Due to the aftermath of the First World War, the Dutch economy was struggling in the 1920s. The Brabant shoe industry also faced some difficult years. The German shoe industry had accelerated mechanisation during and after the war years. Cheap imports flooded the Dutch market.

Employment in the shoe industry was under such pressure that the Dutch government introduced a protective measure in 1923: The ‘Emergency Regulation on Footwear Imports 1923’. This law, commonly known as ‘the shoe law’, restricted the import of foreign shoes and protected the domestic industry.

(Image below: The shoe act, ‘by which the minister can take immediate action against the growing abnormal German competition, which supplies below cost price’, was passed. Article from the Dutch newspaper ‘De standaard’ 1923.)

This intervention offered the Dutch shoe industry some relief to modernise and grow rapidly. In the 1920s, Van Bommel grew from 37 employees to 57, switched from a piston engine as central power source to a more powerful diesel engine in 1922 and doubled the factory floor space in 1925.

(Image above: A photo of the Roman Catholic Union of Shoe Manufacturers in 1925. In the second row between the 6th and 7th person in the front row is Janus van Bommel, 6th generation director of Schoenfabriek van Bommel.)