In Spain footwear export has suffered a sudden slowdown. In the first quarter of 2016, Madrid has imported 94 million pairs of shoes (-3.6%) for a value of nearly 8 million euro (+ 4.6%). The average price has gone up as well as the quality of the imported shoes has grown. In the same period Spanish export was of 843 million euro (-3%) and of 46.3 million pairs (-0.5%). Despite these trends, the sector is the only one of Spanish fashion to show a commercial surplus. The decrease in exports is probably due to a too small size of the companies. In fact, when adding up the revenue of the 35 largest Spanish footwear manufacturers, the total is lower than Tempe’s (footwear hub of Inditex-Zara giant), which invoices over one billion euro. It is also low the average number of employees per company. Half of the Spanish footwear companies have in their staff less than 10 employees, which will see their employment contract being renewed. The preliminary contract agreement provides for an increase in salary of 1% in 2016, 1.2% in 2017 and 1.3% in 2018.
Countermand for Spain: export of shoes down, but also down the import (Chinese, especially)
