Assignment 5 (200 Points – Due Wed 3/25/2015 – Individual Assignment) In this assignment you will use clean structured design to solve a problem that is normally considered to be very difficult, and find that it is in fact surprisingly easy. Look before you leap: think about how your program is going to be organized, don’t just start typing. A rational design will give you a working program quite easily; an unplanned design will not. You need to make sure that your program will flow smoothly and your functions are designed with the right parameters and appropriate data types (you should put very little in main(). You can implement this assignment under any platform but make sure it works under Unix. In other words, don’t use any operation systems (Windows or OSX) specific libraries). This a l s o means that no graphical operations will be available, only plain text. The assignment is to create a nicely formatted calendar for any month of any year. 1. Length of a Month Design a function that takes two parameters: year and month, and returns an integer indicating how many days long that month is. January 2009 was 31 days long, February 2009 was 28 days long, February 2008 was 29 days long, and so on. Remember that for February, leap years must be taken into account. For this first part, we are only interested in the 21st century. Between the years 2000 and 2099 the leap year rule is very simple: a year is a leap year if it is divisible by four. Incorporate your function into a simple program that allows you to test it conveniently, and then test it conveniently. Each stage of this lab assignment depends on the previous stage, so you won’t do any good by going ahead with an incorrect function. 2. Day of the Year. Design a function that takes three parameters: year, month, and day, and returns an integer indicating which day of the year that date is. For example, the 1st of January is day 1 of the year, the 2nd of January is day 2, the 1st of February is day 32, and so on. Incorporate your function into a simple program that allows you to test it conveniently, and then test it thoroughly. 3. Day of the Century. Now make a function that tells you what day of the century it is. Forget about foolish arguments about whether the century starts in 2000 or 2001. If you take 1st January 2000 as day 1, everything works out nicely. So 31st December 2000 was day 366, and 1st January 2001 was day 367, and so on. You still only need to be concerned with this century, 2000 to 2099. 4. Day of Forever. You knew this part was coming. Now we want a function that again takes three parameters, representing year, month, and day, but this time, the year could be any positive number. This raises two issues: where to start counting (i.e. what date shall we choose to be day number 1?), and how to handle leap years. Although pedantic folk will argue that there is no such thing as the year 0, pret ...

1. Assignment 5
(200 Points – Due Wed 3/25/2015 – Individual Assignment)
In this assignment you will use clean structured design to solve
a
problem that is normally considered to be very difficult, and
find that it is
in fact surprisingly easy. Look before you leap: think about how
your
program is going to be organized, don’t just start typing. A
rational design
will give you a working program quite easily; an unplanned
design will not.
You need to make sure that your program will flow smoothly
and your
functions are designed with the right parameters and appropriate
data types
(you should put very little in main(). You can implement this
assignment under
any platform but make sure it works under Unix. In other words,
don’t use
any operation systems (Windows or OSX) specific libraries).
This
a l s o means that no graphical operations will be available,
only plain text.
The assignment is to create a nicely formatted calendar for any
month of any year.

2. 1. Length of a Month
Design a function that takes two parameters: year and month,
and returns an
integer indicating how many days long that month is. January
2009 was 31 days long,
February 2009 was 28 days long, February 2008 was 29 days
long, and so on.
Remember that for February, leap years must be taken into
account.
For this first part, we are only interested in the 21st century.
Between the years
2000 and 2099 the leap year rule is very simple: a year is a leap
year if it is divisible
by four.
Incorporate your function into a simple program that allows you
to test it
conveniently, and then test it conveniently. Each stage of this
lab assignment depends
on the previous stage, so you won’t do any good by going ahead
with an incorrect
function.
2. Day of the Year.
Design a function that takes three parameters: year, month, and
day, and returns
an integer indicating which day of the year that date is. For
example, the 1st of
January is day 1 of the year, the 2nd of January is day 2, the 1st
of February is day 32,
and so on.

3. Incorporate your function into a simple program that allows you
to test it
conveniently, and then test it thoroughly.
3. Day of the Century.
Now make a function that tells you what day of the century it is.
Forget about
foolish arguments about whether the century starts in 2000 or
2001. If you take 1st
January 2000 as day 1, everything works out nicely. So 31st
December 2000 was day
366, and 1st January 2001 was day 367, and so on. You still
only need to be
concerned with this century, 2000 to 2099.
4. Day of Forever.
You knew this part was coming. Now we want a function that
again takes three
parameters, representing year, month, and day, but this time, the
year could be any
positive number. This raises two issues: where to start counting
(i.e. what date shall
we choose to be day number 1?), and how to handle leap years.
Although pedantic folk will argue that there is no such thing as
the year 0,
pretending that there was makes for a very simple solution. Day
1 will be 1st January

4. of the year 0 regardless of whether or not that date ever existed.
It makes the counting
easy.
The true rules for leap years are slightly more complex than just
divisibility by
four. The exact rules are given on the last page if you don’t
already know them, but in
summary:
Any year that is divisible by 400 is a leap year,
any other year that is divisible by 100 is not a leap year,
any other year that is divisible by 4 is a leap year, and
any other year is not a leap year.
Here are some pre-calculated samples to help with testing:
1st January 2000 was day number 730486
4th July 1776 was day number 648857
2nd, 3rd, and 4th of October 2012 are days 735144, 735145, and
735146
27th November 2737 will be the millionth day
1st January of the year 10 A.D. was day 3654
Give some serious thought to testing. If you are getting the
wrong number for a date,
try some very close dates, and you are likely to spot a pattern in
the error that will
give you a big clue about where your program may be wrong.
5. Day of the Week.
Now make a function that takes year, month, and day as
parameters, and tells you
what day of the week that date was. In some strange and wild
countries, such as

5. Czechoslovakia, the week starts on a Monday. We’ll keep them
happy. Make your
function return the answer as an int, using 0 for Monday, 1 for
Tuesday, ..., and 6 for
Sunday. This is very easy if you think of the modulo %
operator and remember how
many days there are in a week. Also, make it flexible so that
you could start the
calendar on any day and you could then sell it in any strange
and wild countries.
6. A Calendar for a Month.
Use that function in a program that allows the user to enter two
integers,
representing year and month, and then prints a correctly
formatted calendar for that
day and month. Like this, which would come from an input of
2014 2:
Mo
Tu
We
Th
Fr
Sa
Su

6. 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

7. continued...
You certainly know how to print out a list of numbers starting
from 1. To make those
numbers come out looking like a calendar, you need to work out
how many spaces to
print before the “1”, and how to tell when it is time to start a
new line. You also need
to take a little care to get the alignment of one and two digit
numbers right.
7. A solid Product.
Make sure that your calendar works for any year, not just in the
21st Century.
8. For A Little Extra Credit.
Write a function that works out how many sundays any given
year has.
9. For Extra Credit Only.
Transfer your program to a Windows o r a M a c O S X
computer, and convert it
to use the graphics library, so that the calendar displayed will
look even nicer.

8. Only For Reference:
Rules for Leap Years
Under the Gregorian calendar system, which is what we use
now, the rules for
working out whether a particular year is a leap year or not are
If the year number is divisible by 4, it is normally a leap year,
except that if it is divisible by 100, it is not a leap year after all,
except that if it is divisible by 400, it really is a leap year again.
So, the years...
1600, 2000, 2400, 2800 are leap years
1800, 1900, 2100, 2200 are just ordinary years
1904, 1908, 2004, 2008 are leap years
1901, 1999, 2001, 2009 are ordinary years.
The Gregorian calendar was only introduced in the English-
speaking world and all
the British colonies on 14th September 1752. Before that, the
Julian calendar had been
in use since roman times. Under the Julian calendar, a leap year
is simply any year
whose number is divisible by 4. The major European countries
had switched to the
Gregorian calendar in 1582, so there was a long period of
international confusion.
Florida was a Spanish colony until 1763, British from 1763 to

9. 1784, Spanish
again from 1784 to 1810, independent from 1810 to 1811, then
Spanish again, until it
was finally taken over by the United States in 1821. There isn’t
much to be gained by
trying to take all of those changes into account. Throughout the
United States, the
date for the change is taken to have been 14th September 1752
even in places where it
wasn’t really.
1752 was a very confusing and tempestuous year. All of a
sudden 11 leap years
that had contributed an extra 29th of February didn’t count as
leap years any more,
and those 11 days had to be given back. The chosen solution
was that the 3rd to 13th
days of September just didn’t happen that year. This is the
correct calendar for the
period:
August
1752
September
1752
October
1752
Su
Mo
Tu
We

10. Th
Fr
Sa
Su
Mo
Tu
We
Th
Fr
Sa
Su
Mo
Tu
We
Th
Fr
Sa
1
1
2
14
15
16
1
2
3
4

11. 5
6
7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
24
25
26

12. 27
28
29
30
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
23

13. 24
25
26
27
28
29
29
30
31
30
31

14. You do not need to make your calendar program take account of
the Julian period in
any way. Just pretend that the current system has always been in
place.
History of the company
"These are not football boots, they are golden slippers”: so
spoke the famous soccer player John Charles, referring to a pair
of football shoes as comfortable as slippers. The shoes at issue
were produced by an Italian company which still today is
synonym of high quality, passion, attention for the details and
above all made in Italy: Calzaturificio Lazzarini, today
worldwide known as Pantofola d’Oro, the Italian translation for
golden slippers.
The history of this pillar of the Italian shoe industry dates back
to the year 1886, when the family Lazzarini established the
new-born factory in the little town of Ascoli Piceno in the
middle of Italy. Anyway it was not until the half of the last
century, that the company became the colossal that is nowadays.
In fact it was in the 50s that the soul of Pantofola d’Oro,
Emidio Lazzarini, inherited his father business, who in turn had
took over Emidio’s grandfather, the business founder.
Emidio managed to give new life to the company production
from a personal necessity. He was a wrestler and he wanted to
design and realize a pair of shoes which could enable him to
feel more comfortable and to have better performances. As a

15. result he created a more enveloping, softer and suitable shoe,
which soon became the reference product in the branch of sport
footwear, especially for soccer player. Since that moment on
many football stars have worn Pantofola d’Oro such as Rivera,
Falcão, Van Basten and Lev Yashin.
However this golden period came to an end in the 90’s, when
things started to get worse for Pantofola d’Oro, due to the
cutthroat competition dictated by the multinational competitors
in the sector. So in 2001, to revamp the production processes of
the company and to reestablished the key role of Pantofola
d’Oro in the market, CEO Kim Williams together with chairman
Massimo Ubaldi decided to invest also in leisurewear and in
shoes suitable for other sports such as rugby or cycling,
obtaining an extraordinary success which allowed the company
to reinvest in the soccer segment too. Moreover with this new
product line Pantofola d’Oro set foot into the fashion industry,
always focusing on high quality standard and handcrafted
processes, signing also the shoes worn by Spiderman in his last
movie.
With a turnover of about 12,7 million dollars in 2011, a
stabilized presence in 40 lands and a growth rate of 30-40%
every year, Pantofola d’Oro can be properly considered a solid
Italian company, which has been able to export its high
qualified products and the peculiarities of Made in Italy beyond
the national limits.
International operations
With the new millennium, Pantofola d’Oro has begun to extend
its operating range overseas. After having served the European
markets for more than a century, the Italian company has
decided to conquer the customers in North America as well as in
the Far East. The main overseas partners are the Usa, Korea and
China, where important collaborations and agreements with big
local partners have been made; while in the Eurozone Pantofola
d’Oro has great contacts with Spain, Germany and also Great
Britain, where last October took place a huge manifestation in
Carnaby Street to promote the typical Ascoli Piceno goods,

16. including also Pantofola d’Oro products.
Milestone 3.2
Introduction
It is exciting getting another pair of boots you knows have been
hand tailored in the same manner their inventors have been
doing it for more than 100 years, this boot is assembled around
legacy with a touch of class to include. Not just have these
boots been high quality in the same way the organization has
made them since 1886, additionally they have the same
ergonomic structure, making them an ageless fantastic.
Pantofola d’Oro
Pantofola d'Oro is an Italian organization whose legacy goes
back to 1886 when the old Lazzarini shoemaker's shop was
established in Ascoli Piceno, Italy. It was amid the 50's when
Emidio Lazzarini approached club group Ascoli to make their
group soccer spikes. Within a short span, the shoe industry
made strides. They were prestigious for their excellent non-
abrasiveness, whilst giving remarkable ball control. Emidio
Lazzarini's mystery lay in the delicate calf-calfskin he utilized
and the boot's ergonomic structure, which splendidly taken after
the shapes of the foot. Players, for example, Puskas, Sven
Erikkson and Roger are only a percentage of the players who
have worn the brand over the past half century.
Breaking In/Comfort
From their cases, these boots are simply darn right exceptional.
From their novel classic look to the scent of high quality
calfskin, you just about feel like you are entering a different
time. At your feet, they simply feel right. A standout amongst
the most astonishing parts of the boot is the sole plate. It looks
so inflexible and insipid, yet it has awesome adaptability in
recently the right places. Frankly, many people find that the
sole plate on the Lazzarini Canguro beats a number of the huge

17. names available.
In general, what an extraordinary boot these are right from the
earliest starting point. I did not discover any problem areas and
was completely fulfilled by the solace they provided all through
testing.
Built with Style
Despite the fact that many individuals have affection the old
school style of the Lazzarini, they are not so much going to be
that simple. The general style of the boot is very distinctive to
all else available and does exclude any extravagant additional
items like those that you will see on new discharges. The upper
is just one bit of calfskin that has been hand sewed to an
extremely fundamental looking soleplate. On the off chance that
you like fancy shading combos and forefront innovation, these
boots will not be for you.
Added Detailing
Two vital bits of subtle element are eminent. On the external
side of the boot, you will discover the Pantofola mark stamp
that tells you the boots are genuine. You can tell that this was
hand pressed on, as not the majority of the letters are fresh.
Besides, in the event that you detest putting new bands in your
boots, you will not have that issue with these! Every gap
contains a metal piece that makes it super simple to guide every
ribbon into the spot. This is a better bit of enumerating extra
that you without a doubt will not discover on any present day
boots.
Performance
At the point when on the field and in real life, these boots rank
with the best. Regarding touch and control, you are going to
have no designations. Despite the fact that the K-calfskin is not
super thin, regardless you get a decent vibe for the ball on your
foot and simply enough insurance to take into consideration
sweet hits of the ball with aggregate solace. Underneath the

18. tongue, Pantofola utilize a layer of suede as cushioning between
the tongue and your foot. An exceptionally welcome expansion
fills an extremely legitimate need. The major issue comes
during the rainy seasons. These types of shoes can sometime
take in water. In the wake of abandoning them in a shady range
outside with the daily paper stuffed in them, despite everything
they feel heavier than they at first were. This is sure to happen
with most calfskin boots, yet many do not feel like it has been
this most recognizable some time recently. Sturdiness could be
an issue with these boots.
Negatives
The primary concern spins around the above highlighted issue
toughness of the upper. It appears as they truly drench in water
and consequently you may perceive a portion of the calfskin
marginally wearing. For those of you that may solicit, the
joining of the upper and soleplate won't be an issue and it is in
place, importance the boots are not going to go to pieces. One
other negative, on the off chance that you choose to wear white
socks with these you will think twice about it a short time later
as the shading in the calfskin drains.
Conclusion
Everything about this boot is justified, despite all the trouble,
particularly the old school feel you get while wearing them.
They simply overflow class and offer incredible execution on
the field. In the event that you need my recommendation, I say
verify your claim a couple at any rate once in your vocation.
You are going to need to pay a high cost to get a couple from
Europe, so unless you have cash blazing an entire in your
pocket, take a risk and clutch the trust that Pantofola bring
some of their boots to the US in the not so distant future.
Milestone 3.3
There are many brands that manufacture and sell soccer shoes
on an international scale now a days. Among the brands elected
by consumers as the best soccer shoes on fans websites are:
Nike, Adidas, Mizuno Diadora, Under Armour, Warrior, Lotto

19. and Ryal. Those are the main direct competitors of Pantofola
d’Oro. Regarding indirect competitors we also find national and
local brands, lower quality and lower price brand.
Pantofola d’Oro is a very traditional brand, still making
handcrafted shoes with high quality and luxury. The brand has a
reputation for excellence and focus on high-end clientele that is
willing to pay a higher price in exchange of that quality and
luxury. Also, Pantofola is well-known for shoe’s flexibility and
capacity to adapt to each foot. So quality, fashion design,
flexibility and brand reputation are the main strengths of the
company. On the other side, the main weaknesses are the fact
that, because the brand makes handcrafted classical shoes, it
does not use new technologies and synthetic materials that make
the shoes lighter, like carbon fiber. One of the main critics of
the customers is the fact that the soccer shoes cannot be used in
the rain since they get too heavy. Another critic is that the
colors of the leader come out in the socks. (I wanted to put that
last phrase in a better way but I didn’t know how – if anyone
knows please correct it!)
Pantofola recently entered in the American market at the end of
2012, but it main market is still Europe and, mainly, Italy. The
prices in American dollars vary from $60 to $120 on the official
online store. Lotto for example, sells good quality soccer
footwear for a lower price ($20- $75), as well as Mizuno.
The company has three partners that are helping the growth
abroad: Safe Way s.r.l for technological and accident prevention
development; Calzaturificio Time that develops specific shoes
for children and Officina for the design of leisure time
footwear.
The main challenges faced by Pantofola are expanding the
market for kid’s soccer shoes, where it
needs to predict the best country and region to make that
expansion, find a buyer o distributor of the shoes in those
markets that contributes to maintain the brand’s reputation and
provides good feedback about distribution, sales and critics.
Another challenge that Pantofola faces is dealing with

20. technological
solutions for shoes, in other to make them better for its
customers. (for example, using carbon fiber or near field
communication technology).
The principal threat that Pantofola faces when trying to expand
its market share to other countries comes from the direct
competitors, specially Nike and Adidas, that together have near
65% of soccer equipment worldwide market share. Nike
recorded soccer-related sales of $2.3 billion in 2014, whereas
Adidas reported $2.7 billion in revenue on the same period. To
defend that business, both
companies spend many millions of dollars sponsoring teams and
individual players, as well as on advertisement. The equity that
those companies already have and the reputation and customer
loyalty are huge barriers for Pantofola.
Adidas and Nike good reputation and high sales around the
world, especially North American and Latin America (but also
Europe) represent their main strength; together with the fact
that they research, develop and use the newest technology
possible to make their soccer shoes (which is really appreciated
by the clientele) and, as they have many fabrics they can
produce a lot of shoes in a short period and boost their sales.
Those brand also have many famous sponsors around the world.
One weakness would be the fact that those brands are not as
traditional as Pantofola (Nike was created in 1964 and Adidas
in 1924). Pantofola is consider a more luxury and exclusive
shoe since it is handcrafted and sold in a smaller scale.
MILESTONE 4
Identify market success factors
4a Taking into consideration the Pantofola d'Oro necessity of
growth, the most important elements to highlight in the field of
geography and demography are the size of a country and its

21. market as well as the age distribution.
Country and market size
It should be elected a country or a region with a high population
density so that the number of potential customers is quite
substantial and significant. The more possible future consumers
there is, the most probability of success the firm has. So even if
the country size can be a good indicator of the market size, it’s
more important to consider the vastness and the growth rate of
the market itself, because maybe a little region can be more
profitable and attractive than a bigger one.
Age distribution
It’s essential to evaluate the age distribution. Pantofola d’Oro’s
next challenge consists in the development of a product range
suitable for children and teenagers who play football. So it’s
important to get into a market with a population mainly
composed by young people (approximately between 5-15 years
old) and by parents who pay attention to their children
activities. Moreover in a future perspective it can be positive to
select a market with a high birth rate.
4d Cultural environment factors are fundamental to understand
the possibility of success that an organization can have in a
particular market. For Pantofola d’Oro the main points to take
into consideration in this field are three:
Class structure
Every society in every country is composed by social classes
whether they are explicit or not. The belonging to a particular
class is given by different constituents such as wealth, by
personal assets and incomes, power, which corresponds to the
capacity of exerting influence on other people’s decisions, and
prestige or social status, given by a mix of educational level,

22. working environment and origins of the person. The picture
aside shows a common separation of a society in terms of social
class. Now, taking into consideration the high product quality
and the price (between 107-160$) of Pantofola d’Oro products,
the company should concentrate its efforts on a market with a
middle class (both upper and lower) really interested in
sneakers and professional sport shoes.
Customer preferences and tastes
Potential customers of Pantofola d’Oro shoes has to have well
defined tastes and preferences which above all appreciate and
appraise three elements: Made in Italy, high quality standard
and the guarantee of a great product, because these are the
characteristically attributes of the product. In fact shoes are
completely produced in Italy following not only an artisanal
production process but also the rules of style and fashion so that
we can definitely speak about made in Italy and not about
Italian made. Moreover the materials used to sew these shoes,
such as leather and canvas, are of a very high quality, which
justifies the price of the final products. Finally the history of
the brand itself is an end user guarantee, as this company has
been operating since 1886 collecting success after success.
Interest of customers towards sport
Pantofola d’Oro was born as a firm mainly focused on the
production of football shoes but since the 80’s it has been
starting widening its perspective producing shoes for other
sports such as rugby and cycling to find new market
opportunities. Therefore another important market factor is
composed by how much people practice these kinds of sport and
how much are they interested in wearing very comfortable shoes
to improve their performance.
Milestone 4

23. Introduction
PESTLE analysis is used as a tool by the companies before
starting business in new country and to track the environment of
that country. PESTLE is the mnemonics in which denote P for
political, E for economics, S for social, T for technology, L for
legal and E for environment.
Economics Environment factors:
These factors show the economic performance of the country
and have a direct impact on the company. For example increase
in inflation rate of any economy would affect the pricing
strategy of product and services of a company. In addition also
affect the purchasing power of the consumer due to which
demand and supply also affected. There are following economic
factors discuss below:
Income level:
income level has a direct impact on any business the purchasing
power of an individual depend on his/her income if income of
an individual is high he can buy more.When income level falls,
it decreases the demand of the product and services and at the
result of this company sales and profit also decrease
Unemployment :
if unemployment rate in any country is high, that’s mean
business can obtained labor at cheaper price, if unemployment
rate is too high, than consumer spending less which shows the
insufficient sale of the company which is not good. And when
unemployment rate is low, it may cause the expansive labor, on
the other hand the benefit of lower unemployment rate, rise in
consumption of goods and services. When people have job they
have money to consume more products and services.
Infrastructure development: Infrastructure is an important
variable for judging the countries, regions and states
development. Infrastructure is basically the physical and
organization structure needed for the operations of enterprise.
Ease of doing business:
Always invest in that market where less trade barriers and
promote the foreign direct investment. Company can invest in

24. foreign market by two ways, Acquisition and Greenfield.
Always invest in that country in which inflation rate is low, tax
charges should be less.
TEAM GERMANY
Germany
Germany can certainly represent an important key end market
for Pantofola d’Oro due to different factors which identify this
country as a great commercial partner for Italian companies and
especially for our client organization.
Geographic and Demographic factors
If we compare Germany to other nations all over the world it
can be easily observed that this country is relatively small with
a surface area of about 357127 sq.km. However it’s population
density is pretty high (229,2 people per sq.km). So even if the
size of the country is quite small, it’s high density population is
a positive indicator to start analyzing the German market.
Another important element to take into consideration is clearly
the age distribution, since the organization is focusing its
attention on a future market where children and teenager
football shoes can be profitable. In Germany young people
between 0-24 years, constitute a consistent part of the
population, even if not the biggest, as shown in the diagram
below.
Moreover the country is quite close to Italy and this can be
evaluate as a positive factor in terms of logistic, transportation
and commercial exchanges.
Economic Environment Factors
Even though the deep economic crisis which since 2007 has
been upsetting the whole world, including the European Union,
Germany has turned out to be the EU member which has
managed to face this dark period in the most efficient way. In

25. fact Germany occupies the 4th position in the world’s largest
economies and it’s the leader country in the Eurozone. Its
economy is supported by well-developed infrastructures as well
as continuous investments in constructions and a low
unemployment rate (6,5%). Moreover the private consumption
in 2013 reached the amazing value of 1.6 trillion (triple if
compared to the data of 2000) and the income level is about 30
721$ per capita per year. Those are all significant data which
support the thesis that Germany can be a very profitable market.
Furthermore German is the first Italian commercial partner both
in the fields of export and import, with a bilateral commercial
value estimated at more than 91$ billion. Finally, Germany and
Italy share the same currency.
Political and legal environment factors
The German political economy is associated with the word
austerity, since it has imposed some strict rules to follow on the
nations of the EU in order to get out of the crisis and restore the
public debt. However, Germany doesn’t impose any specific
restriction to commerce or investments in general and it’s also
appreciated for its political stability. Probably in this field the
principal thing to highlight is called “Italian Sounding
Association”, born last February to protect the made in Italy
products against products which look like made in Italy ones
but they are not. In fact in Germany many products are
advertised with Italian words or using the color of the Italian
flag trying to dupe consumers. So in order to avoid any
misunderstanding the association is involved in distinguishing
really made in Italy products from fake ones.
Cultural environment factors
As said before, Germany is a wealthy nation with a fairly high
income level. However there’s a problem related to this issue
known as unequal distribution of wealth among different social
classes as well as among different geographic region. On the
one hand there’s a great difference between wealthy family and
poor family which continues to increase, on the other end East
German regions are poorer than South and West German areas.

26. However in general Germany is a nation where people live well
and where the poverty rate is lower than in any other EU
country.
Taking into account the preferences and tastes of customers it’s
possible to claim that German customers show a clear
preference to Made in Italy products and a significant sign of
this approach is given by the newborn “Italian Sounding
Association”. In fact even if over the last months there has been
a stop to the Italian export, according to the data of 2007
Germany was the made in Italy shoes’ first buyer with 44
million shoes bought.
For what concern football and Germany, this is a tradition as
well entrenched as in Italy, even more emphasized by the last
World Cup, won actually by the German team. German people
loves soccer and playing soccer, in fact more than 6.5 million
people (8% of the whole population) play football regularly and
take part in one of the 27000 existing football clubs all over the
country.
Conclusion
The Italian textiles and clothing sector has improved its export
performance towards German of (is it the correct preposition?)
4,1% over the last year and so Pantofola d’Oro could find good
growth opportunity in this land too. However the German
market displays a very high level of competitiveness and in
order to have success, it’s essential to introduce highly
qualitative products, which can be easily recognized from all
other competitive items, and to manage to detract market share
from competitors.
· There are a few big competitors in the German soccer market.
Specifically, Puma and Adidas. In the beginning, two German
brothers were creating one company when they split off and one
create Adidas while the other Puma. Both of these companies
are huge competitors in every market, especially such a big
soccer country like Germany. Germany’s leading scorer on the
2014 World Cup Champion Team, Thomas Muller, scored his

27. goals wearing Adida’s F50 Adziero. Nike is attempting to make
a move on Adidas in international soccer markets, however
Adidas has a strong hold. Adidas outfitted the World Cup
champion, and star Lionel Messi.
· http://www.thestreet.com/story/12736727/1/adidas-looks-to-
beat-nike-for-soccer-dominance-in-2014-world-cup.html