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Footwear retailers suffer despite UK's growing love of shoes

26 Jan '08
3 min read

"Specialists have fought against the growing competition by opening new stores to fuel sales growth but, with sector profitability sliding, this is compounding their problems," says Verdict Research retail analyst Carol Ratcliffe. "Footwear retailers need to focus on improving sales densities in their existing stores before adding new outlets. While many have already invested in developing new store formats, they need to accelerate these efforts to catch up with the rising standards set by clothing specialists."

Footwear sales are healthy Despite this, competition is also serving to reinvigorate interest in shoes. Volumes have been growing as low price options allow everyone to update their shoe collection more often, while the more frequent exposure to shoe ranges heightens awareness and interest.

Indeed, Verdict Research estimates that the footwear market in the UK grew by 4.6% in 2007 reaching £5,484 million, demonstrating a major improvement on 2006's weak 0.7% growth.

This is the footwear market's fastest rate of growth since 2003. The unseasonably wet summer in 2007 will have also aided the value of footwear sales, with shoes and boots the most sensible purchases, meaning a greater number of higher priced sales. This has been further supported by a degree of trading up on the part of consumers, who can buy better quality or more fashionable products for the same price as they might have bought something simpler or lower quality only a few years ago.

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Verdict Research

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