No more 'off-seasons' for footwear sector
According to new research, there is no such thing as an off-season for the shoe industry. The new study, entitled ‘Footwear goes at double the speed: the footwear sector and quick producers’, suggests an increasing amount of production takes place outside the traditional seasons of spring-summer and autumn-winter.
The study suggests footwear companies are doing more and more planning and production as a continual cycle, with summer and winter collections overlapping. Excluding restocking, it showed that 25% of footwear is sold on an out-of-season basis. For the Italian market, this is believed to account for around EUR 600 million and 33.6 million pairs at retail. These figures account for around 8% of total domestic consumption in value terms and 17% in volume.
“A logic similar to that of fast fashion in clothing is also establishing itself in the footwear sector”, explains Enrico Cietta, research coordinator and manager of the Area Studi Diomedea, which wrote the report. “This is quick production, in other words a strategy with delayed creative timescales, because mini collections are presented later, and accelerated production timescales with a turnaround time of 30 to 60 days maximum. The combination of these two processes allows producers to correct their collections and distributors to integrate their purchases with the latest market trends.”
She continues: “The fast fashion model applied to clothing, both by international chains like Zara and H&M and by small Italian companies like Patrizia Pepe, Pinko and Liu Jo, to name just a few, is also penetrating the footwear sector. There are, however, two important differences: firstly, we need to consider the complexity of shoe construction, which does not allow for particularly accelerated production times unless the right conditions are present.
“Secondly, quick production is not a model that concerns specific companies; in footwear there are no specialised manufacturers, but companies that integrate and modulate the two production typologies: that of pre-planned programmes with long timescales and the more flexible accelerated timescale system. Precisely due to the production specificities of footwear this is a strategy that is shared by many different kinds of companies, rather than, as with clothing, a business model adopted by some specific companies.”
The report was commissioned by footwear trade show Expo Riva Schuh. It comprises responses from around 200 exhibitors at the trade fair and more than 800 visitors including retailers and distributors.
