Footwear firms urged to look beyond Moscow
22/05/2008
The president of the Spanish Footwear Industry Federation (FICE), Rafael Calvo, has urged the country's footwear producers to look to new markets to offset economic difficulties and pressure from the financial sector.
He said in a speech to give a boost to the industry’s ‘Zapatos de España’ (Shoes from Spain) campaign that the countries of eastern Europe, for example, held great promise, but that companies selling Spanish shoes there had to be brave and adventurous.
“Russia isn't just Moscow,” he said, “and there are other countries around Russia.”
He said the sector was “clearly in recession??? because the financial sector were making it difficult for consumers to fund purchases, and that spending on shoes had gone down as a result. Nevertheless, he said the world was full of possibilities and pointed out that Spanish footwear manufacturers were already shipping their shoes to 140 countries around the world.
Mr Calvo added that an estimated 100 million people in different parts of the world had bought a pair of Spanish shoes last year.
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