It's enough to make even Imelda Marcos blush. Spending on footwear rose to £5.48bn last year, according to figures published yesterday.
It's enough to make even Imelda Marcos blush. Spending on footwear rose to £5.48bn last year, according to figures published yesterday.
However, despite the boom in spending on footwear, traditional shoe shops are struggling to compete against the fashion chains, which took a bigger chunk of the market in 2007.
Overall sales grew by 4.6% over the course of last year, compared to a 0.7% rise the year before. That step-up amounts to the largest in the UK footwear market since 2003, according to Verdict Research, one of the leading market analysts of the UK retail sector.
One of the reasons people bought more shoes during 2007 is that competition between high street stores pushed down prices.
The weather also loaned a helping hand: heavy summer rains were responsible for increased sales of more expensive boots and shoes than is usual for that time of year, Verdict said.
However, traditional shoe shops which sell only footwear had a tough time due to competition from clothing and sportswear stores, the report says. Footwear specialists saw their share of the market drop from 48.3% in 2002 to 41.8% last year.
Meanwhile, clothes shops increased their share of the footwear market, which stood at 29.6% last year, up from 24.4% in 2002.
The high street fashion chain New Look did particularly well, according to Verdict, with a 3.4% share of all footwear spending in the UK.
Clarks still has the largest single share at an estimated 9.7% of spending, followed by Marks & Spencer with a 7.2% share. Sportswear shops also enjoyed an increase in their share of footwear sales, which rose from 13.4% to 16.2%.
Verdict said consumers were benefiting from a more competitive market. It said: "Volumes have been growing, as low-price options allow everyone to update their shoe collection more often, while the more frequent exposure to shoe ranges heightens awareness and interest."
Large-scale clothes chains are also in a better position to weather difficult market conditions than smaller specialist footwear chains, the report claims.
The difficulties facing retailers that sell footwear only were highlighted earlier this week when the high street shoe shop Dolcis went into administration.
The chain shut 32 of its 67 wholly-owned outlets on Monday night, although administrators insisted they still wanted to sell the business as a going concern.
It was bought for just £2.7m in December 2006 by John Kinnaird, a Scottish entrepreneur who made his fortune helping to run the sports retail empire of billionaire Tom Hunter.
However, Mr Kinnaird was unable to turn the business around.
While consumers generally are enjoying the benefits of the intense competition between retailers, there are concerns over the conditions in factories in China and Vietnam where much of the footwear bought in the West is made.
In October last year, 37 workers died in a fire at an unlicensed shoe factory in Putian, an export manufacturing town in south-eastern Fujian province. Putian is a centre of shoe manufacturing in China with more than 3000 footwear factories in the area. In 2006, exports of shoes from the region were worth £1.1bn.
