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Iran's shoe industry remains weary-footed as nimble neighbor runs over

Business Materials 30 October 2017 10:09 (UTC +04:00)

Tehran, Iran, October 30

By Mehdi Sepahvand – Trend:

The shoe industry in Iran seems to be grappling with a lot of problems, from raw material procurement to copyrights, while its neighbor Turkey is reaching for new heights of the same market.

Gholamhossein Naderi, the owner of one of Iran’s oldest shoemaking companies, told Trend that in the first place, buying raw material is a big issue in the industry.

“Polyurethane is, unfortunately, entirely imported. Formerly we used to import it from Italy, now China, Korea, and Turkey are also there. The fluctuating price of the US dollar has ended up increasing raw material prices at least 50 percent since March this year,” he said.

“You have add to that other expenditure increases, such as wages, insurance, as well as other materials that we have to procure. But in the meantime, we cannot sell our products for the price of last year,” he admitted.

Naderi pointed out that another big problem with the shoe industry in Iran is the lack of successful branding.

“People pay for brands. You would not be able to sell, no matter how good the quality of your products. Branding is very weak here.”

In the meantime, Selim Yenici, the general manager of BiLSAN, a Turkish-based producer of shoe soles, who was in Tehran for marketing, said he had had a very successful business trip.

“There is no producer of this material in Iran. This is my first time in Iran and I already found some promising customers. We made some successful arrangements,” he said.

Yenici said the competitive prices of his products, easy shipment, and lack of rivals will make his company successful in the Iranian market.

Mehran Naderi, the sales manager of Dorpa Shoes, said Iranian manufacturers are having a hard time to survive.

“Even the very big ones are now working at 30 percent of their output capacity. There is no factory right now working at 100 percent,” he said.

“Now Turkish shoe makers are not seeking markets for their finished products in Iran. They are selling their products at good prices elsewhere. They rather come here now to sell us the raw material.”

Naderi said unhealthy rivalry among the domestic producers is also a big pain in the neck of the shoe industry in Iran.

“They do not work toward improvement of quality. If I, as factory A, produce a certain shoe that finds a good market, then factory B will copy that shoe but by cutting some corners in order to be able to sell it at a lower price. And the result is that, since people are not able to know the good product, they pay for the cheaper one. So research and development is not going to pay off."

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