Footwear experts expect importance of digital retail channels to continue to increase

About 40% of our experts believe that digital retail channels will increase their share in footwear sales in the next three years, with the perspectives being slightly stronger for general multi-brand online sellers than for general online sellers and own-brand retail stores.

Forecasts are more moderate for physical stores. Among those, large-scale retail is expected to perform better than other formats, with 40% of respondents expecting their importance to increase as well, but with a lower balance of extreme answers (of 20 p.p.). 

The views on the evolution of own-brand and multi-brand physical retail stores are now more optimistic than the expectations regarding the evolution of other non-specified retail channels, which, nonetheless, continue to be positive.

Shift Towards Streamlined Production Lines is Anticipated

Influencer Marketing Evaluated as a Successful Tool for Footwear

In 2019 the World Footwear has created the World Footwear Experts Panel and is now conducting a Business Conditions Survey every semester. 

The objective of the World Footwear Experts Panel Survey is to collect information regarding the current business conditions within the worldwide footwear markets and disseminate this information to provide an accurate overview of the situation of the global footwear industry. The tenth edition of this online survey was conducted during the month of April 2024. 

We have obtained 115 valid answers, 32% from Africa, 30% from Asia, 21% from Europe, 8% from South America, 7% from South America and 2% from Oceania. About 45% of respondents are involved in footwear manufacturing (manufacturers) or footwear trade and distribution (traders) and the other 55% in other footwear-related activities, including education and research (16%), trade associations (10%), consultancy (4%) and other activities (25%).

Previous Editions of this Bulletin can be found HERE