Europe represents now 4% of the worldwide footwear production (2017 data) but has the highest average price worldwide. Europe maintains a tradition of footwear production, and a capital of knowledge throughout its institutions, schools, universities, which allows it to produce the highest quality footwear in the world. Thus, when it comes to the Top 10 most important footwear exporters, 5 European countries are well represented, summing more than 10% of world share exportations. The future of European footwear production is undoubtedly centred in the highest segments of the market, in terms of quality, functionality, design and more and more differentiation.Footwear and leather goods include a variety of product categories: from commodities to specialised products (sports, technical, professional, safety) and finally to luxury products, exclusive and unique, being much more than high quality goods, respond to the most distinctive and capricious niches of market all over the world. In the same way that bespoke exclusive and high-end products such as Rolls Royce and Bentley’s cars, or some of the most traditional Swiss watches are completely handmade rather than assembled in line, high quality, luxury and exclusive footwear is also totally handmade. Consumers from around the world recognise Europe as the reference of luxury footwear manufacturing, which is represented by a limited number of SMEs and micro companies and successful designers with innate entrepreneurship skills (running their own atelier and commercialising their shoes on-line) that both develop and manufacture complete handmade footwear, where every single component is thoroughly studied and becomes special, exclusive, and which average price of 800 Euros/pair is later clearly justified. Such high-end companies have the “savoir faire”, but they cannot find really youngsters or newcomers to whom to transmit their knowledge and skills and who could continue their businesses. They face not only the problem of attracting the young generations to the footwear manufacturing, but also finding candidates with the right skills and competences to produce exclusive and innovative footwear. There is a hidden potential in an increasingly “generation” of new talented designers who have completed VET in the field of Footwear Design in many European countries with footwear industry tradition, very creative and skilled in terms of design but finds a lot of difficulties to materialize their ideas and creations, because they lack the manufacturing skills and means to turn their own ideas into luxury tradable products. Therefore, if Europe wants to maintain, and spread around the continent, its first ranking position in the production of high-end footwear, the industry needs to work on a complementary strategy focused in the differentiation, details, sophistication, exclusivity, and image, which includes a B2C attentive model of marketing and commercialization targeted to such group of consumers. The success of this strategy includes different factors like high quality materials and components, innovative design, but the most important relies on the development of a very target-oriented skills and competences capacity of the manufacturers. A consortium of 6 partners from the most representative countries in terms of Footwear tradition and positioning in the rankings, meeting all necessary competences in the field, assigned this challenge.The whole project was dedicated to maintain and strengthen the high-end footwear production across Europe taking into consideration the specificities of this product category, while promoting the entrepreneurship of new talent designers and the development of a new generation of high-skilled manufacturers, oriented to high-end products in footwear. The project was focused on the creation and development of innovative vocational training ICT and practical based, targeted to a wide range of groups – VET students, new talented designers, footwear workers/technicians, new entrepreneurs in the field of Footwear as a mean to cope with the lack of skills/competences in the field of high-end (luxury) footwear manufacturing in Europe. A wide range of outputs were delivered for the success of the upgrading skills/competences, starting by a deep study on the luxury aspects and the real evidence based training need in this field, evolving to a new profile on technician toward high-end/luxury segment, a programme and a compilation of training contents, a B-learning course which was tested and piloted, as well as diligences for the recognition and validation of the professional certification.All the outputs are available in English and in all languages of the consortium: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Czech.