Page 37 - wfjulaug2011

It means that, if he’s correct, the overall consumption figure for China must be much, much higher than two billion. It’s almost two billion before any men or anyone living in the country buys any shoes at all. Those same CIA Factbook figures give a rural population of 767 million. And, making the same assumption as above about urban and rural populations having the same proportions of men and women, the male urban population is around 290 million. At a conservative estimate, we could examine the effect on the overall figures of rural people buying one pair of shoes per year and urban men buying 1.5 (clearly very conservative numbers). This would add 1.2 billion to the total and put China’s total footwear consumption today at 3.1 billion pairs a year, a billion more than many industry observers believed until now. Play with the numbers further to put rural consumption at 1.5 pairs per year and urban male consumption at two pairs per year and you have a total that is closer to 3.5 billion pairs.

Mr Li thinks the figure of seven pairs per prosperous city woman per year is unlikely to go much higher between now and 2015. However, people in smaller towns, influenced by friends and family or by people they watch on television or see in magazines, will imitate them and growth of the overall total is certain to come. The idea of the total doubling still resonates with

him strongly; it’s just that the base his calculations start from is substantially higher than the figures we have seen until now. He consults frequently with big footwear companies that concentrate on China’s domestic market and says their projections tally with his, which is why they are opening new shoe stores right across China and working hard to sell more shoes to Chinese internet users. Perhaps it’s a good job he has been stocking up on raw materials.