SATRA

SATRA publishes this edition of World Footwear Markets after witnessing 100 years of technological change in the footwear industry. During this time, mass footwear manufacture has found its way to China and hasn't really left. In 1919, the first Chinese rubber shoes were successfully produced in Guangdong. Towards the end of the 1970s, because of cheap labour and a ready supply of raw materials, the Chinese footwear industry developed rapidly. During the 1990s there was an explosive growth in shoe production in China establishing the country as the world's footwear manufacturing centre. Arguably, this peaked in 2014 at 14.3 billion pairs. Annual production in 2017 is estimated at just under 13 billion pairs. This is still 60 per cent of the entire global output which means that China remains without an equal in terms of the number of shoes produced every year.