What: Peek & Cloppenburg is leaving the Dam in Amsterdam at the end of February 2027, and its group-owned building will be redeveloped into smaller retail units.

Why it is important: A prime tourist location no longer guarantees a viable department store when local customers stay away and the building cannot meet current technical standards.

Peek & Cloppenburg is ending a 110-year presence in Amsterdam, a notable exit for a company founded in Rotterdam in 1869 by German merchants Johann Theodor Peek and Heinrich Cloppenburg. The building is held by the group's property arm, P&C Vastgoed. The retailer called the decision carefully weighed and plans to redeploy the store's staff within the organisation where possible.

The closure is part of a wider overhaul of the Düsseldorf entity, which sought protection from creditors in 2023 and then carried out an extensive restructuring programme. The Almere megastore, opened in 2022, had already closed in 2025 after disappointing results. Of a chain that once counted around 60 Dutch stores, three will remain: Rotterdam's Hoogstraat, The Hague's Wagenstraat, home to the Dutch head office, and Westfield Mall of the Netherlands in Leidschendam.

The Dutch business belongs to the Düsseldorf P&C group, part of JC Switzerland Holding AG alongside Anson's and Danish department store Magasin du Nord. The group operates more than 170 stores in 17 European countries with around 16,000 employees. A separate, fully independent Peek & Cloppenburg has been based in Hamburg since 1911.

IADS Notes: Peek & Cloppenburg's Dutch retreat comes amid a broader reorganisation of the Düsseldorf group, which merged its Düsseldorf and Vienna buying and merchandising organisations into a single group-wide structure from October (Fashion Network, August 2026) and appointed a new Managing Director Finance effective 1 November 2026, the third change in that role in roughly two and a half years (Stores+Shops, September 2026). Within the same group, Magasin du Nord took a different route, closing its Rødovre store when its lease expired while investing DKK 49 million in its Aarhus and Lyngby flagships and growing retail sales by 9% in 2025 (Nordjyske, April 2026). In the Dutch market, De Bijenkorf chose to keep all seven of its stores open while cutting 167 jobs, despite a profitable year (Retail Detail, January 2026). The planned subdivision of the Dam building into smaller retail units echoes Brookfield's project for BHV Marais in Paris, where 60% of the building is to become a hotel and self-contained retail units aimed at international tourists rather than local shoppers (Fashion Network, May 2026).

Peek & Cloppenburg to close its Amsterdam store