São Paulo – Brazilian companies taking part in the Brazilian Footwear program have chosen Saudi Arabia as one of the destinations to promote their products in 2019 and 2020. Brazilian Footwear is organized by the Brazilian Footwear Industry Association (Abicalçados) and the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) and aims to internationalize Brazilian brands.
Every two years the program selects countries to work upon to enter their markets. For the next two-year period, the companies have chosen to continue their promotion actions in the United States, France, United Kingdom and China, and have selected three new countries to focus on: Peru, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the only Arab country in the group.
“The business owners brought up Saudi Arabia as a desired and interesting market for them,” said Roberta Ramos, project manager at Abicalçados. The manager says that the challenges of selling to Saudi Arabia were much discussed during selection. Ramos believes Saudi was chosene because business owners need help in order to understand and develop that market.
Roberta Ramos shares that the Brazilian Footwear business owners said, during the selection process, that the Saudi market has potential. Among the entrepreneurs taking part in the program, there are those that have exported to Saudi Arabia in the past, lost ground and now want to retake the market and those that haven’t yet sold their footwear in the country. Brazilian Footwear members account for 80% of Brazilian footwear exports, according to Ramos.
Although Brazil already sells footwear to Saudi Arabia, sales are not very strong. Abicalçados numbers show that from January to April this year saw 170,000 pairs of shoes shipped to Saudi, down 58% from a year ago. Revenue reached USD 1.29 million, down 61%.
But Abicalçados believes the outlook for sales to Saudi Arabia is good. “When we begin working on a market, exports to that market tend to start growing,” said Ramos. She explains that this was the case with China, which was the target of Brazilian Footwear in 2018-2019, and will remain so in 2020-2021.
Since Saudi Arabia is a new market for Brazilian Footwear, work will begin with a survey of the market’s potential. After that, a team will travel to Saudi Arabia to look into the market by talking to players, influencers, public relations people, etc. Finally, a commercial promotion strategy will be outlined.
Brazilian Footwear target markets were selected in meetings during leather and footwear industry show Salão Internacional do Couro e do Calçado (SICC) last week in Gramado, Rio Grande do Sul.
Translated by Sérgio Kakitani & Gabriel Pomerancblum
