Market Overview

The domestic shoes and footwear retail market for FY2023 was estimated at 1,226.5 billion yen by retail amount, 109.5% of the size of the previous year. After the COVID-19 viruses degraded to class 5 under the Infectious Diseases Control Law, people’s lives have overall back to normal to the pre-pandemic status and footfall at specialty stores and department stores have returned. Added with increased inbound demand, the market size has risen by 9.5% YoY, though failing to reach the FY2019 market size before COVID. When observing the market by item, the market for sport shoes (including sneakers) has grown exponentially to occupy 57.7% of the market ratio, as casual wear has widespread even in business attire. Sneaker-like products or functional footwear have shown strong sales both in men’s and women’s shoes, while shoes that adopt “ashiiku”, i.e., the shoes to encourage growth of feet, have increased sales in children’s shoes.

Noteworthy Topics

Companies in Shoes and Footwear Strives to Work on Environmental Issues, with Adoption of Environmentally Considerate Materials Prominent

Currently, leading companies in the domestic shoes and footwear market are addressing CO2 emission reduction targets.
Even those companies that do not explicitly set reduction targets develop products that use environmentally friendly materials such as renewable materials derived from PET bottles or LWG-certified leather (leather produced by leather manufacturers certified by the Leather Working Group, an international body to increase sustainability in leather products).
Other than that, the industry works on shoe recycling, donation of trade-in shoes to developing countries, strengthening the resale business, reducing shoe waste by inventory optimization, while also addresses saving of power to consume, installation of solar panels to reduce fossil fuels, to name a few.

Future Outlook

The domestic shoes and footwear retail market size for FY2024 is projected to reach 1,235.4 billion yen, 100.7% on YoY. Demand for leather shoes in men’s and women’s footwear is likely to keep on declining, due to prevailing casual fashion. In addition, progress of yen depreciation is expected to raise the prices of shoes and footwear at companies, which can lead to hesitation of shoe purchasing centered on children’s footwear. On the other hand, there are positive factors such as potential increase in sales due to retail price rise, and continuous favorable status of functional shoes in sport shoes as well as in sneaker-like men’s and women’s shoes. The market in FY2024, therefore, expects a slight rise from the preceding fiscal year.

Research Outline