Ups and downs for Portugal’s footwear throughout 2018: volumes of pairs of shoes went up, but revenues dropped anyway. In fact, after an eight-year-long business growth, exports have decreased, in terms of value, by 2.65%, therefore reaching 1,9 billion euros. According to Apiccaps, Portugal’s association of footwear manufacturers, a slowdown in sales and shopping proved to be crucial all over Europe: in fact, looking at some competitor countries, namely Spain and Italy, such negative trend was pretty much the same. Yet, as for volumes, in 2018 sales increased by 1.54% (84.296 million pairs of shoes), according to data provided by Portugal’s National Institute of Statistics. Consequently, the average price of exported shoes dropped by 4.12%, down to 22.59 euros. According to Luis Onofre, president of Apiccaps and future chairman of European Cec, such figures mostly depend on the sneakers trend and, subsequently, on cheaper shoes, which are also manufactured by using less valuable materials. Since 2006, exports increased by 39% in terms of volumes and went up by 59% in terms of value, thanks to incentives and public support as well. The Portuguese association emphasized that footwear made in Portugal keeps “doing better” than Italy and Spain. “Since 2010 (until 2017) Portuguese footwear manufacturing went up to 83 million pairs, that is, +34%; in the same period, Spain augmented its production by 7% only (up to 102 million pairs), whereas in Italy, Portugal’s major competitor, production declined by 6%, down to 191 million pairs of shoes”. More specifically, the Bank of Portugal spotlighted the difficult situation Portuguese footwear has been facing over the last years. In their report they pointed out: “The footwear industry’s net capital return amounted to 9% in 2016, therefore decreasing by 2% compared to 2015, for the very first time in the period from 2012 to 2016”.
Portugal’s footwear revenues decrease (-2.65%) in 2018. The good news is that “we are doing better than Spain and Italy”
