There was a high turnout among international buyers at the fair, who arrived from every part of the globe, also thanks to the organizational efforts of APEX and Abicalçados. Many veterans were in attendance, while for others, Couromoda was the best window onto understanding the sector of Brazilian footwear manufacturing.
For Luis Guillermo Velasquez Menacho (Regional Sourcing Manager of Bata Latam – Chile), Couromoda represents
an essential appointment for fully understanding the trends and subsequently making purchases for all the group’s branches in South America.
Dairo Castro Benavides (Calzado Erson – Columbia) is not a new face at the São Paulo fair either:
With each new edition, Brazil takes important steps forward. There are brands that have managed to create their own identity and, above all, successfully maintain it. Being in São Paulo is fascinating.
Arriving for the first time from Dubai there is then Walid Tarabey (Walk& City – with 3 stores in the United Arab Emirates).
I am especially interested in comfort footwear and here I have found many interesting proposals. I will return.
Fatima Mejia, instead, works in Ecuador as both a retailer and wholesaler:
We have been working for a number of years with Brazilian companies and I find this event to be very interesting for our business which, sometimes, also works in the bags industry.
Narendar Soni (Andy Enterprises – Dubai) has 15 stores that distribute various brands.
For many years I have been coming to Brazil and I believe that the footwear production is improving with each new season, also in terms of trends.
From France arrived Flora Martinez, in charge of women’s accessories for Monoprix (650 stores selling not only foodstuffs, but also apparel and footwear in 220 of the brand’s stores):
We already buy Brazilian footwear, but it is my first time at Couromoda. I saw very interesting collections with an excellent quality/price ratio. It is undoubtedly an event of international scope.
With Flora Martinez, there was also Sibylle Genin, freelance designer for Monoprix, who underlined the beauty of the many footwear proposals on display, as typical to a ‘Made in Brazil’ that is increasingly fashionable.
Finally, there was Peter Mangione, who is probably the first American to have genuinely believed in Brazilian footwear:
Couromoda is always an extremely important event, and also this year it confirmed the quality of its production, not only in terms of women’s, but also for men’s and children’s.
