‘Alarm bells’ for Italian footwear industry
Household spending fell by 30%, despite the boom in online sales (+42%) due to the closing of shops during the lockdown.
Shoe exports fared poorly: they fell 22% in volume for EU markets, which account for two pairs of shoes out of every three sold abroad, and 33.4% in volume for non-EU markets, with the balance of trade down significantly (-34%) but still showing a surplus of €1.6 billion.
Siro Badon (pictured), chairman of Assocalzaturifici, said: “The health emergency has had a major impact on the performance of our production sector. Aside from the reduction in output and turnover, there was also a marked drop in domestic consumption and exports.
“The post lockdown restart, after the loosening of restrictions, is proving to be extremely slow: sales in Italy are still down (-29% in quantity in May and -7% in June), whereas exports were down 27% in volume for May and June after the collapse (-50%) in the previous two months.
“The bad news also extends to employment with a decrease in both the number of companies (-77 since January) and the workforce (-520). These figures should set the alarm bells ringing in terms of employment trends in coming months.
“Our production system, which mainly comprises small and medium/small businesses, has been severely tested, having been forced to contend with a lack of liquidity caused by the cancellation of orders, returns and unpaid invoices.”
In terms of exports, the data shows a reduction in quantity of -26.4% and a -25.4% reduction in value terms for the first six months of the year.
A total of 78.7 million pairs were exported for a value of €3.8 billion, a drop of more than 28 million pairs compared to the first six months of 2019.
