C22 A/S Crome & Goldschmidts Hovedudsalg

International post card with perfin “C. & G.” in the stamp. The letter is franked correctly with 10 + 5 øre = 15 øre,  which was the rate for International post card from January 1st 1927 to October 31th 1933. The stamp is cancelled August 1st 1928.

Crome & Goldschmidt was a Danish textile company and a well-known department store.

August Crome and Moritz Goldschmidt opened a partnership for a department store in 1860 in modest premises in Antonigade, Copenhagen. Before that, Goldschmidt had for several years run a positioning company in Horsens, where cords, bores, needles and buttons were manufactured. However, the business went slow. Crome had previously worked as both a tobacco manufacturer and grocer in the same city.

Crome and Goldschmidt, the same year they entered into a partnership, were allowed to make use of the working men in the relatively newly built Horsens Criminal Court. For the first few years, the factory was located within the chambers’ walls, where cotton cloths and accessories such as canvas, needles and buttons were produced. In 1865, part of the production moved to larger and newly built premises on Fabrikvej. On the same occasion, they began to hire paid workers.

Crome and Goldschmidt opened a factory in Ribe in 1881, as well as several chewing-house sales around Denmark and in 1905 the company employed approx. 1,000 people. In 1884, the property between Antonigade, Kristen Bernikows Gade and Østergade was acquired for the department store. In 1927, the company was able to showcase Denmark’s first escalator.

However, the worldwide crisis in the 1920s was severe for the company and in 1930 all employees were laid off. However, the company came back on top for a while, and especially the magazine at Strøget (Østergade 32 / Kristen Bernikows Gade) in Copenhagen became the company’s flagship. The Odense branch was in Vestergade 25 in the 1950s. However, on February 10, 1971, management had to acknowledge that there were too many department stores in Denmark; especially in Copenhagen. The company stopped the sale on March 1 and joined Illum under the name: Illum / Crome & Goldschmidt. Then the name disappeared completely.