From hand-made to mass-produced. Footwear production in Poland in the 20th and 21st centuries

Abstract

The production and trade of footwear has undergone significant changes in the past century. The predominantly manual craft was replaced by mass production. In the Poland, the first machine factories for shoe production were established in the inter-war period by the Czech entrepreneur T. Bata. Expansion and new investments in shoe factories came at the end of the 1950s and beginning of the ‘60s. The production of domestically produced footwear increased until the end of the 1970s. The condition of Polish shoe factories and the shape of the contemporary shoe market was determined by several factors, including the deindustrialisation process visible in this sector, the import to the country of footwear produced in Asian countries, the customs policy pursued, as well as changes in consumer tastes and preferences.