Fairer trade “the key to growth” says new Italian footwear industry leader
The new chairman of the Italian Footwear Manufacturers’ Association, ANCI, Rossano Soldini, has identified free trade as being crucial to the industry’s growth prospects.
In a statement, Mr Soldini said that quite apart from the wider economic problems currently faced by the industry, structural change within its ranks was now urgently overdue. He said the industry’s current make-up of a large number of small business could not be allowed to continue indefinitely. If the future was to be secure, more large manufacturers would need to be encouraged, Mr Soldini said. But in order for this to happen, greater parity with foreign footwear producers – particularly those in the Far East – needed to be achieved first.
Accordingly, Mr Soldini said he would ‘devote a lot of effort’ to stimulating multilateral initiatives that would create ‘a more level playing field’. These included compulsory marks of origin for footwear and harsher anti-counterfeiting penalities. As part of the the same effort, Mr Soldini he would be pressing the appropriate authorities to seek ‘reciprocal customs duties’ with a number of countries, especially China.
Though he did not underestimate the scale of the task ahead, the ANCI chairman said the Italian industry had a number of advantages on its side, the first being his chairmanship of The European Confederation of the Footwear Industry (CEC). (See leatherbiz.com story; ‘Italy’s Brotoni takes the chair at CEC’ (20.6.03).
“Now that an Italian is chairman of CEC, ANCI will have a more active role in opposing hidden forms of protectionism and other forms of unfair competition,” asserted Mr Brotoni.
The Italian industry’s second main advantage was the ‘Tavolo di Filiera or ‘Industry-wide Board.’ Despite their effectiveness, trade associations representing different organisations belonging to the same vertical manufacturing process were rare outside Italy, Mr Brotoni explained, and he pledged his full commitment to expanding their influence internationally.
In outlining his vision for the future, the ANCI chairman said that against the backdrop of the current ‘transitory market conditions’ the industry needed to ‘attune itself to the new demands of global competition’ and encourage growth. Aside from encouraging free trade, increased co-operation between regional footwear associations and a greater emphasis on training and international promotion would also have their parts to play, the ANCI chairman concluded.
