Vroom & Dreesmann was the Dutch store for 128 years. Then it vanished overnight.

Vroom & Dreesmann — universally known as V&D — was founded in 1887 by Willem Vroom and Anton Dreesmann, who opened a fabric store on the Rozengracht in Amsterdam. It grew into the Netherlands' best-known department store chain, an institution that generations of Dutch families visited for clothing, home goods, and its La Place restaurant chain. At its peak it operated 64 department stores and employed around 10,000 people.

From the 1990s onward, V&D changed hands several times. In 2004 it was acquired by Maxeda, a private equity group that had previously owned it as part of Vendex KBB. Under Maxeda, V&D's real estate was sold and leased back — generating short-term cash but locking the chain into long-term rental agreements at market rates. Meanwhile, V&D was slow to develop an online channel; by the time it launched a webshop, Dutch consumers had already shifted to Bol.com, Wehkamp and Zalando for their shopping.

The 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent years of cautious consumer spending squeezed V&D's margins further. The chain tried to reposition itself as a mid-market family department store, but it faced relentless competition from discounters like H&M and Primark on one side and specialist retailers on the other. The rental costs from the sale-and-leaseback deals became unsustainable as foot traffic declined.

On 31 December 2015 — after months of searching for a buyer or investor — V&D was declared bankrupt by the Amsterdam court. All 64 stores closed immediately. Approximately 10,000 employees lost their jobs days before the new year. The La Place restaurant chain was sold to supermarket group Jumbo. The V&D name was later revived as an online-only store by new owners, but the physical chain that had anchored Dutch shopping streets for 128 years was gone.