The Winkel van Sinkel

Anton Sinkel arrived in Utrecht in 1839 with a bold idea. He was part of a wave of German merchants who crossed into the Netherlands and quietly changed how Dutch people shopped. The founders of C&A and Peek & Cloppenburg were part of that same crowd. Sinkel, though, went bigger.

The building in front of you on the Oudegracht was his flagship store, and it was unlike anything Utrecht had seen. You could walk in and buy almost everything under one roof: fabric, hats, food, medicine. Some historians consider it the first true department store in the Netherlands. The concept was simple and brilliant: buy in bulk, sell at scale, undercut everyone else.

The store closed its doors in 1912, but what kept it alive in Dutch memory was the advertising jingle Sinkel used to pull in customers:

"In the Winkel van Sinkel is everything for sale. There one can get: baskets of figs, boxes of pomade, bottles of orgeade, hats and caps and ladies' corsets, licorice for snoozing and pills for pooping."