Good news for leather as knitted shoe upper trend unravels
15/03/2019
Mr Clark was responding to comments from former chief executive of French research and testing body CTC Yves Morin, who said the decline in the use of leather in the footwear market owes less to any dislike among young consumers for leather than to young people’s penchant for sports shoes. “It’s because the shoes young people want to buy are sneakers, so this is the fault of the companies that make the sneakers,” Mr Morin said. “The athletic footwear companies are the ones who don’t like leather.”
In response, Jon Clark (pictured) said his company is currently making 110 million square-feet of leather per year and that its two largest customers are adidas and Nike. They are now ordering more leather than in recent seasons, he said, because the popularity of shoes with knitted uppers is waning now.
“It’s about trends,” Mr Clark said, “and about value for the consumer. It’s just not true that Nike and adidas don’t like leather, but they have to sell to the trend.”
He explained that most consumers, young or less young, who have bought knitted-upper shoes in recent years have done so because they wanted to follow the trend. In his opinion, only a tiny proportion of people choose not to use leather for ethical reasons, although he conceded that the number may be growing in markets such as North America and Europe.
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