What you need to know
The footwear market in the UK is estimated to grow by 5.4% in 2016 to reach £10.5 billion as consumer spending on shoes outpaces spend on clothes. The sector is nevertheless seeing slower sales growth due to discounting and as consumers prioritise other areas of spend such as leisure.
The market remains fragmented, with non-specialists including sports stores, clothing retailers and supermarkets all grabbing share from specialist footwear retailers. The fashion-driven footwear retailers such as Schuh and Office, as well as premium retailers such as Kurt Geiger and Dune, are outperforming the market.
Personalisation has become a big trend in the footwear sector, with 29% of women interested in being able to customise their shoes. Giving customers the option to create their own bespoke product provides an opportunity for retailers to encourage people to spend more on shoes and drive sales of full-priced items.
Products covered in this Report
For the purposes of this Report, Mintel has used the following definitions:
The Report looks at purchases of shoes for adults and children through all retail channels – both specialist and non-specialist (eg clothing stores, department stores, sports shops, supermarkets, internet pureplayers, catalogue retailers, markets, garden centres etc).
This Report covers the following footwear categories:
All footwear including trainers.
Excluded
Slippers
Specialist performance shoes.
We use ONS (Office for National Statistics) consumer spending on footwear data in this Report, which represents purchases of shoes through all retail channels – both specialist and non-specialist (eg clothing stores, department stores, sports shops, supermarkets, internet pureplayers, catalogue retailers, markets, garden centres etc).
There is a grey area between sports shoes and casual footwear although sports trainers are classified in the government’s consumer spending data under the footwear rather than the sportswear category. The latter in terms of sports shoes is largely confined to specialist performance shoes such as football boots, athletic spikes or ski boots.
