About Schuhkurier

Schuhkurier

Schuhkurier is a German weekly trade magazine for the footwear industry, published in Munich by Verlag Sternefeld. Describing itself as the leading specialist journal for the shoe market, it delivers news, analysis, and fashion intelligence to shoe retailers and manufacturers fifty-two times a year, supplemented by a weekday newsletter, the schuhkurier.de portal, e-paper editions, and mobile apps. In 2026 the magazine marked its eightieth anniversary, making it one of the oldest continuously published trade titles in the German fashion and consumer-goods sector.

Overview

Schuhkurier is written for the professionals who buy, sell, design, and manufacture shoes in the German-speaking market: independent shoe retailers, buying groups, department-store shoe departments, footwear brands, and their suppliers. The weekly rhythm, fifty-two issues a year, is unusually fast for a print trade magazine and reflects the pace of the shoe business, where order cycles, trade fairs, fashion seasons, and company news create a continuous information flow. Each issue combines industry news with market data, trend reports, product news, trade-fair coverage, order advice, and inside reports from the sector.

The editorial self-image is that of an insider publication: the newsroom describes itself as part of the industry, committed to fast but also to deep and thoroughly researched information. Long-form reportage and portraits of companies and industry personalities sit alongside the news sections, giving readers both the daily facts and the background stories. Fashion coverage is integral rather than decorative: shoe fashion trends, collection previews, and the "schuhkurier Look" section track the styles of the coming season, while the stepkids section covers children's fashion and shoes as a dedicated segment.

Beyond the weekly magazine, the brand operates a newsletter sent five times a week, Monday through Friday, carrying the latest industry news, and the schuhkurier.de website, designed responsively for all devices. E-paper editions are available through dedicated apps for iOS and Android, with subscribers reading as part of their subscription and non-subscribers able to buy single issues digitally. The 2026 media kit presents the brand as a full B2B media system spanning print, digital, newsletters, content marketing, and events.

History

Schuhkurier's eightieth anniversary in 2026 places its founding in the immediate postwar years, around 1946, when Germany's consumer-goods industries were rebuilding and the shoe trade needed a dedicated information medium. Few German trade magazines can document such continuity: through the economic miracle and the rise of mass shoe retailing, through the structural crises of the German shoe industry as production moved abroad, through the concentration of retail and the rise of e-commerce, the magazine has appeared week after week.

The publisher, Verlag Sternefeld GmbH & Co. KG, has grown with the title into a specialist media house for the shoe and leather-goods sectors. The Munich base puts the newsroom close to the fashion and trade-fair circuits of southern Germany while serving the national market. Over the decades the brand expanded from the weekly print magazine into digital channels, following the industry's own digitalization: first the website and newsletter, then e-paper apps, then the diversified content-marketing and event products of the current portfolio.

The anniversary year itself illustrates the magazine's role as the industry's chronicler. For the eightieth birthday, the newsroom presented "40 under 40," forty young personalities described as ambitious and ready to bring fresh energy to the shoe industry, a gesture that connects the title's institutional memory with the sector's next generation.

Coverage and Content

The news operation covers the shoe business in its entirety. Company news follows manufacturers, retailers, and buying groups through strategy changes, expansions, insolvencies, and successions. Market data and exclusive surveys provide the quantitative backbone: order-round analyses, market-structure research, and the industry statistics that buyers and brand managers use to plan. Trade-fair reporting covers the international shoe fairs where the industry meets, with previews, on-site coverage, and assessments of orders and trends.

Fashion intelligence is a core competence. Trend reports analyze the direction of shoe fashion by segment, from women's and men's to children's, and the schuhkurier Look section presents the key collections, trends, and pieces of the coming season. The Lederwaren Report extends coverage to the leather-goods industry, acknowledging the overlap between shoe retail and the bags-and-accessories business. Product news keeps buyers informed about new lines and innovations, while order advice translates fashion and market signals into buying guidance.

Reportage and portraits provide the narrative layer: company histories, entrepreneur profiles, store concepts, and the personalities shaping the trade. The "40 under 40" anniversary project exemplifies this strand, introducing the young managers, designers, and retailers who represent the industry's future. Inside reports and commentaries give the newsroom's own assessment of developments, maintaining the critical independence that trade readers expect from their leading journal. Special editions around major fairs and order seasons concentrate coverage when the industry's attention is most focused, giving advertisers and readers alike a high-impact platform at the moments that matter most in the buying calendar.

Organization and Ownership

Schuhkurier is published by Verlag Sternefeld GmbH & Co. KG, the Munich-based specialist publisher for the footwear and leather-goods industries. The publishing house's portfolio centers on the schuhkurier brand family: the weekly magazine, the digital platforms, the newsletters, the stepkids children's-fashion section, and the Lederwaren Report. The media kit for 2026 presents the team, the technical data, and the full product range from print advertising to content marketing in print and digital, events, and job advertisements.

The commercial model is the trade-press standard adapted to weekly frequency: subscriptions from retailers, manufacturers, and industry service providers; advertising from footwear brands, suppliers, trade fairs, and service companies; and digital and event revenues from the extended brand. The weekly cycle creates fifty-two advertising and editorial opportunities a year, and the newsletter's five-times-weekly rhythm multiplies the digital inventory.

Digital Presence

The digital hub is schuhkurier.de, presented as the first address for footwear-industry news, with daily updates, image galleries, and video content complementing the weekly print cycle. The site's sections include the top story, current news, the Lederwaren Report, the current issue, and the schuhkurier Look trend pages. Newsletters deliver the industry's most important information directly to inboxes in several formats: a daily newsflash, the weekly roundup, and the Look newsletter for fashion content.

The e-paper apps for iOS and Android let readers access each issue before the print edition arrives, with offline reading after download and a search function for finding brand names, companies, and keywords across issues. Single digital issues are priced at 6.99 euros for non-subscribers. The apps and the responsive website ensure the brand reaches readers on the devices they actually use, from the office desktop to the smartphone on the trade-fair floor.

The Shoe Trade's Weekly

In an industry where fashion cycles spin faster and retail structures keep shifting, a weekly trade magazine performs a specific function: it gives the shoe business a shared rhythm of information, a common set of facts and interpretations against which buyers, sellers, and manufacturers can plan. Schuhkurier has provided that rhythm for eighty years, evolving from a postwar trade paper into a multimedia B2B brand without abandoning the weekly print issue at its center. For the German-speaking shoe industry, it remains the journal of record, the publication whose weekly arrival structures the industry's ongoing conversation with itself.