The chilling reality and survival breakthroughs of globally renowned footwear brands

The Chill Felt by Globally Renowned Footwear Brands and the Path to Survival

The global macroeconomy is on a low-growth trajectory, with the world economy facing moderate slowdown and multiple uncertainties from 2026 to the first half of 2028. Under this "new normal" macroeconomic gloom, the shoe machinery industry (mainly footwear manufacturing, shoe repair, and industrial sewing machinery), which overlaps heavy industry manufacturing and traditional consumer goods, is undergoing a profound and brutal structural reshuffle.

In the face of the Guangdong International Smart Shoe Machinery and Shoe Materials Exhibition (GISMA GUANGZHOU) scheduled for May 2027, if we step outside the traditional organizers' habitual "blind optimism" perspective and place the exhibition's effectiveness under a thorough deduction based on the real fundamentals of profit pressure on top global brands, differentiation of OEM clusters, and supply chain overcapacity, the cold reality of an industry ice age has already surfaced.

I. Chill Transmission: The Profit Siege Facing Global Major Brands and OEM Giants

Shoe machinery involves large-scale capital expenditure, with long procurement cycles and heavy technological iteration. Whether downstream footwear manufacturing factories buy equipment depends entirely on whether top-tier brands place orders. And the current financial reports of global footwear giants are sending chills throughout the entire supply chain.

1. International First Tier: Giants on the Defensive, Comprehensively Tightening Supply Chain Capital Expenditure

1) Nike: In the latest financial reporting period, revenue growth has essentially stalled, and its long-proud direct-to-consumer business (NIKE Direct) has shrunk significantly, leading to a decline in net profit. Core markets such as Greater China are facing heavy inventory and brand reinvention pressures. To save itself, the brand is frantically tightening inventory and reducing orders to OEM factories.

2) Adidas: Although it managed to boost revenue growth in some quarters through major sporting events and marketing, its operating profit fell sharply due to high operating and supply chain costs, triggering turmoil in the capital markets. Retailers in markets such as Europe are maintaining sales through aggressive discounting.

3) Puma: Sales declined after currency adjustment. Although supply chain restructuring slightly improved gross margins, weakness in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas has kept it in the throes of destocking.

This pressure of "cost control at the brand end" was instantly transmitted to the manufacturing end. Data from Pou Chen Corporation, the world's largest footwear OEM giant, and its subsidiary Yue Yuen Industrial, shows that its core "footwear manufacturing business" revenue actually contracted year-on-year. The maintenance of major manufacturers' profits now relies heavily on peripheral financial investments rather than capacity expansion at local factories. When brands cut production budgets to save themselves, and OEM giants strengthen production scheduling flexibility due to large-scale idle machinery, the entire supply chain's willingness to invest in fixed assets (shoe machinery) has fallen to freezing point from top to bottom.

2. China's First Tier: Domestic "Duo" Hits the Brakes, Defense Over Offense

1) Anta Sports: Although it achieved hundred-billion-level revenue, the revenue growth rate of its core foundation "Anta main brand" hit an extremely low level since its listing. The group's growth is now highly dependent on overseas-acquired outdoor sub-brands such as DESCENTE and KOLON. The main brand has entered a strategic convergence period — stopping expansion, closing unprofitable stores, and clearing out outlet inventory.

2) Li-Ning: The group's revenue in the first half of the year increased only slightly year-on-year. Due to offline foot traffic performing far below expectations, it has lowered its full-year revenue guidance to low single-digit growth. The company restrained its desire to open stores, completely abandoning its past aggressive route of "opening a store wherever possible," and shifting to "improving per-store efficiency."

3. Survival Status of Functional, Niche and Lower-Tier Markets

1) Skechers, New Balance, On, Hoka: They demonstrated strong macroeconomic resilience or explosive growth. Professional running shoes and comfort shoe newcomers have become one of the few brands currently motivated to maintain orders in Vietnam and Indonesia. However, their requirements for OEM factories are extremely strict: they must possess highly responsive "small-batch quick-response" capabilities, 3D visual automation processes, and ESG green low-carbon certifications from Europe and the US.

2) 361 Degrees, Xtep and Lower-Tier/Vertical Tracks: Xtep experienced its first decline in years, and the entire industry is rushing into "carbon-plated running shoes," turning the running track from a blue ocean into a bloody red sea. Meanwhile, 361 Degrees held onto its national foundation in third- and fourth-tier markets with extremely high cost-performance across its full product line, becoming a slight-growth dark horse by relying on lower-tier markets and "value for money."

3) Fashion and business footwear (Belle, Red Dragonfly, Aokang): Traditional mass-production orders have shrunk significantly. Major women's shoe manufacturers like Belle rely heavily on e-commerce and "small-batch quick-response" flexible supply chains to maintain turnover, while the business leather shoe production chain remains extremely conservative, with almost no willingness to invest in new shoe machinery that requires heavy assets and high unit prices.

II. Supply-Demand Mismatch: Internal Troubles and External Threats for China's Shoe Machinery Industry

Against the backdrop of "chill transmission" across the global industrial chain, China's shoe machinery export and domestic markets are exposing structural weaknesses that have accumulated over years:

III. Tactical Outpost: Examining the "illusion and reality" of going overseas through the 2026 Vietnam VFM & VTG exhibitions

Before stepping into the 2027 Guangzhou main exhibition, the Vietnam International Textile and Apparel Exhibition (VTG) and Vietnam International Footwear Machinery and Materials Exhibition (VFM), held at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center (SECC) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, are precisely the "outpost battle" to test the true quality of the Southeast Asian supply chain and procurement budgets. As an organizer with deep cultivation in overseas markets and a background in cross-border exhibition organization, one must thoroughly understand the true positioning and core value of this dual-exhibition linkage, and use it as a moat for strategic defense at the 2027 Guangzhou exhibition:

1. Exhibition positioning: The joint participation of VFM and VTG as a "cost-reduction smart manufacturing" one-stop OEM hub in Southeast Asia is essentially a cross-industry integration of the entire industrial chain spanning textile spinning, knitted garments, footwear machinery, and shoe materials and accessories. Its core positioning is very pragmatic: it is not intended to showcase "original technology" that surpasses Europe and the United States, but rather to comprehensively hedge against the increasingly soaring local labor costs. Through technologies such as AI visual cutting, modular fully automatic molding lines, and supercritical environmentally friendly foaming, it assembles on site a "cost-control assembly line" that can be rapidly implemented for local Vietnamese manufacturers as well as giant multinational OEM factories undertaking international major brands (such as Pou Chen, Ching Luh, etc.).

2. Commercial value: The "flood discharge gate" of the multinational supply chain and the "legal outlet to the sea" for second-hand machinery. Against the backdrop of shrinking global orders, the greatest incremental value of the Vietnam dual exhibitions lies in their "scavenger role." It can not only help Chinese shoe machinery exhibitors trapped in overcapacity to directly clear out "stagnant new second-hand equipment" that has been sitting in domestic warehouses at a discounted price with high cost-performance, quickly converting it into cash to stay afloat; at the same time, through high-intensity on-site "Live Demo (live sample making)" and the introduction of supply chain finance and RMB settlement mechanisms, it dispels overseas buyers' concerns about purchasing due to local exchange rate instability. It is a "must-contest battleground" for Chinese shoe machinery enterprises to seek incremental growth from the ten ASEAN countries during a turbulent period and to seize the few remaining overseas equipment budgets.

IV. Objective forecast: Cold reflections on the effectiveness of the May 2027 Guangzhou exhibition

Under the peculiar setup of being filtered by the Vietnam VFM forward battle first and then followed by the Guangzhou "dual exhibition relay" in late May 2027 (the Xianhui Exhibition and the GISMA Exhibition held successively within two weeks), next year's exhibition effectiveness will produce a dramatic "Matthew effect" and structural differentiation:

1) Surface prosperity in foot traffic and internationalization: For multinational buyers (especially multinational giants that have already seen the Vietnam VFM exhibition), one business trip can allow them to see two major exhibitions in Guangzhou consecutively, offering extremely high cost-effectiveness. Therefore, the overseas buyer attendance rate and degree of internationalization at GISMA 2027 may look very impressive. But this is very likely to be false prosperity of "bustling with people but not with business."

2) Foreign buyers "just watching the show, finding it hard to place orders": Affected by the broader environment, on-site overseas group buyers and multinational OEM factories are extremely rational and even picky. Due to long procurement cycles and shrinking budgets, when they come to Guangzhou next May, the vast majority are not there to buy equipment, but to "probe the market" and "find cheaper alternatives than those at the Vietnam exhibition." The actual on-site order conversion rate may fall to freezing point.

3) Major downsizing of exhibitor recruitment and fierce price wars: After a long period of order drought, the cash flow of domestic small and medium-sized shoe machinery exhibitors will look very ugly. Large factories that once routinely took special booths of several hundred square meters will most likely reduce booth area next year, or even settle for standard booths, causing the overall physical scale of the exhibition to face contraction pressure. In order to seize the little remaining low-end overseas orders, it will be very common for exhibitors to slash prices to rock-bottom levels on site to clear inventory.

V. The Organizer's Pragmatic Breakthrough and Defensive Strategy

Now that the golden age of massive flooding-style investment is over, and facing the reality that the industry has entered an ice age, the organizer must no longer use boom-period KPIs to evaluate the team or blindly expand the scale. In 2027, GISMA's operational strategy must completely shift from "pursuing scale" to "pursuing survival plans," implementing a refined "defensive" strategy:

1. Control the physical scale of the exhibition and improve profit margins

It is better to proactively lower sales targets and moderately reduce exhibition hall space, concentrating the limited exhibitors together to visually create the illusion of prosperity—"although the scale has shrunk, the crowds are extremely dense and the exhibition atmosphere is booming." By reducing venue rental and on-site construction costs, priority is given to ensuring the organizer's own cash flow safety.

2. Leverage Vietnam exhibition resources and pivot to a self-rescue positioning of "clearing inventory and selling affordable alternatives." Using the core overseas buyer data accumulated by the organizer at the Vietnam VFM & VTG exhibitions, next year's exhibition should no longer focus its domestic recruitment messaging on vague "high-end and cutting-edge" themes, but instead directly address exhibitors' pain points—quietly playing the card of "overseas clearance and monetizing idle equipment." The organizer can innovatively set up on-site a [Global Shoe Machinery Inventory/Second-hand Machinery Direct Sales and Exchange Zone], with the organizer's credit endorsement for low-price auctions.

At the same time, for foreign buyers, the messaging should be fully redirected toward "affordable alternatives to European technology, the ultimate cost-performance of Chinese manufacturing." Using the recession-era hard truth of "achieving 85% of the performance at 1/3 of the price of German and Italian equipment" to attract overseas buyers whose budgets have been severely slashed.

3. Introduce supporting services and firmly hold onto the core overseas buyer base. The more recessionary the times, the more buyers are the lifeblood of the exhibition. Next year, do not blindly pursue exponential growth in foreign buyer registration numbers, but instead treat the procurement teams of multinational contract manufacturers contacted at the Vietnam exhibition as core assets, providing "nanny-level" refined services.

At the same time, in response to foreign buyers' fears about exchange rate and legal changes in neighboring countries, introduce cross-border supply chain financial institutions, overseas compliance legal consulting, and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure) on-site at the exhibition. Tell foreign buyers: we not only provide machines, but also provide risk-avoidance solutions such as "how to settle in RMB to avoid exchange rate risks" and "installment payment financing," thereby helping exhibitors passively shorten the procurement cycle.

Conclusion

When the industry enters an ice age, blindly optimistic organizers often fall on the eve of spring, while helmsmen full of crisis awareness who can rationally see through the underlying logic are the ones who can lead the exhibition through the narrow gate. The May 2027 GISMA Guangzhou exhibition is destined not to be an easy battle, but as long as the organizer can make good use of the outpost dividends from the 2026 Vietnam VFM, help exhibitors turn the "new second-hand machines" in their warehouses into cash, and help foreign buyers purchase life-saving affordable alternatives when their budgets are halved, this platform can survive the harsh winter and accumulate the purest industry stickiness.

(1) VTG Vietnam International Textile & Garment Industry Exhibition: Focusing on the Upgrade of Intelligent Textile Manufacturing

VTG Exhibition has been deeply cultivating the Southeast Asian market for nearly 20 years. It is a UFI-certified flagship exhibition covering the entire textile and garment industry chain, focusing on full-chain software and hardware solutions from Textile 4.0 to 5.0, and precisely adapting to the industry's core needs for small-batch quick response and flexible production. The exhibition's core exhibits cover cutting-edge equipment and technologies such as high-speed intelligent knitting equipment, digital spinning and weaving machinery, nonwoven fabric production equipment, 3D intelligent body measurement garment systems, and factory intelligent ERP management systems.

The exhibition's core commercial value focuses on solving industry pain points, helping Southeast Asian textile enterprises overcome the challenges of labor shortages, rising production costs, and low production efficiency. It provides intelligent and digital flexible production solutions for global brands and OEM factories, perfectly matching the 2026 footwear and apparel industry's product development trends of lightweight, personalized, and fast-iterating.

Visitors can complete pre-registration through the official channel:https://www.chanchao.com.tw/en/entryApply.asp?id=FTXTHCM2026

(II) VFM Vietnam International Footwear Machinery and Materials Industry Exhibition: Empowering Green Footwear Transformation

The VFM exhibition precisely reaches over 70% of local footwear factories in Vietnam, deeply connecting with the OEM systems of global footwear giants, making it the most influential professional trade platform for footwear equipment and materials in Southeast Asia. The exhibition focuses on green, low-carbon, intelligent and efficient footwear manufacturing technologies, with core exhibits including supercritical physical foaming complete equipment, AI visual intelligent cutting equipment, fully automatic footwear molding production lines, ultra-light eco-friendly sole materials, water-based non-toxic footwear adhesives and other core products and technologies.

The exhibition site will demonstrate the full-process intelligent and green footwear manufacturing process in real scenarios, providing multinational OEM factories and footwear enterprises operating in Vietnam with a complete set of production solutions for cost reduction and efficiency improvement, as well as compliance and environmental protection, precisely adapting to the 2026 thin-sole barefoot shoe production needs and global environmental compliance requirements, helping the industry complete green transformation and capacity upgrading.

Visitors can complete pre-registration through the official channel:https://www.chanchao.com.tw/en/entryApply.asp?id=FVNFLM2026