Trade

Italy: footwear exports continue downward trend

Jan 6, 2025 Italy

The third quarter of the year did not bring a turnaround in the sector’s difficult situation, resulting in a cumulative decline of 9.2% in the value of footwear exports between January and September

“In the third quarter of 2024, there was no turnaround in the sector’s economic situation. On the contrary, more than 60% of companies closed with turnover below the levels achieved in the same period of 2023, with reductions of more than 20% for 1 out of 5 companies”, explained Giovanna Ceolini, president of Assocalzaturifici, the association representing the Italian footwear manufacturers.

According to the latest snapshot from the Confindustria Accessori Moda study centre for Assocalzaturifici, from January to September, footwear exports declined by 9.2% in value terms, as compared to the same period last year. The sharp fall in orders had a significant impact on both production activity (down by 18.9% year-on-year according to the Istat industrial production index) and turnover (down by 9.7% year-on-year).

“The reflective performance of many major international economies, in Europe and outside the EU, and a geopolitical context that is anything but favourable, which has seen the addition, in addition to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, of another front of instability in the Middle East, have severely penalized footwear exports in 2024”. The “slowdown suffered by many luxury brands, whose development had contributed in recent years to sustaining sector dynamic” also weighed on the sector’s performance, concluded Ceolini.

In terms of markets, EU customers as a whole show fewer negative dynamics than non-EU customers. Overall, in the first nine months of the year, exports to the EU as a whole fell by 2.6% in value terms, as compared to the same period of 2023, with exports to France and Germany, the two main European customers, down by 2% and 6.2%, respectively.

The decline was more pronounced in non-EU markets, with exports down by 15.3% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2024. However, nine-month exports to China rose by 1.7% in value and 19% in volume, and to Turkey by 10% in both value and volume. In addition, in value terms, Italian footwear exports to Hong Kong increased by 8.7% and to the United Arab Emirates by 26.3%, despite a moderate decline in volume for both.

Estimating a sectoral turnover the first projections for the full year 2024, Assocalzaturifici points to a slowdown of 9.3% to 13.2 billion euros (almost 1.4 billion less than the previous year), with inevitable effects on business demographics and employment.

This forecast seems to indicate a worse performance than in 2023, when, according to the World Footwear 2024 Yearbook (more information available HERE), both imports and exports declined in volume but increased in value, resulting in record-high average export prices per pair for Italian shoes.

Image Credits: Frederic Christian on Unsplash

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