Goirle has 56 places, of which 42 publish opening hours, 75 per cent. Of those, 71 per cent open on a Sunday and 33 per cent work past eleven. Some 34 per cent have no online presence.
The closing times here are strikingly late at the end of the week. Midweek the door shuts at two, but on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and the day after a public holiday only at four in the morning. Shops may open on Sunday from seven until ten.
The money here came from textiles, and unlike in most Brabant villages the firm is still there. Van Puijenbroek began in 1865 and has sat at the same address in Goirle since 1888; in 1939 it employed 1,200 people, and in 2015 it received the royal title. The head office is still here, but manufacturing has moved to North Macedonia and Tunisia. What one sees here, then, is a brand without a shop floor.
Beside the village lies the Regte Heide, 538 hectares of protected ground with bronze age barrows along the edge of the plateau. The black grouse was last seen there in 1998.
The municipality is independent, takes in Riel as well and has grown by nearly a third since 1995 to 24,886 residents, of whom 25 per cent are over sixty-five.