Retail Beyond Borders: How Bata Shoes Unlocked Frontier Markets | BoF CROSSROADS 2025

Bata, the Swiss-based multinational footwear manufacturer and retailer founded in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (modern-day Czech Republic), has been around for more than 130 years. The company has had a global presence since almost the very beginning. Today it has thousands of stores across five continents and sells around 150 million pairs of shoes a year. It’s so enmeshed in many of the frontier markets where it operates that many of its customers don’t even know it’s a global business. In a conversation with BoF president Nick Blunden, Bata’s chief digital and international franchise officer Roger Graell unpacked the brand’s “global-local” strategy. Subscribe to BoF’s YouTube channel to never miss a video. CONNECT WITH THE BUSINESS OF FASHION: Web: https://www.businessoffashion.com Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/BoF Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/businessoffa... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/BoF LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-... Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/fashionbu... Newsletter: https://www.businessoffashion.com/new... ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF FASHION: The Business of Fashion is a next-generation fashion media company conceived for today’s global and hyper-connected world. Founded in 2007 by Imran Amed, BoF is known for its authoritative, agenda-setting point of view on the global fashion industry, and is an indispensable resource for fashion executives, creatives, students, and entrepreneurs in over 200 countries. It has bee