of the coal mines when the national government stepped in where private enterprise had failed due to the huge long-term investments that are required for the development of mines. The Dutch government was afraid that the Netherlands would become too dependent on foreign (German) energy sources and bought all still unsold concessions in 1901. This led to the establishment of the State Mines, which caused a fivefold increase of the population of Heerlen in 30 years.

During World War I cloth became scarce and prices soared. Right after the war the market was so unstable that sometimes cloth bought for 12 Dutch gulden per metre had to be sold for only 7 gulden due to much better cloth imported from England. Stocks worth tens of thousands of gulden became worthless. Then, in the 1920s, prices plummeted due to stiff competition from nearby Germany, where the economy had collapsed, so some of that cloth bought at 12 gulden sold for no more than 80 cents. The German Mark had suffered an enormous inflation and was worth only one guilder cent. A suit that cost 70 gulden in Heerlen cost only 17 gulden in nearby Aachen, so people from Heerlen started buying there and local shops started going bankrupt. On top of that, the Belgian Franc also plummeted (although that hit Maastricht harder than Heerlen). As if that wasn't enough, before the war the de facto local currency had not been the Dutch gulden but the German Goldmark, so that's the currency that Schunck had its cash in. When that changed after the war and the mark (now Papiermark, paper mark) became virtually worthless, Schunck's assets were largely gone. But Peter Schunck survived. By the end of the 1920s, the business was profitable again, and very much so, despite competition from V&D and Hollekamp. he started buying houses again, such as a bed and carpet shop in 1929 (later to be owned by his daughter Leonie and renamed first Käller-Schunck and then Hiero).

While the focus of the firm remained clothing for the miners, much attention was also given to the other end of the market, classy clothing. Quality remained a major goal for both, with the house-brand Lion's Quality (in English) and the slogan Kwaliteit wint altijd (Quality always wins). In the 1930s, the workshops were closed and Schunck changed completely to clothes manufactured by others.