Ahead of the 86th edition, which is scheduled to take place from 16 to 19 September 2018 at Fiera Milano (Rho), MICAM, the international footwear event, has conducted an in-depth analysis of its visitor database, by profiling and comparing the data collected during the last six editions (from September 2015 to February 2018).
There were three main objectives for the analysis: improve the organisational and operational aspects (in particular those linked to the sector of logistics, accesses and events), communicate more complete data to stakeholders and – especially – find out more about visitors’ needs with the aim of improving the offer and the services available during the event.
In particular, the profiling of participants for the event focused on four areas: access procedures and frequency, origin of visitors, business activity of their respective companies and the sectors they are interested in.
With regard to accesses, it was established that, on average, almost half of visitors attends more than one day of MICAM (29% attend two days, 14% attend three days and 4% attend all four days), with preferences for Sunday and Monday, which are usually the opening days of the fair. In particular, stays are longer for foreign visitors (60% of whom attend more than one day).
In the last edition, the origin of visitors can be broken down as follows: Europe 86%, Asia 10%, North America 2%, Africa and Australia 1%. In Europe the two countries with the highest participation rates after Italy are Spain and Germany (which accounted for 5.1% and 4.6% of European visitors respectively); for Asia the top country was Japan (21.3% of Asian visitors), followed by China (18.9%) and Turkey (17.9%). Shifting the focus towards Italy, 28.1% of participants comes from Lombardy, 11.5% from Veneto and 9.7% from Tuscany.
The trend for the last six editions highlights an increase in visitors from Russia (+71.5% in six editions) and Ukraine (+32.9%). MICAM will be dedicating specific welcome and entertainment programmes to visitors from these countries.
With regard to the survey that was carried out, 37% of visitors owns and/or works in a shoe shop, while almost 10% of visitors are agents. Moreover, more than 40% of visitors has a decision-making role (owner, chairman, managing director/general manager of the company/business). Almost 20% of visitors operate in procurement and just over 10% are involved in sales.
More than 80% of visitors stated that they operate in the footwear sector, with a lower representation of the leather goods (3.5%) and total look (9.6%) sectors.
In terms of types of shoes, more than 65% of participants work with women’s shoes, from all price brackets, from the cheapest to the most expensive. Only 4% of visitors is interested exclusively in men’s shoes, but almost 25% of participants deals with men’s and women’s shoes. Even in this case visitor preferences are evenly spread across the various price brackets, with a slight difference for the highest price bracket. In children’s footwear, which is the exclusive product for only 1.3% of participants (15% of the total if one considers businesses that also commercialise adult’s shoes), the main price bracket is the medium one, while the highest price bracket is selected by a lower percentage of the visitors in question (18%).
The trend for the latest editions shows a progressive and constant increase in interest for women’s shoes, on both an exclusive basis and with a combined interest for the men’s and children’s sector.
The sectors of greatest interest are Contemporary (for almost 50% of visitors) and Luxury (more than 25%) to which MICAM pavilions 2/4/5 and 1/3 are dedicated respectively.
In light of this analysis of the profile of visitors to the event, Assocalzaturifici will optimise the registration form by adding new specific fields to better profile visitors through a CRM system, which will be managed almost exclusively through the fair’s website in order to guarantee faster access to the event.
Moreover, dedicated activities will also be organised for the Regions/Countries with the greatest number of visitors, the logistics for reaching the fair and the internal logistics will be simplified and training events and seminars will be organised for the sector’s professionals.
