LONDON — Michael Kors has picked out some new shoes to go with its handbags. 
 
 On Tuesday, Michael Kors Holdings said it had agreed to buy the shoe company Jimmy Choo for 896 million pounds, or about $1.2 billion, the latest push by an American high-end fashion house to find new sources of growth and what its chief executive characterized as the first step in building a bigger international luxury group. 
 
 Many upscale brands like Michael Kors have faced plummeting sales and tepid profits. Mall traffic in North America has declined sharply, while shoppers who have traditionally been loyal to the so-called middle market have gravitated toward brands at extremes of the style and price spectrum. 
 
 The trends have played well for e-commerce giants like Amazon, fast-fashion brands like H&M and Zara, and luxury houses like Gucci. But it has left companies like Michael Kors — once the runaway leader of the “accessible luxury market” — exposed. 
 
 
 
 Jimmy Choo, which shot to prominence thanks to celebrity patrons like Princess Diana and the “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker, could give Michael Kors a new avenue for growth. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. retailer Michael Kors (KORS.N) agreed to buy luxury shoemaker Jimmy Choo CHOO.L for $1.2 billion, snapping up a British company whose towering stilettos have been made famous by celebrity customers from Princess Diana to Kendall Jenner. 
 
 The move comes two months after rival handbag maker Coach COH.N struck a deal to buy quirky fashion brand Kate Spade & Co KATE.N, as so-called affordable luxury companies look at new markets and customer bases to boost flagging sales. 
 
 Founded by bespoke shoemaker Jimmy Choo in the 1990s, the company makes three quarters of its revenue from selling shoes and has about 150 company-operated retail stores around the world. 
 
 Its strong performance stands in contrast to Kors, which has lost 65 percent of its market value since 2014 due to fierce competition and a drop in customers at department stores. 
 
 Michael Kors’ shares fell 1.2 percent in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Jimmy Choo shares were up 17 percent at 228.00 pence at 1510 GMT. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: A store of shoe designer Jimmy Choo is seen in the mountain resort of St. Moritz, Switzerland March 15, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo 
 
 Jimmy Choo will help Kors expand its footwear portfolio to 17 percent of total sales from 11 percent, Kors said on a conference call. 
 
 The shoemaker has the potential of raking in $1 billion in sales annually as it opens more stores in Asia, especially China, Kors Chief Executive John Idol said. 
 
 But the pace of store expansion will be measured, he said. 
 
 One of the reasons for falling demand for Kors bags was the fact that the company was expanding too fast, which made the brand too ubiquitous. 
 
 Michael Kors, which has tried to stem a decline in sales by expanding into dresses and menswear and its online business, said in May that sales at stores established for more than a year fell 14 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter. 
 
 Slideshow (2 Images) 
 
 “We like the target given its solid financial footing, premium luxury positioning, and footwear leadership,” Jefferies analysts wrote in a broker note. 
 
 Kors will pay a premium of 36.5 percent to Jimmy Choo’s closing price before it was put up for sale. 
 
 MULTI-BRAND STRATEGY 
 
 Berenberg analyst Zuzanna Pusz said the Kors and Coach deals showed U.S. accessible luxury companies were pursuing the multi-brand strategy found in Europe, where cash flows from one large brand are reinvested into smaller but faster growing ones. 
 
 Pusz said it was probably a sensible move in the long term, with competition unlikely to wane anytime soon. 
 
 Companies such as Kering SA (PRTP.PA) have implemented the multi-brand strategy to boost revenue. Kering houses brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen. 
 
 Jimmy Choo put itself up for sale in April after its majority-owner JAB, the investment vehicle of Germany’s billionaire Reimann family, signaled its intention to focus on consumer goods instead. 
 
 Jimmy Choo will continue to be led by the same management team, including Creative Director Sandra Choi who joined the company at its inception. 
 
 Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan acted for Michael Kors on the deal, while Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Liberum and RBC Europe acted for Jimmy Choo.
– Shoes and handbags go together like … well, Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors, now that the latter has agreed to purchase the former for $1.2 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. Michael Kors is looking to bolster its business with the luxury shoe brand as sales of its own handbags falter, with a Customer Growth Partners analyst noting just a 2% recent growth in the handbag market overall, as opposed to 15% growth six years ago. Reuters notes that Michael Kors has lost 65% of its market value since 2014. Michael Kors' sales may have taken a hit by the company permitting its product to be sold at a discount in outlets and department stores, making it harder to command full price in its own. The New York Times notes a big drop in shopping mall traffic as another possible contributing factor to lethargic sales. Jimmy Choo CEO Pierre Denis is expected to stay on in his current role.