Highlighting the importance of shoes, the French fashion designer Roger Vivier said  ‘to wear dreams on one’s feet is to begin to give a reality to one’s dreams.’  Today, besides the normal formals and casuals, footwear finds its use in a range of activities including sports, adventure, occupational safety, defence forces and also in physiotherapy. Thus, footwear symbolizes necessity, comfort, fashion and style. With the consumer base for middle and high-end footwear increasing in India and the per capita consumption expected to rise from present 2 to 4 pairs, we need to improvise at the product level by bringing in new technologies, and also at the productivity level, by upgrading the skills of the workforce. This will help in achieving our objective of providing high quality footwear at competitive prices, both for exports and for domestic market. Design Studios provide the best platform for product improvisation. We need to have world class Design Studios in all major leather clusters to cater to the varied design requirements of our manufacturers. On the productivity front, organizations like LSSC should continue their efforts of up-skilling existing workers and also training unemployed people with updated curriculum.  These initiatives will help in achieving the desired 10% growth levels in both domestic market and on export arena.