e-shoe intelligence vol. 14 n- 21+22

- Growth of 12.2% for brown shoes in 2011

- Change of the guard at Geox

- Clarks makes lower profits

- Foreigners overtake Italians at Micam

- New management and statutes for CEC

- Shoe stores are getting bigger

- Eram invests in Mellow Yellow

- Mixed exports from Italy and Spain

- Inditex,others produce more in Spain

- U.S. shoe consumption drops slightly

- A new agents’ recruitment service

- Paris fairs shuffle dates and venues

Corporate

Bakers, Beppi, Cortina, Geox, Jimmy Choo, Kenneth Cole, Leiser, MBT, New Stella, Remonte, Sixty, Van Bommel, Wolverine, Zalando

Management & Distribution

Ara Shoes, Havaianas, Payless, Royer, Tod's, Stuart Weitzman

Other Companies

Bata, Christian Louboutin, Crockett & Jones, Esprit, Huntsman, Moreschi, Nordstrom, Pedro Garcia, Pedro Miralles, Pittards, Prada, Repetto, Schuh, Sergio Rossi, Superga, etc.

ShoeIntelligenceNews and analysis of the international market

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Philip WebsterItalian CorrespondentTel.: +39 02 659 6347

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Eugenio Di MariaPublisher

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Vol. 14 - N°21+22Oct. 12, 2012

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Double-digit growth for the brown shoe marketThe major brands of brown shoes – an expression that we use every year for certain types of casual shoes – raised their sales by 12.2 percent in terms of U.S. dollars in 2011, according to an annual survey of the industry by Shoe Intelligence. This com-pares with the drop of 4.0 percent that they had suffered in 2009 and the increase of 9.0 percent that they had enjoyed in 2010.

The brown shoe market reached a level of $15.3 billion - mostly at wholesale - following increases in dollar terms of 17.4 percent in the U.S. and 6.9 percent in the rest of the world. Price increas-es were partly responsible for these increases, especially in the U.S., so the growth in volume was lower.

In terms of local currencies, the market grew at a slower pace, too. All our figures are expressed in dollars, calculated at the average exchange rate for each year. In contrast with 2010, when the average value of the dollar appreciated by 5 percent against the euro, the dollar fell by 4.9 percent against the euro in 2011, down to less than €0.72. Because of this, the perfor-mance of the European brands was a little weaker in terms of euros than what stands out from the charts that we are publish-ing, like every year, on page 3 of this issue.

Comparatively, the branded athletic footwear market jumped by 13.2 percent in dollars last year, reaching a level of $41.6 billion, sup-ported by heavy advertising and technological development, and drivenby growth in emerging market. The rugged outdoor brands

experienced an even higher growth rate of 14.5 percent, partly due to higher sell-ing prices in response to cost increases. We have already published the charts for these two segments in two other publica-tions of ours, Sporting Goods Intelligence and The Outdoor Industry Compass.

Like before, we have broken down the brown shoe segment into two sub-segments – lifestyle and casual. Led by brands such as Clarks, ECCO and Geox, the lifestyle casual segment of the brown

The Euro Oct. 11 rates

Czech Koruna 24.98Danish Krone 7.458Hungarian Forint 280.2Norwegian Krone 7.397 Polish Zloty 4.099Pound Sterling 0.805Swedish Krona 8.651Swiss Franc 1.208U.S. Dollar 1.294 Brazilian Real 2.644Canadian Dollar 1.268Chinese Yuan 8.111Japanese Yen 101.4Russian Ruble 40.22

R E T U R N T O T A B L E O F C O N T E N T

Oct. 12 , 2012Shoe Intelligence

shoe market went up by 12.3 percent, rising by 19.7 percent in the U.S. and by 9.5 percent elsewhere.

After restating the figures for ECCO, based on new data from the company, we see that its total footwear sales became higher than those of Geox last year, in spite of the Thai floods of one year ago, which affected its ability to deliver its products to its clients. We still could not determine whether its businesses in China and Japan have been consolidated, which could help ex-plain the big jump in turnover

On the other hand, the figures for Geox include those of its nu-merous company-owned stores and those of licensees, inflating the totals. Like for all the other brands on the chart, apparel revenues are not included.

Anyhow, Clarks remained by far the leader in the lifestyle ca-sual segment with market share of almost 20 percent, and its market share went up.

Like in 2010, Birkenstock, Mephisto, Caterpillar, Sperry Top-Sid-er and Waldläufer grew faster than the market in 2011. Sperry, which has now become a property of Wolverine Worldwide, made a spectactular progress.

Rank Company Sales Change Share Sales Change Share Sales Change Share Sales Change Share Sales Change Share Sales Change Share

1 Clarks (a) (restated) 1,726 13.1% 18.4% 580 23.4% 21.3% 1,146 8.5% 17.2% 1,526 -4.9% 18.3% 470 -6.9% 20.6% 1,056 -4.0% 17.4%2 ECCO (b) (restated) 1,256 21.6% 13.4% 203 11.1% 7.4% 1,053 23.9% 15.8% 1,033 16.7% 12.3% 183 35.0% 8.0% 850 13.4% 14.0%3 Geox 1,150 9.0% 12.3% 68 0.9% 2.5% 1,082 9.5% 16.2% 1,056 -6.4% 12.6% 68 -4.8% 3.0% 988 -6.5% 16.2%4 Birkenstock 763 10.8% 8.1% 171 10.3% 6.3% 592 11.0% 8.9% 689 11.4% 8.2% 155 4.4% 6.8% 534 13.5% 8.8%5 Hush Puppies 430 -12.5% 4.6% 57 8.0% 2.1% 373 -15.0% 5.6% 491 6.8% 5.9% 53 5.0% 2.3% 439 7.0% 7.2%6 Mephisto 411 10.1% 4.4% 56 -4.9% 2.1% 355 12.9% 5.3% 373 18.9% 4.5% 59 19.0% 2.6% 314 18.9% 5.2%7 Rockport 363 8.7% 3.9% 182 8.7% 6.7% 182 8.7% 2.7% 334 4.0% 4.0% 167 4.0% 7.3% 167 4.0% 2.7%8 Caterpillar 332 16.1% 3.5% 30 10.7% 1.1% 302 16.6% 4.5% 286 14.3% 3.4% 27 8.0% 1.2% 259 15.0% 4.3%9 Sperry 320 72.9% 3.4% 301 77.1% 11.0% 19 26.0% 0.3% 185 17.2% 2.2% 170 15.6% 7.5% 15 38.9% 0.2%10 Josef Seibel 237 -7.8% 2.5% 39 -2.5% 1.4% 198 -8.8% 3.0% 257 4.0% 3.1% 40 -7.0% 1.8% 217 6.4% 3.6%11 Dansko 135 13.4% 1.4% 132 13.8% 4.8% 3 0.0% 0.0% 119 21.4% 1.4% 116 20.8% 5.1% 3 50.0% 0.0%12 Stonefly 129 9.5% 1.4% 1 - 0.0% 128 8.7% 1.9% 118 -0.8% 1.4% 0 -100.0% 0.0% 118 -0.1% 1.9%13 Waldläufer 104 26.0% 1.1% 4 20.6% 0.2% 100 26.2% 1.5% 83 19.5% 1.0% 3 209.1% 0.1% 79 16.4% 1.3%14 FinnComfort 84 8.4% 0.9% 8 0.0% 0.3% 76 9.3% 1.1% 77 7.4% 0.9% 8 6.9% 0.3% 70 7.4% 1.1%15 Wolverine 82 14.2% 0.9% 62 14.0% 2.3% 20 14.9% 0.3% 72 0.9% 54.4 - 2.4% 17 - 0.3%16 Camel Active 79 17.7% 0.8% 79 17.7% 1.2% 67 -0.6% 0.8% 67 -0.6% 1.1%17 Vagabond (restated) 75 13.9% 0.8% 75 13.9% 1.1% 66 - 0.8% 66 -0.1% 1.1%18 Sebago 67 14.4% 0.7% 18 12.6% 0.7% 49 15.1% 0.7% 58 6.0% 0.7% 16 6.0% 0.7% 42 6.0% 0.7%19 Hotter 66 23.0% 0.7% 14 25.0% 0.5% 53 22.5% 0.8% 54 - 0.6% 11 - 0.5% 43 - 0.7%20 Callaghan 50 5.5% 0.5% 50 5.5% 0.8% 48 7.7% 0.6% 48 7.7% 0.8%21 Lumberjack 43 4.4% 0.5% - 43 6.2% 0.6% 41 20.8% 0.5% 1 - 41 18.7% 0.7%22 Sanita (est) 40 -15.2% 0.4% 17.9 5.3% 0.7% 22 -26.7% 0.3% 47 21.3% 0.6% 17 41.7% 0.7% 30 12.2% 0.5%

Others 1,445 12.7% 15.4% 783 18.6% 28.7% 662 6.4% 9.9% 1,282 7.9% 15.3% 660 12.2% 29.0% 622 3.7% 10.2%

TOTALS 9,388 12.3% 2,725 19.7% 6,663 9.5% 8,361 6.7% 2,277 10.8% 6,085 5.2%

2011 Exchange Rates: Euro 0.719/$; UK 0.623/$; Den. 5.359/$; Nor 5.606/$; Swe 6.493/$ 2010 Exchange Rates: Euro 0.755/$; UK 0.647/$; Den. 5.622/$; Nor 6.045/$; Swe 7.202/$

Notes: (a) excluding Bostonian and UK retail sales(b) including licensee revenues

International Lifestyle Casual Footwear Market

2010TOTAL U.S. Non-U.S.

(Estimates in millions of US$ at wholesale. Change vs. prior year in dollars)




Led by Timberland, Steve Madden and Ugg – in that order – the fashion casual segment of the market grew at a faster rate of 12.0 percent, with increases of 16.2 percent in the U.S. and 8.1 percent in the rest of the world.

Steve Madden overtook Ugg, whose rapid ascent of the last few years has come to a halt. Among the other brands in this cate-gory, Kickers and Fly London recorded above-average increases, raising their relatively small market shares.

Some of the figures on the chart come from public statements, but the majority are actual figures or estimates based on input from management and industry officials. It took us a little longer than usual to put together the two casual footwear charts pub-lished on page 3 because it took longer for some of the brands to respond to our repeated queries. Like last year, we could only get estimates for the brands of the Wolverine group and for some others, based on multiple sources.

Finally, we decided to drop one of them, Pikolinos, and to add two new ones - Joya and the Wolverine brand, which coming out of its traditional work boot business. Run by the family of Karl Müller, founder of MBT, Joya is the only brand of toning shoes that is rising at the moment. MBT’s sales dropped sharply last year to the equivalent of $128 million, precipitating its bank-ruptcy earlier this year. Skechers went down, too, but we have

Rank Company Sales Change Share Sales Change Share Sales Change Share Sales Change Share Sales Change Share Sales Change Share

1 Timberland 1,063 2.6% 18.1% 481 2.6% 16.4% 582 2.6% 19.8% 1,036 11.3% 19.7% 469 6.3% 18.5% 567 15.7% 20.8%2 Steve Madden (restated) 969 52.4% 16.5% 915 52.4% 31.1% 53 52.3% 1.8% 636 26.2% 12.1% 601 24.7% 23.7% 35 58.4% 1.3%3 Ugg 916 4.9% 15.6% 630 -5.4% 21.4% 286 38.2% 9.7% 873 22.6% 16.6% 666 18.5% 26.3% 207 38.0% 7.6%4 Camper 348 7.1% 5.9% 17 21.4% 0.6% 331 6.4% 11.3% 325 9.4% 6.2% 14 40.0% 0.6% 311 8.4% 11.4%5 Diesel Footwear 262 3.1% 4.5% 57 2.0% 1.9% 205 3.4% 7.0% 254 -2.1% 4.8% 56 -2.9% 2.2% 198 -1.9% 7.3%6 Kickers (b) (restated) 178 12.7% 3.0% 2 - 0.1% 177 11.7% 6.0% 158 - 3.0% 158 - 5.8%7 Replay 121 -5.8% 2.1% 1 -20.0% 0.0% 120 -5.7% 4.1% 128 1.6% 2.4% 1 25.0% 0.0% 127 1.4% 4.7%8 Dockers (Europe) 72 -16.0% 1.2% 72 -16.0% 2.5% 86 12.3% 1.6% 86 12.3% 3.2%9 Harley-Davidson 68 7.4% 1.2% 45 6.0% 1.5% 24 10.2% 0.8% 64 6.0% 1.2% 42 5.0% 1.7% 22 8.0% 0.8%10 Superga 66 5.3% 1.1% 3 113.3% 0.1% 62 2.6% 2.1% 62 -14.8% 1.2% 2 -11.8% 0.1% 61 -14.9% 2.2%11 Sioux 60 12.8% 1.0% 60 12.8% 2.0% 53 -2.2% 1.0% 53 -2.2% 1.9%12 El Naturalista 52 8.0% 0.9% 3 -38.1% 0.1% 49 12.4% 1.7% 48 13.6% 0.9% 4 23.5% 0.2% 44 12.7% 1.6%13 Fly London 50 17.0% 0.4% 6 42.2% 0.2% 44 14.1% 0.5% 43 17.9% 0.4% 5 50.0% 0.2% 38 15.0% 0.5%14 Marc Shoes 49 5.2% 49 5.2% 46 9.5% 46 9.5%15 Joya 39 4.9% 0.7% 39 4.9% 1.3% 37 - 0.7% 37 - 1.4%16 ART 35 3.2% 0.6% 4 8.4% 0.1% 32 2.6% 1.1% 34 10.3% 0.6% 3 108.4% 0.1% 31 5.1% 1.1%

Others 1,534 12.1% 26.1% 777 16.1% 26.4% 757 8.1% 25.7% 1,369 8.7% 26.1% 669 11.5% 26.4% 700 6.1% 25.7%

TOTALS 5,881 12.0% 2,940 16.2% 2,941 8.1% 5,252 13.2% 2,531 14.9% 2,721 11.7%2011 Exchange Rates: Euro 0.719/$; UK 0.623/$; Den. 5.359/$; Nor 5.606/$; Swe 6.493/$ 2010 Exchange Rates: Euro 0.755/$; UK 0.647/$; Den. 5.622/$; Nor 6.045/$; Swe 7.202/$

Notes: (a) excluding Bostonian and UK retail sales(b) including licensee revenues

International Fashion Casual Footwear Market(Estimates in millions of US$ at wholesale. Change vs. prior year in dollars)





already featured this company in the athletic footwear chart of Sporting Goods Intelligence.

Geox switches CEO to boost its fortunesGeox has replaced its long-serving chief executive, Diego Bol-zonello, with the group’s marketing director, Giorgio Presca, in an attempt to relaunch the group, whose sales have petered out lately. The appointment of Presca heralds a change of strat-egy for the brand, aimed at making it more fashion-oriented, as repeatedly suggested by its founder, chairman and controlling shareholder, Mario Moretti Polegato.

The change of the guards is more than just the simple replace-ment of a top executive. Bolzonello is largely considered as the co-founder of the group. Born in 1958 and a resident of Crocetta del Montello, the same town in the Veneto region where Moretti Polegato lives, Bolzonello started working for Geox when it was created 17 years ago. He was the first person to have been hired by Moretti Polegato and helped turn the start-up into the sec-ond- or third-largest brand of lifestyle-driven brown shoes, ac-cording to the annual rankings of Shoe Intelligence

In the early part of the past decade, the group enjoyed strong growth, prompting Moretti Polegato to list Geox on the Milan stock exchange in 2004. Its market capitalization exceeded €2 billion in late 2007, when the share price rose above €16.

But, the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2008, a failed diver-sification into sports shoes and a slowdown in the growth of Geox’ apparel segment, which was expected to keep the sales momentum going after the footwear segment plateaued, stifled sales growth. In the meantime, the group’s share price has plum-meted to around €2, and the prospects for further sales growth remain weak at present.

In the first half of 2012, Geox suffered a 4.3 percent decrease in sales to €429.1 million. On a currency-neutral basis, its sales fell by 5.0 percent. Footwear revenues were down by 4.6 percent to €375.5 million and apparel sales decreased by 1.8 percent to €53.6 million. At constant foreign exchange



rates, revenues fell by 5.6 percent for footwear and by 1.8 percent for apparel. When it announced its first-half results at the end of July, Geox warned that full-year revenues were likely to end up in the low-er part of the of €820-830 million range predicted in May. This year’s results will be significantly lower than the €887.3 million booked in 2011. Financial analysts believe that Geox’ sales will pick up next year, approaching €860 million, but without ex-pressing great enthusiasm about the group’s prospects. Early in September, Goldman Sachs trimmed its sales forecasts for the next two years and forecast a decline in gross operating profits (Ebitda).

Bolzonello seemed inclined to maintain the group’s current strategy and price positioning. He is believed to have irremedi-ably clashed with Moretti Polegato when the group decided to have a direct presence in China and Hong Kong, terminating its distribution agreement with Belle International. According to this rumor, Moretti Polegato carried out his coup de main on Sept 28. during a board meeting where he obtained Presca’s election to the board, which immediately appointed him CEO.

A spokeswoman for the company said that this was not the is-sue. In fact, Geox put out a statement today to the effect that Bolzonello had resigned from his position “for personal rea-sons” and “to embark on new professional challenges.”

Regarding Geox’ business in China, the spokeswoman said that the company had decided against renewing its contract with Belle at the end of this year in order to preserve its freedom to set up company-owned stores at key locations. The plan is to set up 130 of them by the end of 2016 in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau. The first one of them was already established in Shanghai last March. At the same time, a new Chinese distrib utor, RI Qing, will open 400 stores and shop-in shops at other locations throughout the country.

Anyhow, the change of the guard at Geox seems to be intend-ed to give a new impulse to the brand. A seasoned-marketer, Presca has worked for many high-profile brands, especially in



jeanswear. In the 1990s he was marketing director for Benetton Sportsystem and then for Lotto, before moving to Levi’s Strauss in 1998. Between 2000 and 2007, he worked as vice-president of sales and marketing for Diesel, then moved to head the jeans-wear business at VF Corporation. He was hired as general man-ager of product and marketing at Geox in May 2011

The Italian merchant bank Banca IMI welcomed Presca’s appoint-ment, noting that the current attempt to relaunch the brand could be helped by greater attention to marketing and improv-ing the brand’s image. The equity research group Morningstar summarized the advantages and drawbacks of the change in strategy by saying that the move increases the company’s risk profile because keeping up with consumer tastes can lead to missteps or falling out of favor. Conversely, the management change could reinvigorate the group and lead to higher sales growth and gross margins if the strategy is successful.

Lower profits at ClarksPre-tax earnings declined by 12.9 percent to £31.1 million (€38.7m-$49.8m) at C&J Clark for the first half of its financial year, ended on July 31. Operating profits before exceptional items declined by 12.3 percent to £35.5 million (€44.1m-$56.8m), but the management expects them to be flat for the full year. Sales grew by 2.5 per-cent to £643.1 million (€799.8m-$1,029.0m) in the first half, and they should be still up for the full year.

Clarks Consolidated Income Statement(Million £, Six Months ended July 31)

2012 2011 % Change

UK 332.3 337.1 -1.4North America 247.6 234.0 5.8Europe 29.2 29.9 -2.3Rest of the world 34.0 26.6 27.8TOTAL Footwear 643.1 627.6 2.5Cost of Sales 607.6 587.1 3.5Loss in Joint Venture 0.5 0.2 150.0Exceptional Items - 0.1 -Net interest 3.9 4.7 -17.0Pre-tax 31.1 35.7 -12.9Tax 7.6 8.6 -11.6NET 23.5 27.1 -13.3Earnings/ordinary share (pence) 39.7 45.7 -13.1

While its sales in the rest of Europe were flat, the group’s sales dropped by 0.4 percent in the U.K. and Ireland be-cause of the recession and poor weather conditions, which led to a 2.9 percent decline in comparable store sales, but retail margins went up and wholesale shipments increased by 1.6 percent.



On the other hand, Clark’s multi-channel retailing operation raised its sales by 24.5 percent to £23.1 million (€28.7m-$37.0m), de-livering record profits of £10.9 million (€13.6m-$17.4m). It got a boost last May with the introduction of online sales for Clarks’ famous children’s shoes, coupled with a lightweight footgauge sold to parents for home use.

Wholesale deliveries to the rest of Europe grew by 3.0 percent to 2.1 million pairs during the six-month period. They rose by 15.6 percent in the Asia-Pacific region and almost doubled in South America. However, achieved margins were off by 4.8 per-cent in Europe. Profits declined in Europe as well as in the Asia-Pacific region, where they were affected by the start-up of Clarks’ new Indian joint venture and by the takeover the distribution in Southeast Asia.

Overall, profits fell by 16.1 percent to £19.3 million (€24.0m-$30.9m) on 0.5 percent higher revenues of £395.5 million (€491.8m-$632.9m) at Clarks International, the company that groups all the opera-tions outside North America. While the total pairage fell by 10.4 percent in the territory, unit prices increased by 15.6 percent, helping to offset higher input costs.

Similarly, volumes decreased by 14.0 percent at Clarks Compa-nies North America, with a drop in wholesale shipments of 9.8 percent to 6.5 million pairs, but average selling prices went up by 20.7 percent.

The division’s sales increased by 3.1 percent to $390.6 million, but profit went down by 16.6 percent to $5.4 million because of heavy investments on new stores and new systems, including a new distribution center whose construction is nearly complete. On the other hand, the start-up of a new SAP system for North America has been delayed until next spring.

Fewer Italians than foreigners at MicamMicam Shoevent is changing its name to theMICAM (sic) and launching a new logo intended to portray the fair as the most authoritative and significant event for footwear professionals in the world, with a strong international identity. The new trade



name will also be applied to theMICAM Shanghai, the new fair planned for April 2013, and to other fairs that may be staged elsewhere as part of a new program called “MICAM nel Mondo” (Micam in the World).

While we welcome the new name, it creates a little problem for us because we have decided to capitalize all the first letters and to stop using capitals if the letters of a word are not pronounced one by one, like those of the GDS in Düsseldorf.

Micam Shoevent Visitors (Sept. edition) 2012 2011 %

ChangeItaly 20,501 21,418 -4.3Spain 1,612 1,671 -3.5Russia 1,571 1,455 8.0France 1,447 1,427 1.4Japan 1,419 1,363 4.1China-Hong Kong 1,315 1,170 12.4Germany 1,189 1,121 6.1Switzerland 1,127 1,165 -3.3UK 773 846 -8.6Netherlands 725 751 -3.5Ukraine 627 534 17.4Turkey 617 545 13.2Greece 608 703 -13.5Belgium 593 631 -6.0Poland 448 520 -13.8USA 445 389 14.4Portugal 431 475 -9.3Austria 338 363 -6.9South Korea 231 260 -11.2Australia 226 224 0.9Lebanon 216 206 4.9Canada 193 171 12.9Denmark 188 211 -10.9Sweden 179 184 -2.7Kazakhstan 179 0 -Israel 175 258 -32.2Others 3,712 4,170 -11.0TOTAL 41,085 42,231 -2.7

The last edition of the Micam fair in Milan welcomed a total of 41,085 visitors, indicating a slight drop of 2.7 percent from one year ago. The number of foreign visitors increased to 20,584 overtaking for the first time the number of visitors from Italy, which fell by 4.3 percent to 20,501, partly due to traffic problems on the Sun-day during the show.

Attendance from China and Hong Kong grew by 12.4 per-cent to 1,315 people. There was also a remarkable in-crease of 14.4 percent to 445 visitors from the U.S. Relative-ly strong increases were also recorded from Russia, Japan, Germany, the Ukraine and Turkey, as shown in the chart on the previous page.

The number of exhibitors went up slightly to a total of 1,573, about 40 percent of them came from abroad. They occupied a total of 68,035 square me-ters of net exhibition space.



Taking place on Monday rather than on Tuesday, the gala eve-ning at the fair was marked by uninterrupted excitement, and the food was excellent. In his second year as president of the Italian shoe industry association, Anci, the young Cleto Sa-gripanti came over for the first time with his parents, made a short speech and gave the Micam Retail Awards to Barneys of New York and to De Liberto, an 11-year-old chain of 11 stores in Naples that is starting up an e-commerce operation with a first selection of women’s shoes.

Good response to Micam China projectMore than 250 companies expressed interest in Micam’s new project to organize its first foreign show in Shanghai next April 9-11 (see the previous issue). Participation in the show is open to selected brands from all over the world in the medium, up-per-medium and highs segments of the market, including Chi-nese brands.

Anyhow, one of the goals is to capitalize on the momentum that Italian shoes are enjoying in that part of the world. Comment-ing on the new Micam initiative, Cleto Sagripanti, president of the Italian shoe industry association, Anci, predicted that it will help to move China and Hong Kong up from the sixth place on the list of Italy’s foreign destinations for footwear to one of the three major export markets.

Sagripanti admitted that the April dates were a little late, but said that the organizers wanted the new fair to happen at the same time as the local Fashion Week, as is the case for Micam in Milan, in order to attract fashion buyers. The timing of the Oc-tober event in Beijing should be better, considering that Obuv in Moscow takes place around the same dates.

Micam and its partner in the project, Fieramilano, have reserved about 6,000 square meters of net space at the old Shanghai Ex-hibition Center, in the downtown area of the Chinese city, to ac-commodate more than 200 companies. The participants will pay a standard price of €334 per square meter for a turnkey stand of 12 m² or more. As part of the service, they will get the results of a study on the development of the retail sector in China, includ-



ing an analysis of the emerging multi-brand retail format, and information on intellectual property protection.

A few European shoe brands, such as Högl and Wortmann, have already shown interest in presenting their products to Chinese buyers at and earlier fashion fair, China International Clothing & Accessories (Chic) Fair, which is scheduled to take place in Beijing on March 26-29. Featuring more than 1,000 brands, Chic has been attracting as many as 100,000 visitors at each of its sessions. Other shoe companies such as K+S are planning to continue to show at Chic. Ara Shoes showed there in the past, but not anymore.

New general secretary for CEC from SpainCarmen Arias Castellano, a multi-lingual Spanish lawyer born in 1965, is the new general secretary of CEC, the European confed-eration of the shoe industry. Together with a new team based at a new office in Brussels, she has taken the place of Roeland Smets, who passed away last February.

After working at a legal office in Madrid, Arias Castellano joined Ernst & Young and then pursued a long career in the European institutions, notably in the office handling the harmonization of customs and tax regulations. She acted as senior tax consultant at Deloitte between 2002 and 2005. She then handled finance, administration, human resources and legal services at an office in Brussels representing the Spanish region of Valencia.

At CEC, Arias Castellano will take care of relations with European institutions, alert members about relevant European measures and projects, and collect trade statistics. One of these projects is the institution of a European master’s degree in management for the footwear sector. It is strongly supported by the current chairman of CEC, Vito Artioli.

Arias Castellano will work together with a new executive com-mittee whose members will include Richard Kotter, the dynamic secretary general of the British Footwear Association. The com-mittee will draft a new set of statutes, more flexible than the present one. CEC will also have a new institutional website.



Led by Anci, Italy’s powerful shoe industry association, 15 shoe-makers’ associations are currently members of CEC, and three others have observer status. The big German association of shoe and leathergoods manufacturers, HDS, has remained out of the CEC for numerous ideological reasons, including its op-position to the recent anti-dumping duties on leather shoes from China and Vietnam.

A few months ago, HDS elected Fesi, the European sporting goods industry federation, to be its lobbyist in Brussels. Howev-er, the president and the secretary general of HDS, Ralph Rieker, and its secretary general, Manfred Junkert, met the young presi-dent and secretary general of Anci, Cleto Sagripanti and Fabio Aromatici, on the last day of the last Micam show in Milan. We understand that the meeting had been staged mainly to allow the presidents of the two associations to know each other bet-ter and to discuss a wide range of subjects, but nothing con-crete is expected to come out of it in the short term.

At the last Micam, Artioli, who will continue as chairman of CEC until next June, reiterated its call for the imposition of mandato-ry labels of import on shoes coming from outside the European Union – a measure that has been strongly opposed by HDS. CEC will also ensure the respect of safety standards by importers and will work for the abolition of trade barriers in other parts of the world.

At a press conference during the Micam show, Artioli noted that the temporary imposition of anti-dumping duties on leather shoes from China and Vietnam, which was phased out in April of last year, has had a positive effect on the European trade balance. In the first five months of this year, imports of these products into the EU from China and Vietnam rose by only 15.3 percent and 11.9 percent in value, respectively, largely because of price increases.

Meanwhile, Artioli continues to collect responsibilities at the associative level. He has now been named honorary chairman of the San Crispino and Crispiniano Footwear Craftsmen Consor-tium. The 32-year-old consortium, which is based in the Italian



shoe town of Vigevano, groups about 600 entrepreneurs from the footwear industry in Italy and other countries. The consortium awards every year a prize to their best employees. They also do-nate containers of shoes to deprived populations, as they did last year in Haiti.

Shoe stores are getting biggerAfter the successful expansion of the shoe floors at the flagship stores of Selfridges in London and Galeries Lafayette in Paris, three department stores in New York and a couple of them in Germany replicated the move in the last few weeks, offering a broader selection of products and placing more emphasis on footwear as an increasingly important element of the total look.

At the same time, new and larger stores for shoes only are springing up here and there, rivalling with large internet op-erators like Zappos or Zalando in the number of styles that cus-tomers can choose from. This kind of activity is particularly strong in the highly competitive German market, where other retailers such as Görtz and Humanic operate relatively large stores as well.

Barneys, which got one of the retail awards at the recent Mi-cam show in Milan, experienced a sales increase of 40 percent in the shoe department of its flagship store in New York after raising the surfaces dedicated to women’s and men’s shoes by 60 and 40 percent, respectively, building up to a total surface of around 2,000 square meters.

One factor that contributed greatly to the sales increase was the American department store operator’s decision to place men’s and women’s shoes under one roof, instead of showing them on different floors.

Also in New York, Saks Fifth Avenue tripled its shoe floor to nearly 3,000 m² at the end of August. Macy’s is boasting since the beginning of September a shoe floor of nearly 6,000 m², although nearly one-third of that is for inventory.



In Germany, meanwhile, the flagship department store of Breun-inger in Stuttgart inaugurated a vastly upgraded and enlarged shoe floor in mid-September, telling the local people that they no longer have to fly to London or Paris to find a big choice of shoes. Company officials said they made the €4.5 million invest-ment after noticing double-digit increases in the store’s sales of footwear over the past few years.

Measuring 2,000 square meters, the new space in the basement of the Breuninger flagship is more than double the previous sur-face. It offers a selection of around 40,000 different models of women’s shoes from 250 brands in all the price categories, in-cluding Buffalo and Pedro Garcia or Jimmy Choo and Prada.

In Berlin, a similar space of 2,000 m² is now devoted to shoes in ‘The Loft,’ a newly opened area of 6,000 m² for high-end ac-cessories at KaDeWe, still the largest department store in Ger-many. The move is part of the ongoing upgrading and modern-ization of KaDeWe, the big department store that belongs to the Karstadt group.

Berlin is also the setting for a new Shoe City store of 1,100 m² that opened last month, shortly after the restructured Leiser opened its biggest store on 3,000 m² in Frankfurt (see the previous issue of Shoe Intelligence). The Shoe City store is one of the five new stores being opened this year by Aktiv Schuh, a German shoe retail chain that now has a total of 52 locations, trading also under the Shoe Lounge banner and operating mono-brand stores for Birkenstock, Gabor, Tamaris and Think!

Meanwhile, a new shoe superstore measuring more than 9,000 m² is opening in Dubai this month. Called the Level Shoe Dis-trict, it is being promoted as the biggest shoe store in the world; dwarfing the 4,000-m² Shoe Palace erected in Riyahd 18 years ago by the Al Garawi Group (more on them in the next issue). The new shoe mall in Dubai is going to display more than 250 brands. It will also feature a Condé Nest Restaurant.



Eram invests in Mellow YellowEram, one of the biggest shoe retailers in France, has acquired a minority stake in Mellow Yellow, a fast-growing brand of shoes and other products created in 2003 by Bruno Van Gayer, a French trader based in Hong Kong who was formerly a client of Eram.

The investment has given Mellow Yellow more financial power to sustain its strong growth, which reached 30 percent during the past spring/summer season. Eram will help the brand in such areas as financial management, logistics and the search for the best possible locations for Mellow Yellow’s stores.

There are about 15 stores trading under this brand, mostly in France, but a Mellow Yellow store opened in Japan earlier this year, and there are also a few shop-in-shops in China. The brand is developing the concept of a larger store to accommodate the widening range of its products.

Italy’s shoe production goes downItaly’s shoe exports declined in terms of volume by 10.3 percent to 96.9 million pairs for the first five months of this year, but with a 15.9 percent increase in the average price, their value rose by 4.0 percent to €3.11 billion.

For Italy’s shoemakers, this relative stability compensated for an estimated drop of nearly 5 percent in domestic footwear con-sumption. As a result, the level of shoe production decreased by an estimated 3.6 percent in volume and 0.7 percent in value during the first half of 2012, according to a period survey con-ducted by Anci, the Italian shoe industry association. The drop was more pronounced in the second quarter.

The softer demand, which is no doubt related to the economic crisis in the country, also led to lower imports of shoes from abroad, especially since March. For the first five months of 2012, they fell by 11.6 percent in volume to 147.6 million pairs and by 2.3 percent in value to €1.66 billion.

Italy’s exports of leather shoes fell by 4.7 percent in volume to 59.6 million pairs, but they rose in value by 7.0 percent to €2.55



billion, with a higher average price of €42.76. Higher volume decreases were registered in synthetic footwear, down by 20.5 percent as compared to the same period a year ago, and in rub-ber shoes, down by 39.0 percent.

Total shoe exports into the rest of the European Union fell by 15.1 percent in volume and by 4.3 percent in value in the first five months of 2012. In terms of value, sales grew by 1.4 percent in France, by 2.9 percent in the U.K. They fell by 1.5 percent in Belgium, by 7.1 percent in Germany, by 8.8 percent in the Neth-erlands and by 10.9 percent in Spain.

Sales in the U.S. went up by 9.3 percent in value and by 0.7 per-cent in volume, but the growth rate decelerated in the latter part of the period. In Russia, Italian shoes scored increases of 13.5 percent in value and 3.3 percent in volume. Sales went up by 9.2 percent in value and by 10.3 percent in volume in the United Arab Emirates. Shipments to Brazil fell by 5.0 percent, and their value was off by 29.6 percent.

Turning to Asia, Italian shoemakers exported 6.2 percent more footwear to Japan, resulting in an increase of 16.3 percent in val-ue. Sales rose by 35.4 percent in Hong Kong and by 76.4 percent in China, accompanied by increases in volume of 24.5 percent and 42.5 percent, respectively.

Spanish footwear scores well in distant marketsExports of footwear from Spain grew by an estimated 13.5 per-cent in volume and by 0.5 percent in value in the first six months of 2012, reaching a level of 75 million pairs worth €1,027.3 mil-lion. The volume figure is not 100 percent sure with regard to a couple of export countries, but it is clear that the average price has gone up, as has been the case for Italy.

Companies in the region of Valencia were responsible for 47.96 percent of the total export value, and their sales abroad grew by 8.61 percent during the period. Only 9 percent of Spain’s shoe exports came from the region of La Rioja, and while they grew the most in the last few years, overtaking those of local wines, they remained basically flat in the first half of this year.



No data were available on the Spanish footwear industry’s sales into the domestic market or on its production. The Spanish market went down, in line with the national economy and the general trends in consumption, but it seems to have fared less bad than the apparel sector.

Like in other European countries, one of the results was a big drop in the import flow. Shoe imports into Spain fell by 14.4 percent in volume and by 9.3 percent in value during the period, down to 169 million pairs worth €974 million. While imports of leather shoes into Spain fell by 9.94 percent to €397.9 million pairs, exports of this kind of products increased by 1.74 percent to €609.2 million.

On the other hand, officials of Fice, the country’s shoe industry association, feel that the country’s shoe production continued to increase in the first part of this year as Spanish companies such as Wonders, Panama Jack or El Dantés have decided to re-patriate some of the manufacturing that they had outsourced in China and other offshore locations. They say the process started about three years ago, partly due to concerns about the quality of the product for increasingly demanding clients and a desire to respond to market changes more quickly.

Spanish exports grew in part because of the ongoing diversifi-cation of the industry’s foreign sales efforts, partly backed by Fice and by the Spanish export promotion agency, Icex. Sales of Spanish footwear declined in the rest of Europe, but they in-creased outside the European Union by 30 percent in volume and by 13 percent in volume, Fice noted.

Except for Italy, where Spanish shoe manufacturers achieved sales increases of 19 percent in volume and 1 percent in value, the Spanish shoe industry had to endure falling exports to sev-eral important neighboring markets such as France, Germany, Portugal and the U.K. The European Union still represent 76 percent of its foreign business.

On the other hand, the data collected by Fice indicate major sales increases, especially in volume, in several Eastern European coun-tries such as Polonia, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic.



With Poland and Hungary showing strange increases in volume of 616 and 1,044 percent, respectively, with a very low price per pair, Fice suspects a form of “triangulation” for Asian products that entered those countries via Spanish harbors. It is investi-gating the matter.

Average export prices for Spanish shoes were the highest in China, at €45.78 per pair, followed by the U.S. and Australia. In terms of value, exports rose by 12 percent in the U.S., by 34 per-cent in Japan and by 18.5 percent in Australia.

As for the emerging markets, Spanish footwear scored increases of 12 percent in Mexico, 5 percent in Russia, 9 percent in China, 10 percent in Turkey, 10 percent in the United Arab Emirates, 8 percent in Hong Kong, 40 percent in South Korea and 35 percent in Chile.

Spanish shoe exports to Brazil rose by 38 percent in value dur-ing the period, whereas Italian footwear suffered a decline in that highly protected market. Fice and Icex are currently focus-ing their export promotion activities on the U.S., Japan and Chi-na, and they are working on emerging markets such as South Korea and Latin America.

Inditex makes more shoes in SpainThe Spanish-based parent company of Zara, Bershka, Mas-simo Dutti, Pull & Bear and other well-known international re-tail chains produced 48.93 million pairs of shoes for the group through Tempe, a subsidiary in Alicante that currently employs more than 1,100 persons, according to Textilwirtschaft. This compares with only 32.18 million pairs five years ago.

Inditex is investing €100 million to set up a distribution center of 105,000 square meters for its shoes in Alicante to cope with higher production levels in the future. Evidently, the availability of directly controlled facilities allows the group to fine-tune the production of specific styles in tune with the demand of the mar-ket, and to repleninsh its stores throughout the year while keep-ing inventories at minimum levels.



Inditex continued to report excellent results for the first half of 2012. Its net profit jumped by 32 percent to €944 million on a 17 percent increase in revenues to €7,239 million. Based on con-stant currencies, sales went up by 15 percent. On a comparable store basis, they rose by 7 percent.

The Asian market generated 20 percent of the total turnover, up from 17 percent in the same period a year ago. Instead, Spain’s share of the revenues declined to 22 percent from 26 percent. The rest of Europe fell from 45 to 44 percent, whereas the Ameri-cas rose to 14 percent from 12 percent.

The group opened 166 new stores around the world during the six-month period, bringing the total door count up to 5,639 units, located in 85 different markets. Inditex began to sell on-line in China on Sept. 1.

In view of the difficult situation of the Spanish market, Inditex has decided that it will not pass on to consumers the increase in the national value-added tax from 18 to 21 percent, which became effective on Sept. 1.

On the other hand, Inditex is setting aside a fund of about €31 million to subside a plan to encourage some of its older em-ployees in Spain to leave the company. The plan has surprised many observers, considering the fact the the average age of the group’s Spanish employees is 29.

The group, which employs some 40,000 people in the country, is also closing some stores in reaction to a drop of 3.9 percent in its Spanish sales during the first six months of this year.

U.S. shoe consumption drops slightlyAmericans purchased smaller volumes of shoes and spent an ever smaller percentage of their household income to on footwear in 2011. According to ShoeStats 2012, the annual re-port released by the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), U.S. footwear consumption dropped by 3.8 percent in volume to about 2.18 billion pairs in 2011. However, the con-sumption rate had made significant gains in 2010 and the de-



crease did not represent a return to the level of consumption experienced in the 2008 and 2009 recession years. On average, Americans spent $212 per capita on more than seven pairs of shoes in 2011.

While the number of pairs they bought declined, the value of Americans’ purchases grew by 4.8 percent to $66.1 billion at re-tail, reflecting both an increase in prices, driven by higher sup-ply chain costs, and consumers being willing to go for higher price points after the economic recession.

A 7.9 percent surge in domestic footwear manufacturing was sa-luted by the industry as a remarkably positive result. The past year was also marked by a 1.9 percent rise in employment at the manufacturing, wholesale, and retail levels, surpassing the level of one million employees for the first time since 2008.

In terms of sourcing, the industry began to diversify its sup-ply chain away from China to other viable sourcing partners, including the United States itself. While 98.6 percent of the foot-wear sold in the U.S. was still made in other country, this repre-sented a decline of 0.2 percentage points from 2010 and marked the first-ever decline in import penetration.

Retail prices for shoes rose by 0.4 percent in 2011 over, although the numbers remained relatively depressed. Retail sales at spe-cialty shoe stores, except for discounters, experienced a slight improvement due to price hikes and the boost in consumer spending.

Prada is close to overtaking GucciPrada is close to becoming the main Italian-based fashion brand. After having overtaken Giorgio Armani, Prada may soon be chal-lenging the supremacy of PPR’s Gucci brand, as it is growing at a faster rate thanks to a strong performance in leathergoods and the expansion of its retail network. As a group, however, Prada is still smaller than the luxury goods division of PPR, which booked rev-enues of €1,467 million in the second quarter ended June 30.



In its second quarter, ended July 31, the Prada group bolstered its total sales by 29.0 percent to €851.4 million, driven by a 32.0 percent increase for the Prada brand to €691.9 million. At con-stant currency rates, they were up by 19.0 percent. As previ-ously reported, Gucci’s second-quarter sales rose by 19.3 per-cent to €880.0 million, but by only 10.0 percent at comparable currency rates.

On the other, Prada only raised its footwear revenues by 2.0 percent to €180.6 million, hit by a drop in sales at Car Shoe and a halving in Church’s growth rate compared with the first quar-ter. The product category’s share of the group’s total revenues slipped to 21.0 percent from 27.0 percent a year earlier as leath-ergoods grew faster.

Driven by foreign tourism, sales of leathergoods instead jumped by 49.0 percent to €525.8 million in the quarter. Ready-to-wear was up by 8.0 percent to €134.9 million and other products rose by 44.0 percent to €10.2million.

The equity research group Morningstar was upbeat about the growing importance of leathergoods in the market because the product “evokes the most brand loyalty and is less vulnerable to swings in fashion, and thus more sustainable for the long term.”

All of Prada’s main brands, except Car Shoe, booked sales in-creases. Revenues went up by 32.0 percent to €691.9 million for Prada, up by 19.0 percent to €138.6 million for Miu Miu and up by 10.0 percent to €14.7 million for Church’s, while Car Shoe fell by 5.0 percent to €5.0 million. Other collections fell by 19.0 percent to €1.1 million.

Group sales rose at a strong double-digit pace in all main mar-kets, except Italy where the group continues to terminate his-torical relationships with small retailers. Elsewhere in Europe, sales continued to be underpinned by tourists’ purchases.

Geographically, revenues grew by 5.0 percent to €149.3 million in Italy, by 28.0 percent to €200.7 million in the rest of Europe, by 29.0 percent to €138.2 million in the Americas, by 43.0 percent



to €279.7 million in the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan, by 30.0 percent to €73.2 million in Japan and by 146.0 percent to €10.3 million in other countries. Sales in Greater China, which are included in the Asia-Pacific tally, rose by 47.0 percent to €173.0 million.

At constant currency rates, European sales, excluding Italy, rose by 25.0 percent. They were up 14.0 percent in the Americas, up 27.0 percent in Asia, up 28.0 percent in Greater China, up 13.0 percent in Japan and up 130.0 percent in other countries.

At group level, retail sales increased by 46.0 percent to €660.3 million, lifted by higher comparable store sales and many new openings. Same-store sales were up by 20.0 percent globally. They rose by 26.0 percent in Italy, by 32.0 percent in the rest of Europe, by 6.0 percent in the Americas and by 20.0 percent in Asia-Pacific, with Greater China up by 19.0 percent. Same-store sales only rose by 3.0 percent in Japan.

Sales in North America were affected by store renovation and softer sales to tourists. The company added that election years have historically weighed down on sales. Same-store sales slowed down in Greater China as compared to the first quar-ter but proved resilient. Analysts were concerned that weaker growth in China and a tough comparison base could have dent-ed more severely Prada’s sales growth rate.

The company added 69 directly-operated stores (DOS) year-on-year during the quarter, bringing the total up to 414 units at the end of July. In the first half of the year, it opened 28 stores world-wide and closed two. Two store openings were in Italy, 10 in the rest of Europe, five in North America, two in South America, four in Asia, three in Africa and one in the Middle East. In Japan, the company reduced the number of stores to 64 from 65.

Morningstar believes that Prada’s retail expansion continues to be well balanced. Prada said it will continue to expand pru-dently in China, resisting calls to speed up its retail program in the country.



The number of Prada stores rose to 263 worldwide from 218 a year earlier. The number of Miu Miu banners went up to 102 from 82, Church’s to 43 from 40 and Car Shoe to six from five.

The group’s wholesale turnover dropped by 8.0 percent in the second quarter to €191.1 million, representing 22.0 percent of group sales compared with 31.0 a year earlier. They were nega-tively affected by the group’s ongoing strategy to focus on retail and to carry out a more selective distribution policy.

For the full first half, the Prada group’s total revenues rose by 36.0 percent to €1.525 billion. On a currency-neutral basis, they were up by 28.0 percent. The group’s gross margin widened to 71.5 percent from 71.0 percent thanks to cost containment and a better product mix. The Ebitda margin rose to 30.3 percent from 27.8 percent a year and the Ebit margin increased to 25.5 percent from 22.3 percent, both reaching historically high lev-els. The net margin rose to 18.5 percent from 15.8 percent.

Capital expenditure reached €122.7 million, of which 74 percent was destined to the retail network. Thanks to a strong cash flow, and despite the payment of €126.0 million in dividends, the cash pile rose to €82.5 million at the end of July from €15.8 million at the end of January.The management predicted that tourist purchases in the sec-ond half of the year will remain in line with the first half. It noted that August and September nearly matched the sales trend seen in the first half. But it warned that high growth rates cannot last for forever.

Financial analysts forecast that the group’s topline will ap-proach €3.3 billion in the full year, while operating profits (Ebit-da) and net profits are seen above €1.0 billion and above €600 million, respectively, and the cash pile close to €280 million. Morningstar even sees the group’s sales breaking the €4.0 bil-lion mark next year, with sales of €4.12 billion in the full year ending in January 2014. The analysts’ consensus is for sales of around €3.9 billion.



Sports-Contacts’ operator launches Shoes-Contacts

M2b, the Munich-based recruitment agency of Michael Plank, is launching a new business portal through the GDS fair in Düs-seldorf to help shoe brands to find suitable agents and distribu-tors in various countries. Called Shoes-Contacts, it will start with agents and distributors for the German-speaking countries, Benelux and Poland in November,

M2b has already put together a database of about 6,000 agents and distributors in these countries. The process will go on, with the goal of adding a European country or a group of countries every half year. France and the U.K. may be next.

After two years of discussions, M2b signed a exclusive contract for the new business portal with the GDS, initially for a two-year period. It will thus be able to capitalize on the GDS’ huge data-base of exhibitors and visitors to promote this new matchmak-ing tool. Messe Düsseldorf which owns and manages the shoe fair, already has a generic business portal, but it is not footwear-specific and it has not been widely used. For the GDS, the idea is to pave the way for initial contacts in the shoe sector that may be pursued at the next edition of the show, scheduled for March 13-15, 2013.

For Shoes-Contacts, Plank will draw on his experience with two older recruitment platforms for distribution partners, Sports-Contacts and Lights-Contacts. More than 200 link-ups between brands and agents or distributors have been implemented through the Sports-Contacts platform all over Europe in the last five years. Using a database of more than 20,000 contacts in 12 European countries, Sports-Contacts has been arranging more than 70 transactions a year involving agents or distributors.

Before embarking on the new project, Plank and his team inter-viewed 150 brands at the last GDS to check their interest. He says that nearly all of them responded in the affirmative. Thir-teen years ago, we followed a similar process for our launch of Shoe Intelligence, after publishing for many years the European edition of Sporting Goods Intelligence (SGI Europe).



Like Plank, we have discovered many similarities and overlaps between the sporting goods sector and the non-athletic foot-wear sector in the past years. Partly for this reason, many of the companies that subscribe to Shoe Intelligence are also members of the SGI Europe club. We have also found several managers, distributors and agents who have switched from one segment to the other without any major problems.

Plank stresses that he has no intention to get involved in execu-tive recruitment in the footwear sector, but says he may branch out into the apparel sector in the future. The recruitment of company managers is handled by other agencies such as MBS or ISM, which are based in the U.K., or Sport Invest Search, which is based in Germany. ISM also has an agency to find distributors and licensees, called Sports Brokers. Like Mb2, Sport Invest re-cently diversified from the sports segment into the non-athletic footwear segment.

Paris fairs shuffle dates and venuesThe organizers of Who’s Next and ancillary shows in Paris, in-cluding shoe and accessories fairs such as Mess Around and Première Classe, have decided to postpone the dates of their next summer session for one week, making them run on July 6 to 9, after Bread & Butter and other fashion shows in Berlin. They still want to attract overseas visitors - especially from America - by giving them a chance to visit Paris and Berlin on the same journey.

The decision follows a drop of 8.7 percent in the overall domes-tic attendance figure last July, when the Paris fairs were made to occur just before B&B, coinciding with the start of the end-of-season liquidation sales. Many exhibitors who exhibited at Mess Around when it was still held in March pulled out of the fair.

The shoe mess at Who’s Next apparently led many French buy-ers to skip the July show and visit instead TEC Italmoda, the French shoe agents’ fair held in a park on the eastern outskirts of Paris on Sept. 23-25.



At about 900 in total, the number of exhibitors remained at the same level as before. Instead, the number of visits at the show went up by 16 percent as compared to last year, hitting a total of 2,054, with record attendance on Sunday. The show will be moving next March 17-19 to the Porte de Versailles, to a hall that used to house the former Midec and the subsequent Mess Around.

Jean-Paul and Pascale Leroux are the main organizers of TEC Ital-moda. They started Mess Around as an earlier and more mar-keting-oriented event in the northern part of Paris in September 2008.

After that fair moved to the Porte de Versailles, taking the place of Midec, they sold a 50 percent stake in the operation to WSN Developpement, the company that organizes Who’s Next and Première Classe.

News Briefs & Short Stops

Corporate

Cortina is investing €12 million in the establishment of ‘The Cortina Chain of Shoe Knowledge’ in the Guandong Province of China that should become operational by next March, after the Chinese New Year. The new complex will offer a one-stop solution to the big trading company’s present and future clients by centralizing all its sourcing, pre-sampling and prototyping opera-tions, which are now dispersed over five different sites. The 45,000-square-meter platform will house lots of sample rooms where the buyers will be able to interact with the manufacturers. About half of the 450 employees at the center will make the prototypes faster than before. Cortina produces more than 120,000 samples per year, resulting in over 6,000 styles and production of more than 30 million pairs annually.

The takeover process for the bankrupt MBT by one of its Asian distributors, Andy Chaw, has been stopped. The Swiss court in Winterthur, which is han-dling the case, has reportedly accepted a request by Karl Müller, founder of the company, to review his objections to the sale of the brand rights and of some of its subsidiaries. According to a report in the Tagblatt of St. Gallen, Müller has developed a new shoe model that he would like to produce in Swit-zerland under the MBT brand name. He could not be reached for comment by



the time that we were going to press. Meanwhile, the fact that deal has not yet been finanalized has caused big problems for some European distributors because they cannot get delivery of the merchandise, parked in a warehouse in Luxembourg.

The Leiser group of shoe shops has come out of bankruptcy proceedings, following a settlement with its creditors. As previously reported, the proceed-ings were largely predicted when the Joseph Seibel group took an initial stake in the German retailer, which has been subsequently raised to 100 per-cent.

Bakers Footwear has filed for bankruptcy, after announcing store closures and cost-cutting measures due to declining sales last summer. The company listed assets of $41.9 million and debt of $59.5 million as of Apr.28 in the documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Louis. According to court papers, the American shoe retailer is asking the court to approve as much as $22 million in debtor-in-possession financing from Crystal Financial, including $6 million on an interim basis, to operate while in bankruptcy. Pur-suant to the terms of the credit agreement, Bakers must enter into “a defini-tive term sheet or similar agreement” with respect to a reorganization plan on or before Nov. 2. Baker’s largest unsecured creditors include Taichung, Taiwan-based East Mount Shoes, Steven Madden and H Co. IP, based in Los Angeles.

KPMG is auditing the accounts of Jimmy Choo to consolidate those of its various subsidiaries, following its expensive acquisition by Labelux. The newest one is the brand’s subsidiary in China. Jimmy Choo is in fact tak-ing control of its distribution in Mainland China with immediate effect. The London-based footwear brand has acquired the rights to its Chinese distribu-tion from Kutu, with which it had been working since 2009. Jimmy Choo (Shanghai) Trading Co, which was created this year, will assume direct responsibility for the region’s retail operations, managed by Wannie Suen, president of Jimmy Choo Asia, who is based in Hong Kong. The transac-tion will close in the fourth quarter, but direct operations are beginning this month. Jimmy Choo operates three stores in China, located in Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, and plans to open four more stores within the next few months.

Wolverine Worldwide announced the belated completion of its $1.24 billion acquisition of the Performance & Lifestyle Group (PLG) of Collective Brands, which comprises Saucony, Sperry Top-Sider, Stride Rite, Keds



http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/SHOO:US

and Pro-Keds. Financed through a $1.1 billion senior secured credit facility, the takeover gives WWW a portfolio of 16 shoe brands. The company says that, with an annual volume of 100 million units of footwear or apparel, this size makes it the largest footwear company in the world outside pure athletic brands such as Nike, Adidas or Puma. The group is more bullish than before about the opportunities available for the international expansion of Sperry, Keds and Saucony. Meanwhile, even before completion of the deal, Mean-while, even before the finalization of the deal, Collective decided to take over from Groupe Royer the distribution in France of Sperry Top-Sider, Keds and Pro-Keds, which has been relatively marginal lately, starting with the spring 2013 collections.

Geox has announced a €15.8 million investment in a new shoe factory in Serbia. The Serbian government is reportedly backing the project by giving the Italian company €9,000 for each of the 1,250 workers recruited for the project, or a total of €11.2 million. The factory should produce 1,250,000 pairs per year.

The Dutch shoe manufacturer Schoenfabriek Wed. J.P. van Bommel will be reopening its factory at its head office in Moergestel on Nov. 27. The reno-vated factory was completely destroyed by a fire in 1951. After a complete reconstruction in the last eight months, its space of 6,000 square meters will include a library, a museum and an additional warehouse of 3,000 sqm. In the ninth generation of the family company, the three bothers Pepijn van Bommel, commercial director, Floris van Bommel, creative director, and Reynier van Bommel, chief executive officer, form the executive board. The company sold 450,000 pairs of shoes in 2011. The casual brand Floris van Bommel accounts for 55 percent of total sales, while its more classical Van Bommel line of men’s shoes accounts for the balance of 45 percent. The company has 120 employees and manufactures its products both in its own factory in the Netherlands and at a production site in Portugal. It counts 800 clients in its domestic market and 400 outside the Netherlands.

Planitoi, the Portuguese company that markets shoes under the Beppi trade name, is reportedly negotiating a joint venture with a financially solid part-ner to establish a U.S. subsidiary before the end of this year. The new struc-ture will enable the company to deliver merchandise from its own stock in the country. Beppi generated sales of €11 million last year, and 60 percent of the production was sold outside Portugal. Aside from thousands of wholesale customers, it has 40 mono-brand stores, 21 of which are in China.



After meeting public authorities and the labor unions, Pietro Bongiovanni, the recently appointed chief executive of Sixty Group, filed for preliminary bankruptcy proceedings because of a huge debt of more than €250 million and a big drop in revenues, which fell to €267 million last year, compared with a peak of €680 million in 2007. It may take up to 120 days for Sixty’s court-appointed trustees to decide on its future and on a settlement with creditors. Apparently, they who stand to lose their rights in case of a liquida-tion because the trademarks are owned by a company based in Luxembourg whose licensing deal with the Italian company expires next Dec. 31 . The company has been marketing shoes and clothing under various brand names including Miss Sixty, Energie and Killah. Sixty was taken over recently by an Asian firm registered in the Cayman Island, Crescent Hyde Park. Its 414 employees have been temporarily laid off and their wages are being paid by the Italian government.

A special shareholders’ committee has approved Kenneth Cole’s plan to take the company private for $15.25 a share, giving the firm a value around $250 million. Cole already owns 46 percent of the company’s equity and controls 89 percent of its voting power but a majority of other shareholders needed to sign off on the transaction for it to be completed.

New Stella of China has announced that it will build a new production fa-cility in Yongzhou County, in the south-central inland province of Hunan. The Chinese footwear brand will invest $300 million in the factory, which will concentrate on women’s fashion shoes. The new facility is expected to employ 500 workers, who are already being trained at the company’s factory in Dongguan.

Remonte Dorndorf, the German shoe brand acquired by Rieker ten years ago, has changed its name to Remonte and launched a new logo and a new product range with new designs for the spring/summer 2013 season. The collection is accompanied for the first by a line of handbags. Rieker says that 2012 will be the most successful year for the brand since its takeover.

+++ Zalando has obtained loans of €40.7 million from a pool of banks to help finance its new 78,000-square-meter logistic center in Erfurt, Germany +++



Management & Distribution

Patrick Röseler, 38, is joining the executive board of Ara Shoes. The move follows the recent departure of Ara Shoes’ chief executive, Tobias Zimmerer, who was also in charge of production and other matters. Patrick Röseler is a brother of Jenny Röseler, Zimmerer’s wife, and son of Robert Röseler, the former CEO and major shareholder of the company, who died in May 2010. Patrick Röseler has been carrying out various jobs at Ara since the mid-1990s. In the summer of 2009, when his father got sick, he moved into the supervisory board, which he is leaving now to join the executive board.

Alain Royer has decided to step back from the management of Groupe Royer, which he has been running together with his ultra-dynamic brother Jacques. He has been involved in its operations since 1975, and he was most recently in charge of purchasing. As previously reported, Royer is looking for an investor who would be willing to take over the 22.5 percent stake owned in the company by Apax Partners.

W. Paul Jones has been appointed chief executive of Payless ShoeSource, the big American and international chain of shoe shops, following its sales by Collective Licensing International to Golden Gate Capital and Blum Capital. He was previously chairman, president and CEO of Shopko Stores and vice president of Sears in charge of general merchandising.

Nereo Friso has been appointed by Stuart Weitzman “consultant director” for the brand, which is partly owned by Jones Group, and for a new sub-brand called Sw1. One of his tasks will consist of better positioning the Sw1 label worldwide. Friso has been active in the luxury goods sector for more than 15 years. He most recently worked as international commercial director for Givenchy Couture. He was previously commercial director of Moschino.

Bortolo Venturelli is the new general manager of Tod’s Deutschland, which handles the sale of all the brands of the Tod’s group in the German-speaking countries as well as in Scandinavia. He takes the place of Alessan-dro De Medici. Previously, Venturelli was with a company that distributes brands such as Moncler, Marina Yachting and Henry Cotton’s in Ger-many.

Havaianas has appointed Macio Moura as its new U.S. president, effective Oct. 1. Moura, who has served as vice president of finance and operations since the opening of the U.S. office in 2007, succeeds Afoso Sugiyama, who



has been promoted to global manager of brand extensions for Havaianas. With two-digit sales growth over the last two years, the Brazilian producers of rubber sandals is planning to open more single-brand stores in the U.S. start-ing in March 2013 with a store opening in Miami, to be followed by locations in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Las Vegas. The company recently took its U.S. distribution in-house.

+++ G.H. Warner Footwear has become the exclusive distributor for the U.K. and Ireland of three brands by Grendene – Ipanema, Rider and Grendha – replacing Glass Footwear +++

Retail

Federcalzature, the Italian association of shoe retailers, has announced an agreement with Barclaycard to facilitate online payments for the custom-ers of its retail members. They will be able to pay with any credit card from Italy or from foreign countries. For the retailer, one condition is that it must generate revenues of at least €200,000 a year from e-commerce.

Schuh, the successful British chain catering to young customers in the U.K., is launching a new format for children, called Schuh Kids. The first three stores of the kind are set to open at Braehead in Scotland, at the Lakeside Shopping Centre in Essex and at Liverpool One, adjoining the local adult stores of the chain. Schuh was taken over in June 2011 by Genesco, the American retail group that runs the Journeys and Journeys Kids chains. Schuh was planning to open a total of 17 new stores in the U.K. this year, partly in order to capitalize on attractive real estate opportunities because of the difficult economic situation in the country. It’s a major investment program, considering that the average Schuh store is four times larger than a regular Journeys store.

Crockett & Jones has inaugurated its sixth stand-alone shop in the U.K. Located in the elegant Knightsbridge area, in the heart of London, just at walking distance from Harrods, the new store brings the total number of stand-alone shops for the brand to ten, including the other doors in France, Belgium, and the U.S. Founded in Northampton in 1879, the English shoe-maker has recently renovated its boutique in Paris, in the central 8th district of the city, near the Madeleine church. The renovation of the Parisian store will continue through the end of the year, leading to a doubled sales surface of about 160 square meters.



Moreschi has inaugurated a new 220-square-meter showroom in Piazza San Carlo, in the heart of Milan. It is designed as an open space and is decorated in a technological and contemporary urban style. The Italian brand already has a store in Milan, in the centrally located Piazza San Babila. Although Italy is Moreschi’s traditional market, the company realizes 80 percent of its turnover outside of Italy, in over 80 countries. It expects to close 2012 with revenues up by 10 percent to about €40 million.

Pedro Garcia is to launch its new e-commerce site in the autumn, making the brand even more accessible to all kind of customers in the U.S. and Eu-rope. Established in the early 1920s by Pedro Garcia as a children’s footwear workshop, some 80 years later the Alicante-based luxury footwear company remains a family-run business, led by two third-generation family members, Mila and Pedro Garcia. Their father, “the second Pedro,” still works as a consultant for the business and has recently published a book about the brand and the family clan. Pedro Garcia shoes are sold in over 20 countries and are carried in over 1,000 retail locations around the world and online at Net-A-Porter.

Pedro Miralles has announced that it will open two mono-brand stores in Beijing, at the Shin Kong Place and YouYi Shopping City malls, by the end of the year. The Spanish women’s fashion shoe brand, headquartered near Alicante, also has plans to open a third Chinese store in the city of Tianjin. These openings are part of the brand’s five-year Asian expansion program, which is expected to result in a network of nine stores in the region. The company sells in five continents, but in terms of own single-brand stores, the Beijing openings represent the brand’s first shops outside Spain.

Stuart Weitzman has launched his online store in Europe, offering the whole range of products sold under his label in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Payments can be made in euros or pounds sterling.

Sergio Rossi has also launched its e-commerce site, the first one of those planned by the recently established joint venture between PPR and Yoox Group. The online store can be browsed through in English, French, Italian German, Russian and Japanese, and it can take orders from 100 different countries except for China, which will be added next year.

Nordstrom will start opening its first stores in Canada next year. Three of them will occupy the premises vacated by Sears at the Chinook Centre of Calgary in the autumn of 2014, at the Rideau Centre of Ottawa in the spring



of 2015, and at the Pacific Centre of Vancouver in the autumn of 2016. An-other Nordstrom department store is set to open at a future date at a new shopping mall in Toronto, called Sherway Gardens.

Repetto has inaugurated a store in Dubai and a shop-in-shop in the Milan flagship store of La Rinascente, the Italian department store chain. The French brand of ballerinas has gone ahead with the planned opening of four stores in Japan since the beginning of this year. Other recent openings have taken place in Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. There are plans for a Repetto store in Shanghai next year.

A Portuguese shoe company, Claçado Guimarães, has opened its first store in Spain. It is located in a new shopping mall, called El Faro, at Badajoz near the Spanish border with Portugal. The company already has 37 directly man-aged stores in Portugal.

Corso Como District is the name of the newest fashion district of Milan, taking from the famous fashion store at 10 Corso Como. A recently reha-bilitated area that extends from the pedestrian Corso Como to Piazza della Repubblica, in the city center, will host about 50 stores, showrooms, restau-rants, art galleries and cultural laboratories on a surface of more than 15,000 square meters. Renzo Rosso has already announced the opening stores for Diesel and others brands by his company in the new complex.

+++ Berluti has opened a shop-in-shop at Harrods, the department store in London, featuring for the first time the menswear line developed for the brand by Alessandro Sartori +++ Louis Vuitton is opening today a flagship store in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan +++ Fornarina’s first German store is set to open on the Sendlingerstrasse in Munich next spring +++ Schmoove, the trendy shoe brand of Rautureau Apple Shoes, is opening its first store in Paris, located on the rue du Temple +++ Dr. Martens plans to open a second store in New York City, this one located at 868 Broadway, according to Crain’s NY +++ Yoox.com is launching its Chinese version +++

Results & Statistics

Sabu Schuh & Marketing has reported a slight drop in centralized settle-ments of 2.5 percent for the first half of 2012, down to €169.3 million, due es-sentially to lower orders from its retail members for the spring/summer 2012 season. However, the affiliated retailers booked an average increase in their own sales of about 1.4 percent, and Sabu’s management is projecting stable



results for the cooperative during the current financial year.

Esprit booked net income of 873 million Hong Kong dollars (€87.3m-$112.6m) for the year ended June 30. It was way higher than the profit of HK$79 million re-corded in the previous year, but lower than the financial analysts’ projections. Revenues were off by 10.5 percent in local currencies, down to HK30.1 billion (€3.9b-$3.0b), but this was largely due to strategic decisions such as the closing of many unprofitable stores and Esprit’s pullout from North America. Operating results improved in spite of heavy spending related to the company’s trans-formation program. In the course of this year, the company plans to renovate more than 90 stores and to open 40 full-price stores and more than 20 factory outlets. The number of stores in China will be raised from 1,013 to 1,900 by the 2014/15 financial year, covering about 400 cities instead of the present network of 191 cities.

Pittards has reported flat results for the first six months, which it puts down to the 150 percent tariff on crust leather exports imposed by the Ethiopian government. The U.K.-based leather company reported profits of £100,000 (€124,185-$160,330), in spite of restructuring costs of £200,000 (€248,372-$320,661). The firm expects the prices of raw materials to ease in the months to come, giving it a more positive outlook in terms of gross margins for the second half.

Legal & Institutional

Bata has immediately responded to a request by the European Commission to withdraw a shoe called Flexible Pelle Vera, made by an external supplier and sold in Bulgaria, because it has been found to contain traces of chro-mium VI, a substance banned by the EU because it can be allergic for some people. Bata has taken it off from its stores in Bulgaria and a few other coun-tries and asked a laboratory to check it out before it decides on further action to ensure that similar problems are not repeated.

U.S. customs confiscated 20,457 pairs of counterfeit Christian Louboutin shoes at the Los Angeles/Long Beach seaport. According to U.S. authorities, three different importers shipped the fakes on July 27 and Aug. 14 of this year. Customs officers noticed that the boxes containing the knock-off shoes came from China, while the original Louboutin shoe is made in Italy. The boxes were declared having a domestic value of about $57,000, meaning that it would have cost just less than $3 per pair to make the shoes, against a sug-gested retail value of about $18 million.



The first Milan Anti-counterfeiting Committee (“Consiglio Milanese Anticontraffazione” - CMA) was presented to the press at Milan’s city hall by the city’s mayor, Giuliano Pisapia, and other dignitaries last Sept. 24. The project aims at monitoring counterfeiting in the municipality of Milan by collecting data with law enforcement agencies and establishing a direct cooperation with the public prosecutor’s office. The initiative also envisages a series of awareness raising campaigns as well as the implementation of a partnership with Expo 2015, to declare the universal exposition a “counter-feiting-free” event and guarantee the protection of the participants’ intel-lectual property rights during the event.

The British Footwear Association has announced a new collaboration with two London-based public relations agencies to offer mentor support to emerging footwear brands. The BFA PR mentoring program, in association with Wingfield PR and Cow PR, will help member companies expand and develop their brand identity. Cow Boutique, the newly-launched fashion and lifestyle division of Cow PR, will be developing campaigns for Julian Hakes, Miista and John White Shoes. Wingfield PR will be assisting Northern Cobbler, Red by Wolves and Coco Rose London.

Product

Repetto is diversifying its product range by adding a line of women’s ready-to-wear clothing for its growing network of mono-brand stores, which is set to reach 60 locations by the end of this year. The line will be introduced at the end of this year. It has been designed by Emilie Luc-Duc, who continues as artistic director of Rodier. She has worked for other brands including Christian Dior.

Superga is putting out a capsule collection of sophisticated shoe styles in collaboration with a British designer, Giles Deacon. It will be available at high-end boutiques such as 10 Corso Como in Milan, Dover Street Mar-ket in London, L’Eclaireur in Paris, Susan of Burlingame in San Fran-cisco and Lina Dresdner in Bimingham, Michigan.

The Cortina Leomil Group has announced the signing of a licensing agree-ment with Activision Publishing to bring Activision’s Skylanders Spy-ro’s Adventure brand of console and handheld video games to the footwear market in the U.S. The company will partner with Rich Footwear for the marketing, selling and joint creative development of the line, which will be



launched in the U.S. market in spring 2013.

Huntsman has launched Daltoped Lite, an innovative polyether material for polyurethane shoe soles that is set to represent a versatile alternative to its ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA). Daltoped Lite materials combine the low den-sity needed for increased comfort with mechanical properties and improved ease-of-processing. They are particularly suited to the production of polyure-thane soles for casual shoes and children’s footwear. With a density of just 0.33 – 0.38 g/cm³, the new materials allow for the production of extremely lightweight unit soles, which can be processed on existing polyurethane ma-chinery at a lower cost. Polyurethane molds are less expensive than those used for EVA soles.

Ernesto Segarra of Spain has launched what he claims to be the world’s first 100-percent compostable leather shoe. Once the shoe has reached the end of its life cycle, it can be left to decompose on a domestic compost heap or along with domestic rubbish for a new lease of life. The main material used for manufacturing the shoe is an organic substance called Form, high in humidity and low in metal contents. The research process started three years ago at the university of Vigo with laboratory analyses and tests. Trials on industrial composting were also conducted with 60 pairs of shoes in a waste dump in Barcelona.

+++ Santoni is coming up with its first line of women’s handbags for spring/summer 2013 +++

Marketing

Interbrand has released the 2012 edition of its Best Global Brands report, providing a ranking of the world’s 100 most valuable brands on an annual basis. While Coca-Cola retains its no. 1 position and Apple jumps to no. 2, ahead of IBM and Google, Prada has returned to the list at the 84th spot, fueled largely by its growing network of directly operated stores worldwide, targeting in particular increasingly sophisticated customers in developing markets. Despite the difficult economic landscape, all of the luxury brands have increased their brand value. The 2012 report includes seven luxury brands: Louis Vuitton (#17), Gucci (#38), Hermès (#63), Cartier (#68), Tiffany & Co. (#70), Burberry (#82), and indeed Prada (#84). Zara rises to no. 37, from no. 44 last year, overtaking Gucci. Nike occupies the 26th spot, compared with the 25th in 2011. Adidas is flat at no. 60. No other sports brands were featured on the list.



The Pentland Group is working together with Arts Thread to support a unique national design competition launched by the Churchill Centre among design students and recent graduates. The candidates will have to submit an inspiring piece of work in 2D format – a graphic design, a tex-tile sample or any other – that encapsulates the relevance of Sir Winston Churchill to the contemporary scene in the U.K. today. The winners will receive monetary prizes and a paid internship at the Pentland Group, the British family-owned company that owns sports brands such as Speedo, Berghaus or Ellesse. It also owns footwear brands such as KangaROOS and Red or Dead and has the footwear license for Lacoste and Ted Baker, Applications can be made until May 2013. The winners will be announced at the Churchillian Awards Dinner in London in October 2013. The contest is only opened for the moment to students at U.K. universities, but there is a project to extend it internationally (more under www.artsthread.com).

Pittarello, the Italian shoe retail chain acquired by Alessandro Benetton’s 21 Investimenti, has launched its new advertising campaign for autumn-winter 2012-2013, on the occasion of the reopening of its store in Treviso, in Italy’s northeast. The new campaign is dedicated to families, under the slogan “Scarpe Pittarello. Scarpe di famiglia.” It will bring the investment in communications around the brand to €4 million annually.

Trade Shows & Other Events

The thirtieth edition of Modacalzado + Iberpiel recorded a slight increase in visitors, up by 5 percent from the previous edition last March and virtually flat as compared to one year ago. Held in Madrid on Sept. 22-24,the Span-ish shoe and leathergoods fair welcomed 7,526 buyers from 69 countries. Over a thousand visitors were from outside Spain, with increasing numbers from Russia, the U.S. and Mexico, as well as from nearer markets such as Belgium, Switzerland, and Poland. Spanish visitors grew by 4 percent, with a majority of participants from the areas of Madrid and Valencia. The event featured the participation of nearly 500 exhibitors from Spain, Germany, the U.S., France, Italy, Portugal, and the U.K. Alongside the trade exhibition, the fair also hosted a new edition of the IdeasLab Area, a forum for promoting know-how in which professionals had an opportunity to attend sessions on marketing and innovation strategies.

The footwear sector came out particularly strong at the latest Fashion Access, which was held in Hong Kong on Sept. 27-29. Nine exhibitors were rewarded with



the Best of APLF Awards, four of which were footwear companies. PT Mario Minardi of Indonesia won for Best Quality Men’s Footwear Collection. Art Star of Hong Kong won for Best Trendy Men’s Footwear Collection. Calzaturificio Mercury di Mazzarella G. of Italy was rewarded for the Best Ladies’ Footwear Collection. Finally, McNally of Korea won for Best Children’s Footwear Collec-tion, the first award ever for this newly-created category at the prize. The Best of APLF Awards are given in recognition of design excellence and originality and the outstanding workmanship of products exhibited at both APLF-organized events, MM&T and Fashion Access.

The 23rd edition of Le Cuir à Paris attracted 14,011 visitors, an increase of 9.8 percent from September 2011. Boosted by the luxury sector, the leather and fur trade show, which closed last Sept. 21 in Paris, saw the participation of some 413 exhibitors, and its surface increased by 23 percent against the previous edition. International visitors made up 60 percent of the total at-tendance, led by European countries, especially Italy, the U.K., Germany and Spain, in addition to domestic visitors from France. Among non-Europeans, the number of American and Japanese visitors increased by 16 and 39 per-cent, respectively. The next edition of the event, for which organizers an-nounce a new stand model and new information tools on materials, will be held on Feb. 12-14, 2013.

India’s Council for Leather Exports is planning to stage an Indian Leath-er Show in Paris from Feb. 28 to March 1, 2013. The show was supposed to take place in Paris last month, but CLE decided to postpone it in order to allow Indian manufacturers of leather and leathergoods to exhibit in Paris before going to the Mipel show in Milan, scheduled for March 3-6.

The 2012 edition of the All China Leather Exhibition (ACLE), held on Sept.4-6 in Shanghai, attracted 22,204 visitors, 16.25 percent more than in 2011. Visitors from China were 18,699, an increase of 20.22 percent from last year, while overseas visitors came in at 3,138, up by 1.69 percent. Apart from China, the top 10 countries and regions in terms of visitors were India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Italy, Turkey, the U.S. and Indonesia. The fair hosted 1,301 exhibitors, 10 percent more than in 2011, coming from 41 countries and representing the entire supply chain of the leather industry, from tanneries and tanning machinery producers to chemical companies and leather traders. As many as 60.69 percent of the exhibitors were from China. They were followed by the 60 exhibitors from Turkey, which was the focus country at this edition of the fair.



A total of 133 paying delegates attended the first Footwear Sustainability Sum-mit in Shanghai last Sept. 13-14, resulting in a full house, and the event will likely be repeated next year. One of the speakers was Luigi Grosso, president of Euro Brand Management in Germany. The delegates came from such companies and organizations as Adidas, Auchan, Bally, BASF, Bayer, Camuto Group, Carre-four, Crocs, CTC, Deichmann, Dow Chemical, ECCO, Freudenberg, Geox, Hugo Boss, Lotto, Metro, Micro-Pak, Novi Footwear, Pacific Brands, Satra, Stahm, Tempe, Texon and Wortmann.

Bernard Arnault, the chairman and chief executive of the LVMH conglomerate and France’s richest man, will be honored with an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) by the British ambassador in France, Sir Peter Ricketts. Re-portedly, Arnault will be the only French national to be awarded the title this year.

A new British brand, Fury, has won a prize for a sponsored stand in the FN Platform section of the Magic show in Las Vegas. It is one of thee prizes won by young British entrepreneurs in the 2012 Footwear Friends Awards. Monetary prizes were given by the consultancy of Ken Bartle to Nicole Le Grande of Love Art Wear Art, and by Philip Meltzer to Red by Wolves.

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e-shoe intelligence vol. 14 n- 21+22

Documents

shoe intelligence

brown shoe segment

shoe consumption

dollar terms

drivenby growth

higher growth rate

cec shoe stores

european brands