Cost of childrens’ shoes to go up by 20%
19-05-2006
to children’s shoes too. When you consider that most families buy five pairs of shoes a year for children this will represent a heavy blow for most families.
Clarks have the majority share of the quality footwear market for children. Many mothers can remember the arduous task when they were a child of having their tootsies measured for length and also breadth then some pair of horrendous looking Miss Marbles shoes emerging from a box winging it’s way to your feet! I feel hot at the thought of all the ribbing such shoes caused at school! Such school shoes now cost between £25 and £32 pounds a throw and when you consider that such shoes will last at best a full term that’s a substantial cost for a house hold. Effectively the 20% levy could lever an additional £5- £7 per pair of shoes. I have a family of three boys so that’s a pretty hefty increase….I can see a good solid pair of Jesus sandals winging their way to my boys!
The 20% levy applies for footwear from Chinese and Vietnamese leather shoes being imported into Europe and in April last year the then Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandleson, insisted that children’s shoes were exempt. The charge was initially introduced for six months but EU officials will vote in June to extend the surcharge for another five years. There is no concern that other such countries such as France, Italy and Poland will also extend this duty to children’s shoes too.
The British Retail Consortium were most displeased with the ruling and have already set up a committee to try to prevent the increase being implemented. It plans to set up a campaign around Europe to warn government and consumer groups of the potential problems that such a price increase will create particularly for low-income families.
It is believed that 16 of the 25 members states will vote in favour of the increase and only 13 votes are required to pass through the new legislation. 423 million pairs of shoes were imported into British last year and nearly 65% of that figure was from China and Vietnam with only 1% of shoes sold in the UK being made from the UK compared to 70% in 1970.
There’s a long way to go before conclusions are finalised next month but the consensus of opinion appears to support the theory that it is only a matter of time before children’s shoes will have to carry the surcharge from the import duty.
Jenny Holloway
