Page 122 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.71, # 1, 2014, pp. 120-126

 In recent decades, the fur market in Frankfurt, failed to handle the bulk of the fur trade and

nowadays western Macedonia is the only remaining fur industrial center in the western world.

In the late 80’s-early 90’s the negative signs start to appear for the fur industry, mainly in

Western Europe. The International Fur Fair of Frankfurt with a history of 60 years seizes to exist in

2006. On the other hand, the International Fur Fair of Kastoria continues not only to grow but also to

take place in modern and bigger facilities. The Greek businesses find a way to markets of Eastern

Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian market is now the biggest customer of fur

production not only for the Greek products, but also for other European [European fur clothing

(ready fur coats) that comes to Greece and with the appropriate processing covers the needs of the

new markets] fur clothing.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emerge of new markets in the Eastern Europe,

fur exports were mainly addressed to Germany and USA, but for many years now export trade is

focused to Russia. Russian consumers buy furs not only in Russia but they are traveling to Greece

and buy furs from Kastoria, Halkidiki Katerini, Crete, Rhodes, etc. In these places it has been created

the so-called “storefronts fur selling”, mainly from furriers of Western Macedonia.

Over the past decades with the opening of China's free market economy, the fur industry

and economy is growing rapidly in China. As a result, all the fur production centers in Europe,

USA and Canada have been diminished or disappeared while the production center of Greece in

Western Macedonia (Kastoria and Siatista) resists and withstands the Chinese competition.

The Greek furriers affected by the allocation system of Scandinavian furriers have already

decided from the beginning of 1980’s to establish an association[Grassroots company that would

operate with the form and statutes of a limited company]. This official association would sell their

goods, mostly the ‘unfinished’, the so called ‘bodies or pleter’ [Furs shaped in scraps from rug,

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