Industry news

Estimating the size of the SA shoe market

Estimates of the size of the SA athletic footwear market vary from 9-m pairs sold per annum, to 14-m or even 16-17-m pairs sold — depending on how strong the individual believes the independent market is.

Some estimators will say there are no independents left; while others will say that about 40% of footwear sales go to independents. There are also brands who mainly sell to independents. While crosstrainers, casual and running shoes are strong sellers in chain stores, teamsport boots are strong sellers in independent stores, especially in rural areas catering for schools and clubs.

Another problem is the nature of our sports market — one store will, for instance, mainly sell rugby boots, while another will concentrate on soccer boots. One Cape Town store even reports that hockey sales outstrip all other team boot sales. Here, again estimates about the market share of the different sporting codes differ.

We got estimates of the percentage sales of each sports segment from two expert sources — and as can be seen, there is a big difference in how they see the market:

Both estimators say that the sales of running/fitness walking shoes are considerably higher than soccer — although the BMI surveys, for example, show that many more South Africans play soccer than run. But, the higher running shoe sales could be due to the fact that runners have to replace their footwear more often.

According to the feedback we got from retailers (see boot article) there is not one brand that is absolute king in all team sports. In some stores one brand is favoured, while the customers in another area prefer another brand — which would explain how it is possible for more than 40 athletic footwear brands to survive in our relatively small market. And that is not counting the many athleisure brands also stocked by sport & leisure retailers.

For years the shoe counts at the Two Oceans and Comrades marathons served as barometers of the relative brand strengths among long-distance runners. But, some brands and retailers have now been calling for an audit of the figures. They are concerned that when the count is based on the brand name entered by runners when registering, this could become slanted when incentives are offered. They are also concerned about the high number of other brands recorded (more than 5% in the Comrades) and ask if this could maybe be due to misspelling of brand names on a form? Some brand distributors have also counted vastly different numbers of shoes worn from the official figures.

While retailers selling footwear in America or Europe can obtain detailed statistics about market share per brand and sales of even the most obscure sport category, most SA retailers have to base their footwear orders on gut feel. There is a company that currently tracks athletic footwear sales based on till sales, but this data very much depends on the number of retailers who are willing to install the softwear (free) that enable them to track sales. It stands to reason: the larger the sample of information, the more accurate the figures.