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The early years of Con & Verdonck were increasingly
overshadowed by the impending threat of war, and when Holland was
occupied by the Nazis, Mr Con - being of the Jewish faith - was
forced to go underground, and leave the running of the business
entirely in the hands of his partner. Fortunately he managed to
survive that terrible time, and with his return to the company in
1945, Con & Verdonck entered upon its most spectacular era of
success.
The firm's primary objective of establishing a chain
of specialist Oriental carpet stores throughout the main shopping
centres of The Netherlands was soon realised, much to the surprise
of its less ambitious competitors, with nine major outlets eventually
coming to dominate the entire Dutch market. In this way, the two
founders achieved what had previously been regarded as an impossible
dream - Con & Verdonck became as much a household name throughout
Holland as any of the leading department stores, and such familiarity
served to promote Oriental carpets as a necessity of the well-furnished
Dutch interior, rather than the unaffordable luxury they had represented
in the past.
Perhaps even more remarkably, this triumph of brand
marketing was attained without any compromise in the calibre of
merchandise Con & Verdonck brought to the increasingly discerning
Dutch market, with Mr Con in particular exercising a very strict
selection policy over all inventory carried by the stores, with
the traditional values of Oriental carpet excellence always being
promoted above the changing fads and fashions that had begun to
influence the Oriental carpet market elsewhere.
With the commercial success of the retail galleries
came the opportunity to expand into other areas of the hand-knotted
Eastern carpet trade, which was duly accomplished through the acquisition
of an important wholesale entity Diesbergen & Kunstenaar, while
extending deeper into the antique collector field through the incorporation
of the exclusive gallery Kirman.
New marketing approaches were also developed, including
special events tailored specifically for the large Diplomatic community
in Den Haag, and launching of the Projekt Groep - a vehicle designed
to arrange specialist Connoisseur-level exhibitions and promotions
tied to long-term research and acquisition projects that had been
initiated by Mr Con. The Con & Verdonck Special Collections
programme addressed elsewhere in this site was evolved directly
from the Projekt Groep initiative, as being an approach ideally
suited to the requirements of the high-end Dutch market during these
early years of the twenty-first century.
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