Marketplace | All stories

Italy is famous for its family run businesses making top quality products. But in recent years the economy has been contracting and many young Italians have moved abroad to seek jobs and new opportunities. In this week’s marketplace we look at one Italian couple who have moved to Prague with the idea of creating their own one stop site for producing and selling mozzarella and other specialities from their homeland.

This week we take a look at the financial state of top Czech football clubs as they struggle to come to terms with more meagre earnings from the transfer market.

The Czech Republic can look forward to continued steady growth in 2015, although with domestic demand taking over more of the traction than export led manufacturers, according to a leading economist. Exporters are already operating at near capacity and are facing heavy investments to boost their output, he says. Although Russian recession is looking increasingly likely and the Eurozone continues to look edgy, low oil prices could compensate for some of these external risks and keep growth on course.

With Christmas just around the corner, a search is underway in many households’ attics or basements for ornaments that will – in due time – decorate the Christmas tree. In many families, trees will be adorned with the colourful glass globes, spikes, figurines and other baubles whose tradition in the Czech Republic goes back to the times of the Great Depression. In this edition of Marketplace, we follow the story of Ozdoba CZ, one of the oldest Czech producers of glass Christmas ornaments

The Czech Republic’s most lucrative shopping mall, Palladium, is about to change hands in what some have dubbed the deal of the year on the country’s commercial property market. The German fund Union Investment is to pay 565 million euro for the mall, located in central Prague, according to the daily Hospodářské noviny. The transaction is expected to materialize in the coming weeks – but it confirms Prague’s position as a prime destination for western European real estate investors. I discussed the deal with Rob Paulson, an analyst for the Prague

Since its modest beginnings several years ago, crowdsourcing has become a popular financing tool among Czechs. Hundreds of mainly artistic and cultural projects have been backed through Czech crowdsourcing sites, and compared to other central European nations, the Czech Republic has become a leader in community funding. However, the overall amount raised is still relatively small as most bigger-scale projects tend to use global platforms.

Last week, the governments of EU countries, including the Czech Republic, unanimously approved a new law to cut down the number of plastic bags by 80 percent within the next ten years, with the aim to curb litter on land and in seas. A small non-profit organisation in Prague, called Bezobalu or Unpackaged, is already doing its share in the fight against excessive use of plastic. The group has recently opened a shop in the centre of Prague, where you can only buy unpackaged goods and take them home in your own containers.

E-books have been slow to take off in the Czech Republic with taxes, a local penchant for piracy, and caution from some of the traditional print publishers some of the factors in its slow roll-out. But the optimists are still sticking to the script that e-books can elbow themselves a much greater share of the market.

Breaking down traditional stereotypes of what jobs should be done by males and females is not a mainstream issue or priority in the Czech Republic. So while there seems to have been some progress in getting women in traditional male sectors, and vice versa, the advances have not been dramatic. In this week’s marketplace, we look at the very different ways Norway and the Czech Republic have tackled the problem.

Jan Roháč and Martin Jůza are the co-founders of Ironing Ladies, a project launched over year ago employing women part-time who (for health reasons or the care of disabled family members) otherwise find it impossible to hold down a regular job. The project went from being ‘just an idea’ to becoming a sustainable business.