Germany’s main shoe industry association, HDSL, whose members include many famous names in sports and outdoor footwear, reported half-year growth in 2021, but secretary general, Manfred Junkert, says there are still difficult challenges ahead.

It’s usually a little below 400 million pairs for the full year, so it must be 200 million or something close to that. 

This is compared to the problematic year of 2020, but it’s good for there to be growth. You have said 12.5% is a small figure but it doesn’t look like a small figure. It looks very good.

It looks like a big figure, but to be realistic, that’s only a half-truth. It’s 12.5% because we have the sporting goods industry. Sports, safety shoes, slippers and children’s shoes are all segments that are very good at the moment but things are much more complicated for typical streetwear shoes. There have been no concerts, no business events and people haven’t been going out. Because they were staying at home, there was no need for more traditional types of shoes. If our figures focused only on that segment, there would be a minus before them, not a plus.

Even so you have made the point that there still has to be progress to recover the levels of 2019,  before covid. What will need to happen to make it possible to recover those 2019 figures? What do you hope to see?

Well, first of all, consumers like to go out. If normal life comes back and people can again go to concerts, to discos or whatever they want to do, they will want to have new shoes and new outfits for that. That’s how it used to be. And of course, we hope the shops won’t have to stay closed any more. If they are open throughout the year, if manufacturers have nice shoes, and if people are ready to buy new stuff, we can hope for a bounce-back effect. Maybe if people have gone a whole year without buying single pair of new shoes they might buy two pairs now.

Did you witness some of your member companies trying to make good use of the time when they were quieter to think of new ideas?

Yes, absolutely. Everybody did, but in many different ways. First of all, in their collections. They created new styles for what they think demand will be in the future, thinking about new segments and asking themselves if they needed to be more original in some fields. And many companies also worked on becoming more digital. Shops were closed and companies saw the importance of having an e-commerce business or of becoming better in that field. Our members also spent time thinking about and working on sustainability. They took time to think about new materials. 

Was it a surprise to you that this work on sustainability did not stop important footwear brands from being taken to task for greenwashing?

Well, sustainability covers a wide range of topics and I suppose there is always a danger that companies will use bits of the information for greenwashing. What we think is that it’s essential to give good guidance to the consumer and to the whole of the footwear industry about what is sustainable. We expect new labels to come out of all of this.

What does this say about the supposed benefits of an extended global supply chain, with all the added levels of complexity and the increased difficulty in managing all of that?

Well, I can give you a personal opinion. We have had a discussion in Germany and across Europe about the proposed supply chain law for transparency and good conscience. It’s been in force in Germany since July. Companies have to be able to prove that everything in their supply chains is correct, in social terms and environmental terms. Politicians seem to think that, with this, they can solve all of the world’s problems. But if you produce footwear, and you are talking about 400 million pairs a year in Germany, it’s a lot of material for which to make sure you have the correct documentation. With companies being forced now to have all this documentation, it is better for them to have fewer suppliers. If you have only a few, two or three, it’s easier to document what they are doing. If you have a large number of suppliers, this will be more complicated. On the other hand, if you have just one supplier and now, in the time of coronavirus, that supplier fails, you will be out of business. But companies are almost being forced to put all their eggs in one basket because, under the new law, that means less documentation.

This leads us to the question of the difficulties that we are now witnessing with the transportation of goods, the closure of ports, increased costs and the possibility of product shortages, with consumers perhaps not being able to buy all the things they might want to buy at Christmas time. Is this, on the face of it, good news for those among your member companies who are still manufacturing in Germany or in other parts of Europe? And if there are benefits for those member companies in this situation, is there a way of making that benefit permanent rather than just a temporary fix before everyone goes back to the old ways when the shipping problem is sorted?

Basically, it would be logical to argue like this, but even if you are producing in Europe, you have special parts that come from all over the world. If one part is missing, you cannot finish your product, your shoe. If the eyelets are missing, you cannot finish the shoe. This has happened in automotive with the chips.

If one of your member companies comes to you and asks for your advice on how to avoid the same problem happening to them as has happened in automotive, what would your advice be?

I would tell them that, no matter whether they produce in Germany, somewhere else in Europe or in Asia, they have to make sure they can source all the parts they need to make their shoes. It’s not a matter of where you are producing. You need all the components, and that’s the difficulty. 

Secretary general of HDSL, Manfred Junkert, at Micam in September 2021.
Credit: Micam

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