Following a positive export trend in 2019, all of a sudden Spain’s footwear must face Coronavirus threatening nightmare. What concerns most is shortage of capital assets, which may jeopardize companies’ solvency and access to credits.
Coronavirus deeply hits Spain’s footwear
According to José Monzonìs, president of the Federation of Spanish Footwear Industries (FICE), they will manage to overcome the problems, related to Covid-19 outbreak, in a short term. Yet, should such situation go on like that beyond mid-May, at that point “we will have to deal with solvency problems”. As reported by Modaes, Monzonìs asked Spanish government to set some credit lines alongside specific guarantees to finance again flowing capital assets; on top of that, he requested short-term and mid-term exceptional measures to tackle the surplus issue. “If we keep provisions we manufactured for this season – he pointed out – in our warehouses, we will hardly manage to sell them at a later time”. Finally, the president of FICE criticized the interventions drafted by Spanish government, which is apparently planning to support more actively small enterprises: “Our industry is a cluster: either they take action to help major companies or there will be a knock-on effect as several small enterprises work for the bigger ones”.
2019 results
In 2019, Italy, currently placing second, just behind France, in the footwear export rankings, imported from Spain over 20 million pairs of shoes (+7.8% compared to 2018), therefore spending 337 million euros (+8.9% compared to 2018). The average price was 16.8 euros per pair. Italy considerably contributed to Spain’s overall export, which amounted to 155.7 million pairs and reached 2.68 billion euros, in terms of value. Compared to 2018, exports of Spanish shoes increased by 2.3% in terms of volumes and rose by nearly 1% in terms of value.
From Rome to Madrid
In 2019, Italy’s export towards Spain decreased: 8.4 million pairs of shoes (-14.9% compared to 2018); revenues amounted to 269.4 million euros (-1.3%). The average price was 32 euros per pair. Italy is the third best footwear supplier in Spain’s market, much behind China and Vietnam, which went up, in terms of value, by 16.8% and 17.1% respectively.
In the picture, a Spanish shoe model (picture taken from carminashoemaker.com)
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