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Leather Products

The leather-based industry especially leather products industry (footwear, garment, leather goods) is highly fashion oriented.  Moreover, articles made of (genuine or simulated) leather are complementing clothing. Leather products (shoes, garment, leather goods) is important export earner for many developing countries. In many countries leather products export ranks within the first three places in the total export.  Especially the footwear industry’s importance to the national economies in developing countries is underlined by the fact that it is the main contributor to the countries export and – being a labour intensive industry – provides employment to the most vulnerable groups of the society (including a large number of women) in towns and villages where other job opportunities are very scarce.  The most of the leather products and footwear industry is dominated by small- and medium-scale operations. These SMEs lack of design information, product development knowledge, information and educated personnel for applying up-to-date quality assurance techniques and productive technology.  The institutional background is weak in providing necessary services, support and professional training needed for becoming competitive and thus remaining in business (providing/maintaining working opportunities). UNIDO with other institutions and organizations through tailor made technical assistance assisted to up-grade and enhance leather products sector.

This paper elaborates some reasons behind the success of the leather-footwear sector in Italy, also to see how and if the "Italian recipe" can be successfully exported to other Countries.

To this end, this survey breaks down into three main sections:

a) the first part will aim at setting the Italian leather-footwear system against the more general national industrial system. In fact, some elements (the prominence of small and medium companies, its “district” nature) in general are the resources of the Italian system;

b) the second part deals more specifically with the structure of the leather-footwear system in particular, its present situation, its main points of strength and weakness, and anticipating its lines of development;

c) the third part, finally, includes some considerations about the possibility of exporting the Italian model to other countries.

 

Paper was presented during the 13th Session of the UNIDO Leather Panel Meeting in Bologna (October 1997)

The objective of this survey is to provide a review of domestic and export trading patterns inside footwear business and to give recommendations to developing countries for using appropriate trading strategies and channels. The focus is on footwear marketing and sale. The structure of this paper follows the development we have seen inside sale and marketing of footwear. The paper refers from the beginning less than 150 years ago with local supply of footwear up to day where footwear has become an important business on the global market place. The development has been different from one continent to the other, but it is important to realize that the consumer has become a powerful player. To know and to acknowledge the customers wishes is and still will be a key factor. The development has created challenges. A lot of new markets have come and the competition is growing every day. The paper describes the most important challenges. Challenges, the footwear business has to be aware of. The paper tries to give an answer to the questions the challenges bring.

In market economies, specifically within (the present global) competitive market conditions actual performance of businesses is measured by the (international) market itself: efficient operations remain in business, produce profit and have potential to develop. In case of productive sectors of the economy, namely the agriculture, the industry, the trade and services such assessment having a post-facto character carries the risk of being late, i.e. it may jeopardize the business itself if it does not have sufficient resources to take corrective actions. Specifically assessment of industrial entities such as (sub)sectors, companies and production units plays an important role for governments and managements as its – timely obtained – results enable decision makers to initiate necessary actions.
The above considerations triggered the preparation of this study. In order to demonstrate practical applicability and usefulness of benchmarking, revealing good manufacturing practices and how thy can serve performance assessment in the industry, the paper is focusing – as an example – on footwear manufacturing and trade.

This paper was presented during the 15th UNIDO Leather Panel and later successfuly used in UNIDO TA to benchmark footwear sector and companies.

The present report provides production ratios of solid wastes in leather, footwear and other leather products manufacture and analyse why such wastes are produced and analyses possible solutions in order to reduce the quantity of waste, or to recycle them. 

The report was prepared by C.T.C. for the 14th UNIDO Leather Panel session.

UNIDO Shoe Industry Certificate Course Footwear LeatherPanel 1985

The Footwear Industry Certificate/Diploma Course was developed by the UNIDO Leather Unit's staff, its experts and consultants in 1985. The material was made available as training aid nad given, fully or partly, as hand-out for students and trainees.

The main objective of this survey presented during 14th UNIDO Leather Panel in Zlin/Czech Republic is two fold: to clarify actual differences in direct manufacturing costs of footwear production in selected countries and to review the proportion of different cost components/structures in the case of comparable labour intensive products such as footwear and/or its upper. As styles vary considerably (mainly due to fashion and market demands) and systems of costing used in different parts of the world are far from being uniform, a common scheme of costing had to be established. This was based on more or less standard types of shoe styles and on a suggested, simple cost computation algorithm.

The survey is intended to cover the environmental impacts and health issues of the footwear and leather goods industries with particular reference to solid waste, air pollution and chemicals. The review covers quantification of solid wastes, technology available for reducing environmental impact and health risks and legislation. It was presented during th 13th UNIDO Leather Panel, Bologna November 1997.

The requirements of leather users and consumers need a definition of each of the properties and means to control raw materials, processes and the quality of finished products, as well as of leather articles. Quality and quality control play an important role and are the corner stones on which the good reputation of leather, tanners, leather products manufacturers and traders are built. As the distinction between countries supplying essentially raw materials and countries producing leathers on an industrial scale becomes less clear, the developing countries, once exporters solely of raw hides and skins, are encountering growing pressure to improve the quality of their emi-processed and finished leathers and of products made of leather. Publications were presented during the 12th UNIDO Leather Panel held in Teheran/Iran (1995).

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