The Fashion Consumer Panel of Sita Ricerca reported a drop in purchased footwear pairs equal to -0.7% during the period ranging from January-June last year, with a -2.3% in the amount spent, and a decrease in the average price equal to -1.6%.

Women’s footwear was especially hard hit (-5.8% drop in overall quantity, with the first signals of recovery arriving for classic closed footwear and moccasins, but with significant drops registered in the segments of ankle boots/boots and open shoes and sabots). For men, instead, the downtrend was less dramatic (-1.8%) and almost non-existent for children’s footwear (-0.3%). Positive signals instead arrived only for athletic footwear/sneakers (+2.1%) and slippers (+2.4%).

To get a better idea of what exactly the current situation is in the industry, we interviewed Massimo Donda, President of Federcalzature.

• Can you describe the current situation in the Italian footwear market and its commercial structure to us?
  

  The market of Italian footwear retail has always been different from the German one, where there is a prevalence of Purchasing Groups, as well as from the English and American ones, where there is a prevalence of large chains, since it is typically dominated by single retail stores and partially by street trading.
  For some time now, the situation has completely changed, and Italian distribution has lost a large part of its unique character, blindly adapting itself to follow the lead of important operators in distribution: this includes both leading retailers on the internet on a continental level, and large directly-owned monobrand chains from the service industry or national chains or continental chains of footwear stores with their own retail brands. Street trading has remained unchanged, but is largely controlled by immigrants, while traditional distribution has found refuge in niche markets.

• What are the merits and defects of this structure?
  

  Advocates of change obviously exalt modernity and the shortening of the distribution chain, while those against it criticize the loss of a visual service to clientele, which has by now disappeared in both offline and online business.

• Do large shopping malls create favorable or damaging conditions for footwear retail?
  

  Constant investments in properties, as the driving force behind large shopping centers, is also the main historic catalyst for the quick development of chains that have shown themselves capable; after having bypassed historic centers, which were initially difficult and expensive to penetrate; of winning market shares and increasing their visibility through shopping malls. They have then go on, after having achieved an overwhelming level of success, to colonize historic centers, thus becoming photocopies of one another, if not for the “intrusive” presence of some traditional retailers that have managed to survive and which are by now surrounded, as if they were in an Indian reservation…

• What kind of period are monobrand stores going through?
  

  The strength of the monobrand store, in fact, lies in the brand. If, at that specific moment in time, the brand is popular, then it does extremely well; if instead it experiences a drop in visibility, it feels the full negative impact”.

• How is e-commerce doing on an Italian level?
  

  Constantly on the rise…, for that matter, I cannot be accused of not having predicted it ahead of time, since I had already begun “pushing” in this direction, even before the internet boom of 2000-2001, when I had proposed the Federcalzature internet project at the right moment (just to be clear, it was at the same time as the debut of Yook…). However, the reaction of my distributor and producer colleagues was lukewarm, and even along the lines of: shoes will never sell on the internet… Well, this turned out to not exactly be true… Now both distributors and producers are paying the price for this shortsightedness.

• Sector fairs: what are the dates that are most suited to the needs of small retailers? And what about large-scale distribution?
  

  Italian retailers are not the main customer of fairs, foreigners have always been the protagonists, and are even more so today. The dates have always revolved around their needs, and we must adapt ourselves to them.

• Is merchandising important in retail activity?
  

  It is increasingly essential, because it allows an image or dream of the brand to be created.

• Is there a rise in the franchising phenomenon in the sector of footwear commerce?
  

  Franchising as a phenomenon in and of itself is not expanding, but some operators have derived great satisfaction from it.

• In terms of sales assistance, what do retailers ask of footwear manufacturers?
  

  To make them capable of satisfying in the best way possible the unpredictability of the demand: so, restockings of best-selling items and exchanges for worst sellers, but also personal relations that are more direct, with fewer terms that are “dictated from above”. I hear many complaints when some newly hired kid in the show room forces a professional retailer with many years of experience to make purchases that he would not have otherwise made, with the subtle threat of no longer providing services to him, and instead going to one of his direct competitors.

• Which country specialized in manufacturing is more attuned to the needs of retailers?
  

  Certainly foreign distribution can be a source of great difficulty, but it’s also true that Italian distribution today is not very attuned to these needs, as seen by the above example.

• What does the future hold for footwear retailers?
  

  The future is certainly a future with a strong upward trend, while at the same time, the survivors of retail have been toughened up to this and to the annihilation of their colleagues (which most certainly does not include only those on the margins and those who are weak, but even those that were valid, solid realities). Unfortunately, this is the very worst kind of proof, but at the same time, it underlines the historic moxie of a traditional retail that has survived.