This communiqué to the C&A management announces the key needed to decode calculated prices on clothing labels. This key is strictly confidential (“Streng vertraulich!”) and only valid until further notice. In the method used, each number from zero to nine is replaced by a letter of the alphabet. This enables figures of any size to be encoded as combinations of letters. From interviews with former C&A employees, we know that this technique was also applied orally, e.g. when giving sales figures over the telephone. The Tüötten – Westphalian itinerant traders from whose business tradition C&A emerged – had themselves used ciphers, along with a secret language called Humpisch or Bargunsch. An internal account of the history of C&A, completed in 1974, describes various Tüötten means of encryption. These included replacing numbers with specific letters or secret signs, in order to encode purchase prices and balance-sheet totals.