FOOTWEAR STILL THE PREMIUM SECTOR

The Government was still relying on footwear as one of the premium sector which was expected to pour in more income for the state’s cashbox. Considering its significant role as contributor to the nation’s forex reserves, the Government was doing all they could to jack up performance of national export of footwear. Various measures has been taken among others improving product quality, product’s design, and expanding market to non-traditional destinations like East Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.

Chairman of the Indonesia Shoes Association (Aprisindo) Eddy Wijanarko in Jakarta on Friday (13/07/2012) underscored that in the future national footwear business would not only rely on traditional markets like the USA, Uni Europe and Japan. Eddy rated that the access to the three markets was overcrowded with many competing countries trying to rush in like: China, Vietnam, India and Thailand. “If we solely depend on the three countries it would be hard to step up performance in shoe exporting” Eddy was quitted as saying.

Eddy admitted that the USA was today still the main export destination state for Indonesia’s footwear products. Date of Aprisindo showed that national export of footwear in 2011 was posted at USD 3.3 billion. Of that amount America contributed at least 30% of total export total export of footwear or nearly USD 1 billion. America’s contribution to Indonesia’s forex reserves through footwear trading was 25% - 30% per year. Eddy disclosed that America’s contribution was still less compared to that of the Uni Europe countries. Indonesia’s export destination countries in UE were England, Holland, Germany, Italy and Belgium, the total contribution of which was 40% per annum, while the rest were spread out world wide.

According to Eddy, Indonesia’s export dependency on the USA and UE who contributed at least 5% per annum, indicated that the Government was not serious enough in harnessing non traditional markets. The Government was rated as not being serious in diversifying export to new potential destination countries. In the present global economic circumstance, Eddy was urging the Government to launch marketing promotion campaigns to the said countries. “We wish the Government would act as Indonesia’s marketing agency to aggressively launch marketing campaign abroad through exhibitions or trade missions” Eddy remarked.

Beside making market diversification, according to Eddy, the Government must also encourage shoemakers to exercise diversification of products. He believed that Indonesia had been producing too many sports shoes and less interested in producing fashion shoes (non sports shoes). And yet according to Eddy, competition in sports shoes industry in the export market was extremely tight. For that matter Eddy felt it was time for the Government to collaborate with associations in producing fashion shoes.

Eddy also reminded domestic shoe producers not to be monotonous in designing shoes. He rated that monotonous design was one of the reasons why local shoes lost competition against imported shoes although in terms of quality local shoes were much better than imported shoes. Consumers, according to Eddy, generally tend to follow designs that kept abreast with global trends. Moreover with female consumers, the trendiness factor was most important factor in choosing shoes. Eddy was hoping that local shoe producers could follow consumers’ preferences. Thereby efforts to once again command over the domestic shoes market could bring results” Eddy underscored. 

Business News - July 18, 2012