Freezing Europeans cannot buy Russian felt boots
Due to the extreme cold this winter in Western and Central Europe, demand for traditional Russian footwear, valenki, has skyrocketed, reports www.sostav.ru . However, this unexpected popularity has caught the sluggish Russian industry by surprise: Russian manufacturers lack the capacity and labor force to meet the growing demand for felt footwear.
Western and Central Europe has been under heavy snowfall since the end of November, and the thermometer does not rise above 20 degrees. The European shoe market was not at all ready for such frosts. Local manufacturers, accustomed to warm winters, do not even produce boots with fur.
That is why simple Russian felt boots became the coveted shoe for any European. According to Marker, recently the number of requests from Germany, the Netherlands, England, Finland and the Baltic countries has increased 5-7 times. However, potential customers expected a polite refusal. For example, of the 600 thousand pairs of shoes that are produced annually by the Yaroslavl factory, only about 4% is exported.
Things are no better with the Kukmorsky felting and felt mill. Orders for shoes came from Europe in early December, but by then all products - and the plant produces 1 one million pairs of boots a year - had already been sold out.
In the meantime, Russian manufacturers are struggling to cope with domestic demand. The products of the Yaroslavl factory have already been sold four months in advance, but it is not possible to quickly increase production: boots at 50% are made manually, and training new people takes from three to nine months.
Due to the extreme frosts of this winter in Western and Central Europe, the demand for national Russian footwear has grown sharply - ...
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