Strong expectations for the health of footwear businesses

The sentiment in the industry improved slightly in the last semester. Most of the respondents to this edition’s WF Business Conditions Survey believe that the health of their businesses in the next six months is going to be either strong (53%) or very strong (15%), whereas only 6% expect it to be weak. These results outperform the ones from the last edition of the survey.

A note of optimism is in fact the characteristic of the general outlook of the latest edition of the World Footwear Business Conditions. Most of our panel members believe that, over the next six months, the quantity of footwear sold will increase moderately along with prices, which are expected to increase strongly. Naturally, the outlook regarding the evolution of prices may be reflecting the expected impact of increasing production costs.

As in the previous editions, we also questioned our panel of experts about their expectations regarding the growth of footwear consumption and almost half of the respondents believe that in the current year footwear consumption will grow between 1.5% and 5%, but more of them believe that growth will be stronger than that rather than weaker.

On average, our experts expect a growth of 5.9% in the consumption of footwear, in pairs, in 2022, globally.

 

Contents

Executive Summary
Business Context
Health of the Business
Employment Level
Prices
Quantity
Difficulties
Retail Channels
Average Growth of Footwear Consumption to Reach 5.9%
Footwear Prices Expected to Increase
War on Ukraine to Negatively Impact Footwear
About Survey

About the Survey

In 2019 the World Footwear has created the World Footwear' expert 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 then to redistribute such information in a way it will provide an accurate overview of the situation of the global footwear industry.

The sixth edition of this online survey was conducted during the month of April 2022. We have obtained 108 valid answers, 48% coming from Europe, 22% from Asia, 14% and 9% from North and South America, respectively, and 7% from Africa. Half of respondents are involved in footwear manufacturing (manufacturers) or footwear trade and distribution (traders) – 32% and 18%, respectively – and the other half in other footwear-related activities, including trade associations (20%), consultancy, journalism, etc.