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Home > RUSSIA > Новости
ITALIAN SHOES AT NEW YORK
Rome - (Adnkronos Multimedia) - Focusing on quality, to give a new image to the Italian footwear industry in the mid and medium-high sectors of the market. This is the challenge that many Italian companies in the sector, with the organisational support of the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade - ICE, wanted to take on by participating for the second time, but with a much larger presence, in the Fashion Footwear Association of New York - Ffany, the largest shoe fair on the eastern coast of the United States. Over 30 leading Italian manufacturers of men's, women's and children's shoes, bags, accessories and industrial technology, occupied the show stands, housed in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York from 7 to 9 December 2004.
Italian footwear continues to make significant inroads into the American market, despite the fact that current exchange rates with the dollar tend to penalise European products. According to the statistics produced by the ICE office in New York on the basis of data provided by the United States Department of Commerce, in the first quarter of 2004 Italian shoe exports to the United States reached an overall level of $ 338 million, with a growth of 2.6 percent compared to the same period last year. A positive sign then, which comes after a long period in which Italian shoe exports had been dropping. The Italian footwear industry remains one of the most important in the world and Europe in particular, with an overall turnover in 2003 of € 7.6 billion, 83% of which was achieved on foreign markets. In terms of absolute value, this means an overall production of around 300 million pairs of shoes, 7.7% down on 2002. The markets in which the regression has been strongest have been Europe and the US, where in 2003 Italian sales fell by 16.3%, due above all to a growing failure to compete with goods produced in the Far East.
This led to the decision to give a new boost to the presence of Italian footwear on the US market, starting with an intensive marketing and image campaign which emphasises the quality of Italian shoes in terms of design, durability, materials, and production technology. These are qualities found not only at the higher end of the market, where the image of Italian luxury footwear fears no comparison with products from the east, but also in the mid-and medium-high market range, where Asian, and above all Chinese, producers are offering increasingly dynamic competition.
Ffany, which represents one of the most important events for the American market, thus represented a prime opportunity to set new positive development trends for Italian industry in what continues to be one of the world's most dynamic markets, where the presence of Chinese goods has by now reached levels of 68%, almost pushing the domestic US footwear industry out of the market. Ffany also has unique features in the panorama of American fairs in the sector, insofar as it is organised on two distinct levels, with the New York Shoe Expo - the traditional fair, and the Ffany Collection - in which the individual producers may present their collections in specific showrooms. And the last edition of the show saw around 300 exhibitors and almost 5,000 professional visitors from all over the United States east coast.
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