Children's shoes and labeling. New rules of work will not help bring the children's segment out of the shadows

Before finding answers to these questions, let's look at what was the basis for the introduction of mandatory marking.
There have always been companies on the market operating according to both “white” and “gray” schemes. Tools previously used to protect the business (GOST, TU, certification) were ineffective. The development of information technology allows each pair of shoes to be marked, which, in turn, makes it possible to trace the entire path of its movement along the distribution chain, including the payment of all mandatory payments - duties, taxes and fees. Pairs of shoes that do not have such a passport should be removed from sale.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary that the footwear is marked at the very beginning of the distribution chain - at the production site. But today shoe marking can be done not at the first stage, it is allowed. It is enough for the owner of the goods to buy markers for any batch of shoes and glue them on individual packaging of pairs. In this case, the shoe passport is filled in according to the words of the owner of the goods. This approach allows you to mark not only "white", but all "gray" shoes.
The capacity of the children's footwear market is about 150 million pairs per year. At the same time, no more than 10% is sold in "white". It is impossible for such a huge, fine-tuned "gray" business process to disappear overnight. Most likely, the purchase of tokens will be added to the existing gray sales schemes.

In order to avoid problems with the law, manufacturers at the production stage must start labeling (this is actually assigning a barcode to each size), which in itself is a very useful phenomenon. Intermediaries (wholesalers, shops) should start cooperation only with suppliers of labeled footwear.

Given the predominance of “gray” schemes of product promotion and the imperfection of the labeling system, it can be assumed that no significant changes in the distribution chains will occur.
The new law is of a controlling, restrictive and punitive nature. It is aimed at protecting the interests of the state and a small number of "white" suppliers, but in no way protects the interests of consumers. Moreover, its introduction will definitely lead to an increase in prices. The procedure for introducing the new law also raises a number of questions. It is clear that all manufacturers from July 2019, 1 will begin to label (barcode) shoes. These actions are logical and not so difficult. But it is absolutely not clear why all intermediaries should mark their stocks? What for? All shoes manufactured before July 2019, 2 were unmarked and should not be marked. It is necessary to wait for its natural sale within 3-XNUMX years and only then require the intermediaries to have the obligatory labeling for old shoe remnants.

As an intermediary in the goods-conducting chain, our company has continued and continues to cooperate only with "white" companies. In the period remaining before the law is enacted, we will reduce the level of unmarked shoes in our warehouse to the minimum level and then we will label the remains.