New Russian shoe brands
The crisis spurred the development of young Russian brands of designer, conceptual and avant-garde shoes, offering their products at reasonable prices
Anush Gasparyan - Director of the Educational Center "Management and Communications in the Fashion Industry" NRU "Higher School of Economics", co-founder and commercial director of Fashion Consulting Group, candidate of sociological sciences
Against the backdrop of the economic crisis, when most shoe manufacturers in the mass market segment adhere to a cheaper production strategy, and in many shopping centers and retail shoe stores, the choice of genuine leather models has significantly decreased and the model range has been greatly impoverished, in the premium and medium + segments on the Russian market the opposite trend - there are new shoe brands that focus on the so-called "fashionistas" - consumers who follow the latest fashion trends and new products on the market, wanting to part with the habit of good, high-quality shoes that they have developed over the past years, perceiving shoes not just as a compulsory wardrobe item, but as an integral part of their individual style, as an accent or a bright detail of their appearance, which is comfortable, practical and very high quality.
New Russian footwear brands include Portal, the brainchild of the younger generation of the Illiopulo family, owners of the Econika footwear company; Gottlieb Schwarts - Russian brand of classic Italian-style footwear from the shoe master Andrey Zhakevich; designer footwear brands for creative personalities - Notmysize by Leon Krayfish, Mislistudio by Zaur Huseynov, Void Shoes by Yegor Nudgin. In Moscow, St. Petersburg, designers and shoe makers have appeared who are ready to sew custom-made shoes according to individual measurements, but at the same time keeping relatively low prices for such quality products. As a rule, they also release small collections, some brands already have their own branded stores, online sales are developing, someone is presented or plans to be presented in the capital's Tsvetnoy shopping center, whose space is mainly occupied by young, small fashion brands. clothes and shoes.
Fashion market experts assess the trend of the emergence of new creative, conceptual brands in the footwear segment as a positive moment. In the direction of such niche products, it is worth looking at multi-brand retail stores that are now trying to somehow revise, optimize their product range, who are not afraid of experiments and are looking for new brands. Now, in the wake of patriotism generated by the import substitution policy carried out at the state level, Russian consumers have a real interest in everything Russian, it’s fashionable to dress and dress in “domestic” today.
Expert opinion Shoes Report
“Today, thanks to the active promotion of import substitution and patriotism in consumption, the topic of a niche fashion product is becoming more and more popular day by day. The dynamic development of E-commerce and social networks has only increased the popularity of this trend in fashion. And if earlier niche products were hiding exclusively in online and small showrooms, now we can safely say that they are expected and in demand in more traditional offline retail, mainly as part of the assortment of multi-brand concept stores, specialized stores, focused on the trendy assortment.
Niche fashion is the result of the demand of an “interested in fashion” audience for an alternative approach, the search for avoiding uniformity. Such an audience expects a “non-mass individual proposal”, an original author’s idea, as well as limited circulation from a niche project. To some extent, this can be considered a reaction to a reduction in supply in the middle segment, and to the desire of mass shoe manufacturers to switch to basic models. ”
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