retail buyer’s guide
RETAIL BUYER’S GUIDE
S K AT E S H O E S F W 22
VANS
Skateboarding’s popularity is still blooming with a surge in participation around the world thanks to the Olympics amongst other things. We take a look into what skate shoe brands will be offering in the coming season with our Retail Buyer’s Guide for Skate Shoes FW22/23 by Source Skateboard Editor Dave Morgan.
After another turbulent year navigating Covid-19’s twists and turns, skateboarding continues to be a driving force through the strangeness. Cariuama’s Global Head of Public Relations, Michelle Katz has noticed that “the coronavirus pushed consumers to explore individual activities in order to stay active during quarantine. Consumers have looked towards sports like skateboarding as a result.” Emanuel Labadie, Marketing Manager at DC noted that “the development of the practice of skateboarding and its democratisation plays in favour of a development of the business in spite of the complicated times due to Covid.” With a lot of trade happening through E-commerce and online shopping, brands are still trying to remain relevant through adapting their marketing strategies more to online presence, however with shops now being open customers are able to physically shop for shoes once more. It does seem with the general consensus that the market is better than last year - with things beginning to normalise. Bas Jansen, Senior sales and marketing manager EMEA at Etnies and Emerica said “skateboarding is firing on all cylinders right now and demand is high for both hard goods and footwear. We have seen very strong growth for SP22 and we feel this will continue for the rest of 2022.” Philippe Clarisse, VP Europe for Globe spoke of the hardwoods boom giving them a good trend on their skate shoes: “We can see this phenomenon with the sales of our Vincent Milou Surplus shoe for example - the result of Vincent at the Olympics strongly favoured the demand and the sell-through of this style.”
“Skateboarding is firing on all cylinders right now and demand is high for both hard goods and footwear.” Bas Jansen, Etnies and Emerica Shipping costs and delays are still the two big issues a lot of brands are struggling with, but as Simone Satragno, Marketing manager at C1rca said: “If every brand is suffering from the same issues, the problem is not as severe.” With “freight costs increasing by at least 5 times”, as Ronnie Mizzo, CEO of Fallen footwear said, shipments of shoes from Asia, alongside pretty much everything else, is still causing major disruptions in the industry. With the hope that the supply can again align with the demand for skate shoes and hardware, there is light at the end of the tunnel. General Manager at Osiris, Brian Barber, predicts that “we will continue to see supply chain issues from Asia and other regions until at least Mid-2022. We are trying our best to have minimal price increases, but this will continue to be a factor for everyone with the overall inflation happening from freight, labour and material cost increases.” Francisco Javier Aguirre, system and concept inventor of NC SHOES has a different way of dealing with issues, intending to “avoid the Covid manufacturing chaos delays with the creation of our own structured assembly line in all the process, from 0 to the finished product.” 31
