São Paulo – Renewed for two more years, the program Brazilian Footwear, a partnership between the Brazilian Footwear Industry Association (Abicalçados) and the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil), has selected the United Arab Emirates as one of the key markets for the 2017-2018 period – along with China/Hong Kong, Colombia, United States, France and the United Kingdom.
In effect, this means that the efforts of the program are focused in encouraging exports of Brazilian footwear to these countries. “The UAE was always part of the project, but never actively,” explains Roberta Ramos, project manager at Abicalçados. “We conducted an in-depth study on the market in the last few years and now we will focus actively on it.”
According to Ramos, the Arabs are not very interested in fairs and showrooms: they want to know the plants and talk to the exporters. Thus, the efforts will focus on the buyer project – a local company is already searching for potential clients.
“One of our missions visited the country in May to, among other things, search for matchmaking, public relations and logistics companies [in case fairs or showrooms were to be hosted]. The matchmaking and public relations companies were hired in the second half of the year and are already working,” said the manager.
Studies conducted by Brazilian Footwear identified that the United Arab Emirates, in addition to being consumers, are used as a distribution market by Brazilian footwear to reach other countries in the region. Another point raised by the program is that it won’t be necessary to focus too much on niche products, since in Dubai, for instance, clients arrive from all over the world.
“A large part of the consumer base in Dubai is made of expatriates, so the footwear is not only for the Arabs. Of course that niche models, such as men’s leather sandals, for instance, deserve a great deal of attention, but the client base is diversified,” she explains.
Ramos said that visits to buyer projects will be organized based on customer demand. “We want to take the clients whenever they want, observing his time for purchasing.” There is also a project in the plans for 2018 of taking export managers of Brazilian plants to the United Arab Emirates, aiming to form closer ties. “But we haven’t defined the model just yet.”
Brazilian Footwear will receive a total of BRL 36.46 million in investments to be used in the 2017-2018 time period.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
