Shoe retailers and manufacturers in Germany are struggling with increasing competition from Asian shopping portals. “Temu and Shein are flooding Germany with cheap shoes that are mostly of poor quality, and some of the goods are also harmful to health,” said Rolf Pangels, General Manager of the Textile, Shoes and Leather Goods Trade Association (BTE), at the “Shoes” trade fair in Düsseldorf.

The association is calling for effective controls and fair competition. “If the activities of such platforms are not stopped, there will be further bankruptcies in the shoe trade,” warned Pangels.

In the first half of the year, many shoe retailers in Germany closed their doors again. According to estimates by the BTE, the number of stores has fallen by around 800 to around 8,750 since the beginning of the year. This includes the closure of stores belonging to the Reno and Görtz chain stores, which went bankrupt last year. The number of stationary shoe specialists has also recently continued to fall. According to the association, the companies are not only closing because of bankruptcies, they are often unable to find successors.

One in six shoe retailers rates the business situation as good

In the first half of the year, despite the increase in prices, retailers made two percent less sales than in the same period last year. Adjusted for prices, the loss is likely to be even higher. The reasons for this are the weak consumer sentiment and the bad weather in May and June, said Pangels. After a good start to the year, the shops suffered a “painful double-digit drop in sales” in these months.

Shoe retailers also see rising purchasing, personnel and energy costs as a major problem. They also complain that city centers are becoming less attractive. The outlook is pessimistic: more than every second retailer expects lower sales than in 2023, and only 30 percent expect an increase, as an association survey shows. 41 percent rate their business situation as bad, and only 16 percent as good.

The German shoe industry also did less business in the first half of the year. Sales fell by almost 1.2 percent to 1.15 billion euros, and revenue abroad even fell by 11 percent. The managing director of the German Shoe and Leather Goods Industry Association (HDS/L), Manfred Junkert, said: “As politicians continue to fail to improve the economic conditions, the hoped-for recovery in the spring did not materialize.” Junkert also calls for a tougher approach to platforms such as Temu and Shein. They “do not have to fear monitoring of compliance with sustainability standards,” he criticized.

The online retailers Shein and Temu are very popular in Germany. According to an estimate by the BTE, consumers bought around a billion fashion items and shoes from providers such as Shein and Temu in 2023. KiK boss Patrick Zahn recently accused the portals of selling “goods contaminated with pollutants and produced using child labor.” The companies defended themselves against the criticism and pointed to strict controls and safety standards that they demand from their suppliers. Shein stated that it had solved two cases of child labor in its own supply chain in 2023. It pursues “a zero-tolerance policy towards child labor,” it said.