www.ecco.com.pl

We are delighted to add ECCO Shoes to our list of Foundation members.  ECCO is no stranger to our Foundation having provided special help to our Promise Kids over the past 2 years.  Some may recall that ECCO provided 6,000 pairs of ECCO socks to our Promise Kids for Christmas in 2003.  The Kids were delighted when they learned that the socks were really theirs to keep, and that they could take them home with them.  ECCO has provided shoes for our Promise Kids so many times that is hard to keep count.
 
ECCO is a footwear and accessory company for people who lead active lives and require unique comfort, fit and functionality.  This philosophy has characterized ECCO from its very start more than 40 years ago when Karl Toosbuy founded the company in Denmark in 1963.  To this day, the same philosophy continues to epitomise the future direction of ECCO.
 
ECCO’s staff totals more than 10,000 employees throughout the world, and today ECCO shoes are sold in more than 1,200 ECCO shops, shop-in-shops and/or outlets in more than 10,000 wholesale locations in over 60 countries.  ECCO sells more than 12 million pairs of ladies’, men’s, kid’s and performance shoes each year.  The Toosbuy family still owns ECCO, and Karl Toosbuy’s values are still at the cornerstone of the company’s philosophy.
 
The holding company ECCO Europe East & Middle East Sp. zo.o (EE&ME) was created on January 1, 2005, with its headquarters in Janki near Warsaw.  It consists of 3 companies:  Ecco Shoes Poland, ECCO Shoes Czech and ECCO Shoes Slovakia.  ECCO Eastern Europe & Middle East is acting as the Management center and service provider to markets where ECCO has distributors such as the Baltics, Russia, Ukraine, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Israel, the Middle East and Turkey.
 
Under the leadership of my good friend Peter Mark, ECCO EE&ME is experiencing strong growth with a 34% increase from 2004 to 2005.  We thank ECCO for all it has done for our Foundation in the past, and we look forward to working closely with Peter Mark, CFO Danuta Dabrowska, and all of the ECCO gang in the future.  We are pleased that you will now be able to display our Foundation’s Gold Seal of Approval as a Socially Responsible Company.