Italy reports fall in shoe production and sales

Domestic shoe consumption dropped by almost 18 per cent.

It comes as no surprise that COVID-19 has adversely affected most, if not all, national footwear manufacturing figures around the world to a greater or lesser degree. The Assocalzaturifici industry body in Italy has recently reported how the pandemic has impacted its own members’ work, partly due to the absence of international tourism and the resulting sales, especially in the luxury footwear sector. During the third quarter of 2020, the turnover of companies surveyed plunged by an average of 26.6 per cent. Only 14 per cent of these shoemakers are said to have exceeded or at least equalled the turnover achieved in the third quarter of 2019, while more than half of them logged a drop of 20 to 50 per cent.

According to Assocalzaturifici chairman Siro Badon, the cumulative figures that were logged for the first nine months of the year reveal that the volume of domestic consumption fell by 17.8 per cent. The data shows that there was a major reduction in industrial production of 29.4 per cent, and an average reduction of 33.1 per cent in sales. Exports, which have long been the most important key outlet for the Italian footwear sector, decreased by 20.1 per cent in terms of quantity and 17.2 per cent in terms of value during the first nine months of 2020. A total of 127.1 million pairs of Italian shoes were reportedly sold abroad between January and September – almost 32 million fewer than in the same period in 2019.

Publishing Data

This article was originally published on page 4 of the February 2021 issue of SATRA Bulletin.

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