BELGIUM: New Management At Euroshoe Plan Future Strategy

Euroshoe, the multinational shoe retailing group based in Belgium, is going through a major reorganisation following last May's decision by the Vanaudenhove family, which owns the company, to get out of its day to day operations and appoint experienced outsiders in key positions.The plan is to improve operations in order to raise the group's profitability and to prepare it for a possible stockmarket introduction at a later stage,The new management is still evaluating the opportunity of selling Euroshoe's French 65 store chain, Multichauss, whose results have been improving in the five years since the Belgian firm acquired from Bata the 50 per cent stake it previously held in the joint venture.Euroshoe also controls Bristol, a highly profitable chain of about 200 shoe shops in Holland, and it services a group of independent retailers with about 400 shoe shops trading in Belgium under the Shoe Post, Avance, Primo, and Shoe Discount banners.Euroshoe's footwear retailing operations have an annual turnover of about 200m French francs ($26m) in France, 6bn Belgian francs ($130m) in Belgium and a similar figure in the Netherlands.