São Paulo – More and more, Arab countries are sure to be there whenever a footwear industry fair is taking place in Brazil. They are also mainstays in the speeches and plans of Brazilian shoe manufacturers looking to expand internationally. At Francal, the footwear and accessories exhibition running until next Thursday (9th) in São Paulo, there are Arab importers, and there are companies ready to sell more to them.
Bhavesh Shah, who manages the UAE-based Landmark Group’s brands, was placing orders at the Brazilian conglomerate Paquetá’s stand at Francal last Tuesday (7th). Landmark runs franchises for the Paquetá-owned brand Dumond in the Middle East, and Shah oversees them. He buys from 35,000 to 40,000 Dumond shoe pairs every six months. Besides Dumond, Paquetá owns the Capodarte and Lilly’s Closet brands.
The Landmark group runs a large operation in the Gulf, with 2,000 stores in the region, plus India and Egypt. The stores are franchises from different parts of the world, as well as Shoe Mart own stores. At Francal, Shah praised Brazilian shoes, saying they have good quality, design, comfort, and structure.
Apart from the Landmark group, Francal has invited other importers from the UAE and from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon and Sudan. They were called in by the organizers as part of a group of 200-plus importers, with lodging paid for.
Many of the exhibiting brands at the expo have good expectations regarding exports, and rely on the Arab market for their growth projections. At company Jorge Bischoff’s stand, the executive in charge of exports to third-party brands, Glaci Harnwell, said she expects exports to go from 20% to 30% of total output this year.
She also said the US dollar hike has made the brand’s prices more competitive. Shoes by Jorge Bischoff get shipped out to Africa, Latin America and Europe. In the Arab world, the company sells to Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and it has the contacts to sell to Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt, Tunisia, and Kuwait. Jorge Bischoff caters to boutique shops, and Harnwell claims the products match Arabs’ tastes, since they are of great quality and feature stones, shiny details, colors, and combinations of different materials.
Raphaella Booz, another exhibiting company at Francal, expects to see a 15% increase in exports in 2015. Marcos Vinicius Booz da Silva, from the Export Department, claims the economy is export-friendly right now, and that Raphaella Booz plans on investing primarily in countries that trade in US dollars, which the Middle East does. Silva explains that some countries’ currencies have depreciated heavily in relation to the US dollar, just like Brazil’s real has, and this makes for not-so-advantageous prices.
The company exports mainly to Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Colombia, as well as the United States and Southern Europe. In the Arab world, it sells to the UAE and Lebanon, but is in talks to serve other countries in the region. Silva ponders that in case the dollar remains at current levels or climbs some more, exports could soar.
The Brazilian Footwear Manufacturers Association (Abicalçados) has released positive UAE sales figures. It said Brazil shipped 946,800 pairs of shoes to the Arab country from January through May this year, a 33% increase over Jan-May 2014.
Abicalçados chairman Heitor Klein told ANBA that the interest shown by Arab markets in Brazilian shoes came as a surprise to the industry. Arab countries are not among the targets of Abicalçados’ international promotion project with the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) for 2015 and 2016, but Klein believes this will change in the next stage. “The manufacturers are calling for actions targeting the region,” he says.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
