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WORLD FOOTWEAR | JULY/AUGUST 2012
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PACE OF CHANGE
The market has kept growing, and the
trend of Asian dominance on the
production side has continued. Our
figures suggest that global footwear
consumption was just over eight billion
pairs a year in 2001 and had risen to 10
billion pairs by 2005 when global trade
in shoes was worth $160 billion.
According to research carried out last
year by the the Portuguese Industrial
Shoe, Components, Leather Goods and
Derivatives Association (APICCAPS),
the global total for 2010 exceeded 20
billion pairs for the first time. China was
still the leader, and its production had
increased from 3.3 billion pairs in 1993
to 12.6 billion pairs in 2010. India is
second on the 2010 list, with just over
two billion pairs manufactured
(compared to 370 million in 1993).
Brazil takes third place with 894 million
pairs (550 million in 1993), followed by
two more major Asian players, Vietnam
with 760 million and Pakistan with 295
million. After that, it’s back to the
Americas and Mexico with 244 million
pairs, but only two other countries
made more than 200 million pairs in
2010. One was yet another major
manufacturing country in Asia,
Thailand with 245 million pairs, and the
other was Italy, the only European
country to reach those levels (down
from 450 million in 1993). The 2010
total for these top Asian producers
according to Apiccaps is 6.6 billion
pairs, more than 52% of the total. Other
important sources of shoes in Asia,
including Indonesia and Bangladesh, do
not even feature on the Apiccaps list.
QUESTION OF VOLUME
European footwear brands have
made great strides in convincing
wealthy Asian consumers that it’s worth
paying more for the classiest possible
product, so the manufacturing arm of
the industry in Italy and, to a slightly
lesser extent, Spain and Portugal, still
has great grounds for optimism. Official
figures from the China Leather Industry
Association show that the country’s
footwear imports in the first four
months of 2012 were 17.9 million pairs,
an increase of 36.9% compared to with
the same period in 2011. Exports were,
of course, much higher (3.2 billion pairs
over the four months), but the unit price
for export footwear was $3.66 per pair
while the comparative price for shoes
coming into China is currently $28.17
per pair. This means there is hope for
the manufacturers that are continuing
the ancient craft of making shoes in
Europe with the finest leather and other
materials available, but this article must
focus on volume rather than value and
there can be no doubt that the volumes
coming out of Asia, principally for
Europe and North America, are of a
different order of magnitude.
To move shoes, and any consumer
product, around the oceans of the
world today requires expert help from
the logistics service providers who
manage the trade routes and make
them as fast, secure and efficient as
possible. Insight from some of these
experts is of value to the strategists
who are planning footwear supply
chains in 2012 and for the years ahead.
NO MYSTERY
Dachser is a logistics service provider
that has its headquarters in Kempten, a
town in southern Germany, close to the
borders with Austria and Switzerland. It
has 1.6 million square-metres of
warehousing space around the world
and currently transports 37.1 million
tonnes of consumer products a year on
behalf of its clients. Its managing
director in the UK, Nick Lowe, says
there is no mystery about the way the
footwear industry and other consumer
product sectors have developed over
the last 25 years: production has moved
around in pursuit of cheaper costs. He
has personal experience, from a
previous role, of the changes that have
taken place in the supply chain of one
major footwear group, Clarks.
Shipments of leather, eyelets and other
components from the UK, where most
of the group’s production was still
taking place, began to increase in
frequency at the time of
World
Footwear’s
launch as new factories
opened in a number of European
countries. The new locations included
Dachser has 1.6 million square-metres of warehousing space around the world.
CREDIT: DACHSER