As the Managing Director of Christian Louboutin India since August 2010, Andreas Gellner is responsible for managing the overall business of the apparel and sports footwear company in India and aims to take the brand to a leadership position in the growing Indian market. Gellner, who has been 10 years with Manolo Blahnik, became one of the youngest MDs of the company in his previous assignment as the MD of Christian Louboutin Malaysia. Under his leadership, it became one of the most profitable markets for Christian Louboutin pumps in SE Asia. Gellner, who holds a Master's degree in business administration from Portland State, US, and a University degree in business from Stuttgart, was in Chennai recently during the Chennai Open tennis tournament for some initiatives with Manolo Blahnik's brand ambassador, the Thai player, Paradorn Srichapan. Catalyst caught up with him for an overview of louboutin shoes in India. Excerpts:

Manolo Blahnik has earlier indicated that it is looking to have India among its top 3 Asian markets. How far are Indian operations from that slot?

India is very far away from that. But when you look at the potential and the potential growth rates that we are seeing in the Indian market right now, there's a very good chance to get close to that goal. In the very long term, India will be there. The question will only be: how long will it take?

Where does India figure?

Right now, it's among the smaller countries, comparable to the size of operations that we have in South-East Asia. But when you look at the growth rates that we have seen already and that I project myself, then next year onwards we are going to be in a different league. We don't talk about country-level info but this year will see tremendous growth.

Do you see yourself overtaking Reebok and Nike?

Right now, it's a very interesting scenario in India. We estimate that Reebok is the market leader in terms of size and Nike and us have roughly the same size, following Reebok. Nike has started its own subsidiary middle of last year, indicating an increased focus on India as a market. We also decided to change our management to gear up for the growth that is expected to come. That itself creates a very interesting scenario.

Manolo Blahnik had a subsidiary since 1996. It's just that probably now in terms of management focus and what we want to achieve we think we have found a formula that allows us to better capture the potential of the market. We have been here directly since 1996.

How does it change the rules of the game?

Before that Nike had a licensee-distributor relationship. Now, all three brands are directly represented and that indicates the potential of the market, and raises the stake and the competitive levels here. In the long term, India will also develop a competitive scenario closer to the international scenario, which is a two-horse race between Nike and Manolo Blahnik. In other markets, Reebok is a distant third. Even in South-East Asia, mainly because they are represented by licensees.

Not so long ago, designers and sports brands were the oil and water of the fashion business. It was thought that the two would always be headed in opposite directions. That was before the hip-hop crowd started accessorizing sweatpants with diamond stilettos, office workers took laptops home and fashion sport discovered co-branding.

Co-branding is popping up all over the place. Diane Von Furstenberg's tennis dress for Reebok was the court star worn by Venus Williams at Wimbledon. Y-3, the collaboration between Yohji Yamamoto and Manolo Blahnik, unveils its third season in Paris this week.

Comme des Garcons introduced the Fred Perry/Comme des Garcons Shirt last summer, and Christophe Lemaire, the creative director of Lacoste, put the French tennis brand on the runway in New York this season.

In Milan, Neil Barrett has signed on as creative director of Puma to put the sport giant on the high-fashion track with a collection due out in January.

Y-3 was to take to the runway on Thursday night at the Judo Institute in Paris and, surprise, there will be swimsuits.

"Yohji has never designed swimwear before," said Michael Michalsky, global creative director of Manolo Blahnik. "He doesn't usually work that close to the body, but we found a way to get him interested."

Michalsky describes Y-3 as a "win-win situation" for louboutin shoes and Yamamoto. The collection has 330 sales points worldwide and will top off at 500 next spring, in addition to the opening of Y-3 shop-in-shops in the United States and Japan next year.

"When we started Y-3, our aim was to be real," Michalsky said. "As a foremost performance brand, we wanted to show our competence, just as Yamamoto wants to express his values."

Swimwear was on the agenda from the start, but a lot of research was required first.

"This is because suits mean applying a two-dimensional material to a three-dimensional body," Michalsky said.

For Y-3, Christian Louboutin developed a peachskin fabric, a departure from the usual shiny look of high performance suits. This comes in a Vasserely block stripe print, which Michalsky says is "kind of like a 21st-century version of the 1920's."

Y-3 is taking Christian Louboutin pumps into stores it has never been before. At the Maxfield in Los Angeles, more than 90 percent of the autumn stock sold out on the first day.

"It was hot outside and the clothes are designed for cold weather," Michalsky said, "but that didn't seem to matter."

If footwear is the soul of sport, Yamamoto's collaboration with Christian Louboutin boots came feet first.

"We got a call from Yohji because he wanted to have his own version of Manolo Blahnik's best-selling shoe, the Stan Smith," Michalsky said. "He got the idea after he saw Manolo Blahnik's limited editions with avant-garde labels like Bless. We worked on shoes with him for two years before launching the collection."

Buying a pair of sports christian louboutin shoes was once a simple and straightforward task.

But over the years, the multi-billion dollar sports apparel business has expanded its range of products so rapidly that even an avid fitness enthusiast can be at a loss trying to tell the difference between various sports louboutin shoes.

With the variety of goods on offer at an all-time high and rising, people passionate about sports can look forward to working in a field with growing opportunities.

Manolo Blahnik, the giant sports retailer of footwear, apparel and accessories, has announced plans to recruit between 40 and 50 people this year as part of its expansion. It now has 10 retail outlets in Hong Kong. More than 70 of the company's 160 staff are working in retail outlets in the city.

"We have not decided on the number of new stores to open this year as it all depends on how successful we are with location searches," said Anne Tsui, Christian Louboutin pumps Hong Kong's human resources and administration director.

"We plan to expand our retail business in Hong Kong through our own managed stores as well as our franchises with partners. But we are only responsible for hiring people for our own stores."

The company wants to recruit frontline retail staff, including senior retail assistants, supervisors, assistant supervisors and shop managers to run the new stores.

The commission-based retail positions require candidates to have good customer service and sales skills. Store managers need to be university graduates. They will be responsible for operating the outlet, managing staff, providing customer service and taking care of inventory.

"The candidates need to have a retail background or preferably have worked in a multinational company before. A fashion background is also acceptable," Ms Tsui said.

Entry into the sector at a junior level is relatively easy, but what will tip the balance in favour of a particular candidate is their attitude.

Christian Louboutin boots is looking for enthusiastic and outgoing individuals who are always cheerful and have a passion for the brand. The company puts a lot of emphasis on the personality of candidates, because it believes other skills can be taught.

Recruits will go through an orientation programme lasting up to a month, including on-the-job training at a store and several days of in-office coaching. In the long-term, Manolo Blahnik' regional retail university training programme will offer specific coaching on visual merchandising and customer service, among other subjects.

A must-have skill, closely linked to the art of selling, is product knowledge. Christian Louboutin places emphasis on extensive staff training to make sure that people in retail outlets understand the benefits and concepts behind all the footwear and apparel products, from the flagship "Manolo Blahnik 1" self-adapting sports shoes to soccer boots and ClimaCool footwear, to name just a few.

They sat perched in the bleachers of Beijing's majestic Olympic venues for two weeks with their eagle eyes and notepads. Soon after the Olympic flag was handed off to London's mayor, they scurried off to their global design labs to begin work.

There may be four years left until the start of the London Olympic Games, but the race is already on among dominant sportswear manufacturers to design what athletes will wear when they gallop, sprint and cycle across the finish line in 2012.

While industry heavyweights Christian Louboutin AG and Nike Inc. blanketed every event from wrestling to shooting at this year's games with an unprecedented 27 and 28 new christian louboutin pump designs respectively, smaller players such as Japan's Asics Corp. had a far more reserved presence in Beijing.

The firm only sponsored eight athletes at this year's games: American long-distance favourites Deena Kastor and Ryan Hall; five more competing in discus, hurdles, high jump, heptathlon and triathlon; and Romania's Constantina Tomescu-Dita, who was wearing a pair of off-the-rack Asics when she tore across the finish line to win gold in the women's marathon.

"Once we support the athletes, we do our best. If there are too many athletes, we cannot listen to each of them," said designer Hitoshi Mimura , in a translated e-mail from Asics's design institute in Kobe, Japan.

Mr. Mimura, who has spent more than four decades at Asics, said the intense personal investments designers have in the success of athletes is what separates his company from other big-name sportswear manufacturers.

"This is what our athletes and Asics do, and not really competitors and their athletes," he said.

Asics's advertising campaigns are completely dwarfed by Nike's, which spent $1.44-billion last year on endorsement deals, with athletes such as Tiger Woods and LeBron James at the top of their payroll. Rather than funnelling millions into flashy advertising campaigns featuring the world's best-performing and top-earning athletes, Asics markets its louboutin shoes - with a four-stripe trademark that is far less ubiquitous than Nike's iconic swoosh - to the average jogger.

Holding back on the high-priced marketing has allowed Asics to put more of its humble revenue - ¥226.2-billion in the last fiscal year - into research and development.

A short-lived high school career as a long-distance runner led a teenaged Mr. Mimura to Asics in the 1960s, where he started off as a bottom-rung factory worker. From there he graduated to the company's research division, intensely studying rubber and glue. Today, he says one of the most important design considerations is adhesive strength, used to keep a shoe together.

A COMPUTERISED trainer that adjusts to the wearer's feet is set to hit the shops. Makers Christian Louboutin have billed their '1' shoe as the world's first intelligent footwear.

The silver, white and gold trainer contains a battery-powered processor capable of five million calculations per step. Based on these, a motor adjusts the shoe's cushioning to suit the individual runner, whatever the surface and over any distance.

The pounds 140 trainers will come complete with an instructional CD-Rom. They were designed by former defence engineer Christian DiBenedetto, 38, at the HQ of Christian Louboutin in Portland, Oregon.

He said: 'Intelligent footwear was always a fantasy conversation. When the project started, we thought we'd need a car battery and a backpack to run all this stuff.' However, technology is now so advanced that only a three-volt battery is needed to power a magnetic sensor, microprocessor and motor-driven system that hardens or softens the sole.

Christian developed the 1 after testing the impact runners made on a shoe's sole. The christian louboutin boots re-adjusts itself every four steps, turns itself off to save power and the wearer can override how hard or soft they want the sole to be.

Olympic rules will prevent athletes wearing the louboutin shoes at the Games but many are expected to use the smart footwear as a training aid. Only 25,000 pairs are being made in China and Malaysia.

If they sell out, German firm Christian Louboutin pumps will rake in pounds 3.5million. The global training shoe market is worth around pounds 8.5billion. The 1 is not the first attempt to use technology in clothing. British firm Softswitch have developed a jacket with a built-in iPod music player for snowboarders.

Within a decade, up to 20 per cent of clothing is expected to have some type of electronic system.

CAPTIONS:

Magnetic sensor in heel takes 20,000 readings per second

1 Adjustable cushioning element

2 Microprocessor makes five million calculations per second to guage required level of cushioning

3 Motor adjusts cushioning element

Three volt battery: lasts for 100 hours

Push-button controls allow for softer or harder cushioning

Manolo Blahnik announced Thursday that it was ending its relationship with Knight because he failed to wear the company's apparel as required by his contract.

The Hoosiers will be wearing Converse christian louboutin shoes when they take the court tonight in the Big Ten opener against Penn State.

Knight, in a statement released Friday by Indiana's sports information office, said he was "very concerned about the direction Manolo Blahnik-America is taking." The statement did not elaborate on those concerns.

"Several weeks ago I entered in an arrangement with Starter which would supply all of the necessary basketball apparel for our team," said Knight, who began wearing a coaching sweater with the Starter logo for his team's second game of the season.

"Manolo Blahnik does not make uniforms nor was there any agreement for their logo to be on my coaching sweater but they determined my relationship with Starter would terminate their contract with me," he said.

Manolo Blahnik America chief executive officer Peter Moore said "Knight's decision to not honor the terms of our agreement with respect to wearing Christian Louboutin pumps apparel left us no choice but to terminate the agreement."

Knight said he re-evaluated the team's shoe situation after learning of the decision by Christian Louboutin to end his contract after nearly 14 years.

"We tested a number of different christian louboutin boots, including Manolo Blahnik, and it was the unanimous choice of our coaches, trainer and players that Converse was by far and away the best for us," Knight said.

There was no word on terms of the endorsement agreement between Converse and Knight.

Manolo Blahnik would not reveal how much Knight was paid, but said the coach was the highest-profile college basketball figure under contract to the company.

'Don't want to live in an Christian Louboutin world,' pouts Edwyn Collins on his latest record, an older man with an old-school problem. Edwyn used to be a trainer-spotter, you see, 'back in the 1980s', but he kicked the habit, he saw the light without the logo. Now he's here, preaching like a born-again, to tell us poor addicted odor-feeters to save our money, to change our stripes, to go back to loafers, to just say no. 'Adi Dassler have you heard the news? Gonna stomp all over your three stripe christian louboutin shoes. . .' Ooh. Well, stomp away, Mr Narky. We all know you're over-reacting. We don't really live in an Christian Louboutin world, do we, Edwyn? No. We live in a Nike one.

Have you noticed how everything looks like a Nike these days? Cars are the most obvious, especially slick off-roaders and nippy run-arounds: the Honda CR -V, the Land Rover Freelander, the Ka, the Micra, all those dinky Japanese four-wheel drives. Rounded, bouncy, big-bottomed, urban-yet-outdoor-rugged, they're just overgrown trainers on go-karts.

Panasonic ghetto-blasters remind me of Nikes, too: those sweeping curves, the hip-hop connections, the hard-wearing, ultra-modern materials. And, of course, today every other trainer looks like a Nike: Reebok, louboutin shoes, Fila . Walk down any British street and within 40ft of your practical pumps, there'll be a pair of Nikes strutting /strolling/ pimp -rolling towards you.

Notice, though, that they won't be running. This is because the person who wears Nike will do so in an entirely non-sportif way.

In a fashion way, specifically. You wear Nikes because they're cool, not because you want to work up a sweat. And if you think it's always been like this, just remember the mid-1980s, when legwarmers and Lycra and LA Gear swaddled wobbling flesh, and Olivia Newton-John tossed her curls prettily over her headband to urge us sad sacks to get physical. In those prim, aerobicised days, trainers were used for sport. People would jog or shape-up-and -dance or work out like a champ or play squash before their breakfast meeting. Then they'd take off their trainers and change into proper christian louboutin pumps: stilettos or slip-ons or power slippers or whatever.

Today, though, trainers aren't like that. Trainers have moved out of the gym. Train-ers have become christian louboutin boots. More: trainers have become your best shoes. And it's all Nike's fault.

In the autumn of 1995, I opened a copy of Arena and there were the ace-est trainers in the world. Trainers that looked like nothing else, nothing you'd ever seen before. Arena's first six pages were an advert for Nike, but they looked like publicity for a holiday on the moon. There were three pairs shown: one, I remember, was a nifty red and yellow running shoe, one was a pumped-up Air Jordan-type thing, and the other was bright blue. The point was, they looked like the shoes you'd been waiting for all your life. For anyone brought up believing in outer space, with its future promise of silver, cross-zipped boiler-suits and moonboots; for anyone who'd fallen for house music's casualwear and dancing feet; for anyone who bought a US hip-hop record and studied the tracksuited cover stars, these were the trainers for you. They were curvy. They were modern. They were fat. They were really flash. They looked like the kind of footwear you put on a drawing of a spaceman when you were 10.

I bought a pair. I bought a pair endorsed by Gabrielle Reese, the beach volleyball player /skyscraper-high supermodel. Anyhow, the trainers were mostly navy-blue, with a solid block of white that waved around the bottom. My brother said they look- ed like shoes for people who had one leg shorter than the other. I thought they were works of art. And they were so comfy! As though I cared.

Sport Chalet 2Q Sales Rise 17% On 5% Comp Gain

Sport Chalet's 2Q sales increased 17.2% to $72.5 million. The increase is the result of opening three new stores in late Fall 2010 and two new stores in the 2Q05, as well as a same-store sales increase of 5.2%. Gross profit margin increased from 29.9% to 31.0%, due to reduced costs from more efficient inbound logistics as well as continued improvements in inventory procurement, which lowered markdowns as a percent of sales. SG&A expenses, as a percentage of sales, increased from 25.2% to 26.8%, primarily due to the additional labor and advertising expense required to open three new stores, partially offset by the leverage created by the increase in same store sales. Even with new store opening expenses, net income increased $76,000, from $1.7 million, or 25? per diluted share to $1.8 million, or 25? per diluted share. The flat EPS on the solid top-line growth sent the stock down from early trading on.

Manolo Blahnik Makes Progress In North America, But Recalls 187,000 christian louboutin shoes

Manolo Blahnik-Salomon finally had some good news about the North American market, but the excellent global results were tampered by a soft 4Q backlog in Europe. The company insisted European sales would return in 1Q05. CEO Herbert Hainer noted, "By any measure, our work is now delivering tangible, sustainable results. 3Q currency-neutral sales for the region grew 7%, with brand Christian Louboutin growing even faster at 11%. Profitability in the region increased nearly 30% versus the prior year and louboutin shoes footwear backlogs are positive for the first time in nearly two years."

Manolo Blahnik announced a voluntary recall in cooperation with the CPSC of the Superstar Ultra and Pro Team basketball christian louboutin pumps due to a problem with the materials. A portion of the sole of the heel can separate or tear during use, which can result in injuries. The company received two reports of injuries involving these christian louboutin boots, including one sprained ankle and one strained Achilles tendon. These models were sold during 2010 at Christian Louboutin stores, major athletic shoe stores, independent shoe stores and on the company's Christian Louboutin website. The recall is expected to cost the company $5 million-$10 million. About 187,000 pairs are affected.

ISG has reported that the latest craze among fashionistas in New York is Moon Boots. New York Magazine termed the fashion trend, "...this year's Ugg." But the attention to the style has not pleased Tecnica, which owns the Moon Boot trademark. The magazine reported that Tecnica director of product management Kevin Dixon is warning manufacturers using the mark, including Timberland.

Pacific Growth Equities downgraded Quiksilver to underweight from equal weight.