ECCO reports a 49.0 percent increase in sales of "performance shoes" in 2007, describing them as shoes for walking, the outdoors and other sports uses with the exception of golf footwear, whose sales went up by 16.0 percent. Some performance shoes are now being made of yak leather, which is said to be three times stronger than cow hide. The Danish company recently promoted Michael Waack, formerly golf sales manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as global head of its golf division. Stefan Guest and Thomas Maymann were promoted as head designer and technical product manager for golf shoes, respectively (more on ECCO in Shoe Intelligence).