Already one year after its start at EuroShop now the European Retail Academy (ERA) links at its homepage www.european-retail-academy.org 48 research-universities from 20 countries. 20 percent of them are even from Asia, North- and South-America and Australia.

The aim of ERA is to give international transparency about retail-studies on university-level. This is the basis for students of retail to add foreign experiences to their study at home. Insofar ERA promotes the Bologna-process. Due to the globalization of retail there is more and more demand for cosmopolitan leadership.

The Annual Meeting of ERA in 2007 will be organized in Moscow during the Shop Design Russia; in 2008 the professors will come back to EuroShop in Düsseldorf again.
At the Annual Meeting 2006 in Prag during the Czech Retail Summit Wilhelm Niedergöker, Managing Director of Messe Düsseldorf was elected as a non-executive director into the Board of ERA.

Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier, General Manager of the EHI-EuroHandelsinstitut Cologne and president of the EuroShop advisory board, is executive director of ERA. Contact for further information about ERA: Julia Pasternak, Tel. 0221 57993-21, E-Mail: pasternak@ehi.org.