Identifying Gaps in the Indian Footwear Industry

Identifying Gaps in the Indian Footwear Industry : The Current Scenario & The Challenges.

Nowadays, not only footwear but almost the entire market in India is more or less dependent on three main factors contributing towards sales generation:

• Seasonal
• Occasional
• Festive

India witnesses three different seasons annually which helps the industry to allocate different types of footwear to the customers accordingly.

For instance:

• Summers: open sandals, slippers, ballerinas, casual loafers (fabric) etc.
• Winters: boots, closed shoes with warm lining inside, leather shoes, warm fabric shoes etc.
• Monsoon: flip-flops, compressed rubber soles, PVC footwear etc.

New marketing strategies such as celebrity endorsements, promotional offers, and launch parties have proven to be very successful in attracting customers’ attention. Also, nowadays one doesn’t find brand loyalty to be as strong as earlier. Competitive pricing has a huge role to play in scouting clients. However, at Artimen we strongly believe in keeping the quality, the style statement, and our after-sales service the highest priorities for our clients to have faith in us for longer term.

It has all come down to how one brands themselves to a larger audience. It depends on the extent to which the brand is visible or available to the customers at their convenience. Besides priding ourselves at the comfort in our products, we at Artimen also train our staff to keep our clients before anything else as a practice and to develop good relations with them so as to attain their brand loyalty.

Even though the flooding of Chinese products in the Indian market – footwear being one of them – has drastically affected the mindset of the majority of customers, causing a shift in the focus from durability and quality to fancy and low-cost products. This has made it very critical for a business to identify the gaps hindering its success rate.

To serve our clients better, we at Artimen support handcrafted shoes which does take longer to create, but then helps us to cater exactly to our clients’ needs, their liking and specifications. We also try eliminating the seasonal factor hampering business growth by making our clients’ choice as our own and make what they would prefer unlike what the season demands of us.

This way, we are never out of stock and never restricted to making shoes for different occasions.

India is also now moving rapidly towards adopting e-commerce into the existing business model, which thereby provides them with another channel of showcasing products to a larger set of audiences (domestic and international). However, compared to the EU and the US, India is still required to educate and spread awareness on online businesses, e-commerce, and m-commerce amongst the country’s vast number of internet users.