Italian footwear industry needs longer-term vision, says Assocalzaturifici
10/03/2014
Cleto Sagripanti, president of Assocalzaturifici, warned the industry needs to set longer-term strategies with adequate planning. “The time for improvisation, if it ever worked, is definitely over," he said.
He said by still not adopting a label of origin strategy within the EU, it is paying the price for a “short-sighted view that … we can sustain consumption solely by selling products made by others”.
“Demand is in the hands of traders/importers who capitalise on low-priced and low-quality products with huge margins and without informing consumers. We are not against delocalisation per se, but we are against those who delocalise by hiding behind the absence of rules and therefore without declaring the country of production. In Europe, the risk is that of triggering a battle based purely on prices that will end up making production in Europe unsustainable, even at the higher end of the market, because consumers are not able to gain information on what is produced outside Europe."
While the EU faltered, exports to the US and Canada grew 6% and 13% respectively, while exports to China grew 27%, those to South Korea increased 10% and exports to Hong Kong grew 11%.
"We need to be aware that in non-EU markets, and especially in emerging markets, the situation can change rapidly,” continued Mr Sagripanti. “It is not only political instability, as evidenced by the Ukraine in recent days, that can push an entire market into chaos, but also fluctuations in the exchange rate, which nowadays are increasingly driven by financial phenomena rather than by macroeconomic adjustments related to the real economy.
“In this sense, it is advisable to look to distant markets, but without losing sight of the fact that these are very volatile markets and thus, by definition, unstable. The Russian markets have long been an outlet for Italian footwear, but we must be careful of factors such as the exchange rate, that can threaten our competitiveness."
Italian shoe fair Micam is due to hold an edition in Moscow from March 18 to 21, taking 220 companies. The last Russian edition saw 8,000 visitors and the organisers (Assocalzaturifici and BolognaFiere) said it is the most important show for footwear in the region.
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