Small and medium-sized enterprises out of shoe exports

São Paulo-despite the growth of exports of footwear, the benefits are concentrated in a small slice of the industry. While the major manufacturers advance abroad, small and medium-sized are getting out of the game.
"Living a movement to strengthen larger companies in the international market," says the business intelligence consultant of Brazilian footwear industries Association (Abicalçados) and professor in the graduate program in economics at Unisinos, Souad.
According to him, the currency issue comes helping companies meet overseas sales an alternative to their products in relation to the internal market. However, Lélis notes that smaller factories are losing this possibility, due to the economic crisis, which reduced the capacity to invest in productivity, innovation capacity and development of new products. "These companies working on the edge and are not able to keep up with the increased demand," says he.
The IEMI consulting-market intelligence projects 936,200,000 production of peers this year, a high of 3% compared to 2016. However, the amount is less than the production of 2014, when it came to 1.018 billion pairs. "The industry still hasn''t managed to recover the lost space in the internal market", stated the Director of the IEMI, Marcelo Prado. "In this scenario [to fall], small and medium-sized suffer more," he adds.
On the other hand, Abicalçados reports that, between January and June, 59,360,000 pairs were shipped, an increase of 2.5% as compared to the same interval last year. Revenue from exports in the period totaled $ $528,800,000, an increase of 17%-pulled, above all, by 15% in average prices high.
The Chief Executive of Abicalçados, Hector Klein, says that the big industries have more ability to access the international market, which requires an additional sophistication in terms of commercial involvement and productive structure-something more restrictive to the small and medium footwear industry. According to him, however, there are important examples of small businesses that produce in smaller quantities, but they sell with high added value, participating in the incentive program to export Brazilian Footwear.
The Director of Focal length, Gustavo Campos, consulting in footwear, assessed that the domestic recession scenario has damaged the competitiveness and reduced the profitability of the companies. His calculations, about ten brands concentrate approximately 50% of sales. "The way for the industry is to invest in production and strengthening the brand."
Sneakers
While SMEs suffer to win market share, the big companies should snap up more space, especially abroad. The main one is the Alpargatas, which came to be controlled by Itaúsa (Itaú investments holding company) and the Cambuhy/Brazil Warrant (investment arms of the Moreira Salles family), in an operation that moved R $3.5 billion.
"It''s a new group, with more time on the market, financial experience and entrepreneurial spirit, landing on the Sneakers," says the analyst of Eleven Financial, Giovana Scottini. On Friday (14), in your first rally after the acquisition, itasa reported that wants to expand the international presence of Havaianas-flagship brand company. The focus will extend the reach of the company, particularly in the United States.
"The Havaianas is a textbook example of international insertion of a basic product, that if transformed into a high value-added product," says Klein. Only the international business of sandals add up to 58 percent of Alpargatas''s recipe.