CCC is Poland’s largest footwear retailer, with a market share of about 20 per cent. It operates 1,160 outlets, with its network stretching across several European countries, including Germany, Russia, Austria and Hungary. The chain employs more than 12,000 people and sells nearly 40 million pairs of shoes a year.

But an oversupply of cheap, imported Chinese shoes has created something of a crisis in Poland's footwear industry. The country's manufacturers cannot compete with the significantly lower-priced Chinese shoes that are swamping the market. Although many consumers profess a distinct preference for Polish products, the sizeable price differential often all but obliges them to purchase far cheaper China-sourced alternatives.

A manufacturer of high-quality children's shoes shut its doors last month after 20 years of being in the business. Despite the disappearance of many domestic footwear manufacturers, a fair number of their associated brands have maintained a presence on the high street. This new lease of life granted them is largely down to a number of the country's major chain-store operators, including CCC, acquiring the rights to these discontinued brands and either switching production to one of the few remaining domestic footwear manufacturers or, more usually, outsourcing production to third-party operations in China.