Footwear: in a context of weak global sales, the presence of markets undergoing structural growth

World trade data, recently updated to the second quarter of 2025 and available in the Quarterly World Trade Datamart, confirm the difficulties facing international footwear sales¹: the first half of the year showed a new - albeit moderate - Year-over-Year decline in global footwear exports (-1.6% in euro terms), following the -1.3% average for 2024.
Compared to the peak at the end of 2022, the reduction in global footwear exports is around 10.6 percentage points when measured in euros (and -12.3% when measured at constant prices).

Footwear:
which segments and markets can sustain growth?

The economic picture for international footwear sales therefore appears to be in a phase of prolonged weakness. For exporting companies in this industry, it appears to be extremely strategic to identify the segments and markets that can support revenue growth.

With the recent update of the Market Selection-ExportPlanning tool, a new sector indicator called "Import Development Stage" has been introduced. This indicator can classify each country into one of the three phases of the import life cycle for a specific product: Latency, Growth, and Saturation².
This indicator is particularly useful for companies interested in expanding, diversifying, and optimizing their export destinations, as it allows them to identify those markets where imports of a given product are in a phase of structural growth.

The table below highlights the Footwear industry' segments with the largest number of markets experiencing import growth.

Footwear:
Number of Growing Markets and their Value of Imports

Above all, the case of casual shoes with rubber³ stands out, with 43 international markets in the Growth phase⁴, for a total associated value of almost 4.5 billion euros in imports.
In particular, the role of the Chinese market should be highlighted, with imports in this segment reaching a new all-time high in the most recent quarter, at levels almost double those of just two years earlier.

Other segments of the Footwear industry with a high number of international growth markets and a significant total associated import value are:

• tennis shoes: 41 growth markets⁵, for an associated value of over 1.4 billion euros;
• slippers: 35 growth markets⁶, for an associated value of over 2.2 billion euros;
• sports shoes: 35 growth markets⁷, for an associated value of 343 million euros;
• casual shoes with uppers of leather: 24 growth markets⁸, for a associated value of 769 million euros.

Last but not least, it is worth highlighting the uppers and their parts⁹ segment, which - despite being a niche in the Footwear industry - features 32 markets in the growth phase¹⁰, for an associated value of 451 million euros.

Conclusions

The high uncertainty of the international economic scenario is particularly evident in the footwear industry, whose global sales (measured by exports from a sample of over 70 declaring countries¹⁰) have shown slightly negative trends for approximately two years.

As this article documents, the use of the Import Development Stage indicator can, however, highlight the greatest growth opportunities even in industries — such as Footwear — characterized by a highly selective economic climate.
In particular, the usefulness of this indicator is evident in identifying the most dynamic components in terms of product segments, i.e., those characterized by a significant number of growth markets, and the related most significant growth markets in terms of import value.