Footwear Industry Footwear Industry - empirica

Footwear
terms of distribution and brand development. Or in which they can set up their own
directly controlled network for distribution.
The main market challenges companies will have to cope with and for which e-business
can be a relevant support are:
Shortening the development cycle by co-ordinating all information on marketing
forecasts, design, production scheduling, dispatch and delivery, thereby eliminating
information lag and stock “hand-over” time between each stage of the process.
Improving links between existing and with new manufacturing operations –
especially if outsourced – in order to shorten lead times and to save on
administration and management costs. These new manufacturing operations are
increasingly small batch ones requiring efficient and quick management.
Capturing and analysing information about distribution channels and final
customers in order to adjust marketing and production strategies and enhance
bargaining power vis-à-vis larger customers.
Continuously innovate products and services. Companies seeking for sustainable
success will have to continuously innovate. To compete on the highly globalised
and competitive market, however, intangible assets such as creativity must be
supported by the introduction and usage of information processing techniques able
to convey, exploit and manage information to be used for product conception and
design.
2.3 Review of earlier sector studies
Study on the textile, clothing and footwear industry (2004)
e-Business W@tch covered the footwear industry as part of the combined textile, clothing
and footwear industry report published in 2004. The resulting e-Business W@tch Sector
Study (Aug. 2004) 22 presented a comparative analysis on the e-business usage in textile,
on the one hand, and clothing & footwear on the other. This current review highlights
some of that data and in particular the trends, which were found to be relevant to the
footwear sector.
Conservative attitude towards ICT
The report of 2004 concluded that the footwear industry was quite conservative in its
adoption of ICT. Despite a tradition of long-term partnerships, many of its members
appeared reluctant to share information and to open up their information systems. Other
features identified as delaying the process of incorporating e-business in everyday
practice were the typical micro/small size of the vast majority of the operators, the very
limited degree of previous computerisation, and the diverse quality of access to ICT,
which inhibits the process of integration.
22
Available at www.ebusiness-watch.org ('resources')
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