If the shoe fits

SWEDEN: In Malmö, shoes on display in shop windows have been disappearing.  The police have no idea who's taking them. The thieves haven't set a foot wrong.

Boutiques in Sweden commonly put only the left shoe of expensive shoes in the display window. An occasional missing shoe was no cause for alarm, until two men were seen stealing shoes from a Malmö shoe store window early this month. The men escaped with seven left shoes which, when matched with the corresponding right shoes, would be worth about €200 per pair.

Why would someone steal just one shoe per pair? Shoe sellers might have the answer. “I do not know why the Danes display the right shoes," said Anna Johansson, a shop assistant in Malmö. “Since we do it the other way around in Sweden, we figured that the corresponding shoes probably disappear as well in stores in Denmark,” she told The Times newspaper.

Why would someone steal just one shoe per pair? Shoe sellers in Sweden might have the answer.

The theory makes sense. A number of international outlets have the same styles of shoes on offer, and Malmö is only 35 minutes away from Copenhagen by train. However, trying to beat the thieves at their own game would likely just move the shoe thefts elsewhere. “There is no point  in switching to left shoes, since in Germany they display the right shoes,” Marie Andresen, a shop assistant in Copenhagen.