The Footwear Industry in Europe changed in the last decade. Faced with the Far East competition (based on intensive, low-cost, unskilled manpower) there has been a downsizing of the industry which represents now less than half of the global production 10 years ago. The only way to survive is to ensure that the European Footwear Industry focuses on high-quality, high-end products with design and strong added value. That requires a highly-skilled, trained and motivated workforce. The previous VTC-Shoe project created a Virtual Training Centre to: 1) Setup a functional training center, with high quality training materials, to train and share best practice in footwear design; 2) Improve and upgrade competences and skills of the VET colleges and training schools; 3) Extend the common educational qualifications of footwear professionals in particular in the design area and the accreditation of the skills and knowledge of those professionals. This tool was tested and applied with success in several countries like Romania, Turkey and Greece. The curriculum and the content include theoretical knowledge and practical skills and are divided in four parts: Foot; Footwear; Measurements and Tools; Design and Pattern Making. Trainees also have the opportunity to use this educational software to solve specific problems, for example to design a new footwear product as development of classic constructive types. The TIED Shoe project plans to extend the VTC-shoe project in three complementary ways: 1) by transferring the innovation of the project training approach to other countries, namely Portugal, Spain and Croatia; 2) by incorporating new modules (Innovation, Internationalization, Entrepreneurship and New Design Tools) that address the need for Innovation and Internationalization; 3) by extending the concept of the VTC into a Community of Practice that allows footwear companies, stakeholders and professionals to share experience and present a common approach to non-European competition 4) by integrating ECVET as a qualification framework. In this way it will be possible to contribute to the development of the footwear industry in these countries, making it more innovative, more advanced and more profitable.The consortium is multidisciplinary and covers the most important expertise required for the project: footwear knowledge, training skills and ICT expertise. It gathers partners from countries where footwear is a major industry and where there is expertise in high quality production.New contents will be developed in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Greek and Croatian to increase the opportunity for exploitation and replication all over Europe. It is expected that the TIED Shoe project will reach about 200 footwear industries and 2.000 staff during the project scope. This number will be tripled in the two years after the project end.