Shoe companies finally turn attention to Indians with big feet

At Bata’s annual general meeting in Kolkata this month, a shareholder accused manufacturers of being insensitive while sharing the ordeal he has to undergo whenever it’s time to get a new pair of shoes. The shareholder’s feet size is 11. And, shoes that fit him are hard to find.

He is certainly not alone. There is a major chunk of people whose feet sizes have rendered access to their preferred footwear quite tricky.

But things could be changing.

According to Rajeev Gopalakrishnan, group managing director, Bata is running a pilot project to ensure people with large and hard-to-fit feet will have a greater option in shoe styles.

Apart from Bata, brands such as Puma, Metro, Adidas and Arvind are slowly realizing that their sizes have fallen behind in keeping up with the rise in big-foot demand and amid the sluggish sales and a crowd of brand options, companies aren’t willing to lose even a single customer.

That's "precisely the reason why we have started tracking lost sales data. To understand why a store lost a customer and for which large size, and ensure those are available," tells Abhishek Ganguly, managing director at Puma India to Economic Times.

The other reason Puma and other sports shoe makers need to be on their toes is due to the entry of Asics of Japan in the Indian market. Through its first store in Delhi, Puma is offering running shoes with extra width variants (2E and 4E), even for the top of the line Nimbus 17.

Another threat is the online shoe makers, which allows customers to shop around widely.

The question thus is why have companies not bothered previously? According to experts, incorporating these changes means having to reworking a model, which a lot of time shoe makers are hesitant to.

"It is a brave step if a retailer increases shoe styles to accommodate larger or odd sizes," shares Sandeep Mittal, Managing Director at Cartesian Consulting with Economic Times. "For higher margins, a retailer needs to optimise styles and not increase SKUs (stock keeping units). Only a company with the wherewithal to manage a large inventory can do it profitably,” he concludes.

Image credit: Indiatimes