THE SITUATION OF THE FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY AND DEVELOPMENTS OF THE SHOE RETAIL MARKETS IN GERMANY AND EUROPE

摘要

Italy is the most important shoe country in Europe-as ever. The structure of the Italian Shoe industry has hardly changed since the last ten years, there are still mainly small and medium sized companies. Within the last 10 years the number of companies shrank from 8,500 to 6,657. The number of employees has been reduced by 28,000 to 94,143 at end of the year 2006. For the small firms additional research- and marketing investments are difficult to make.