Featuring 740 brands at GDS and 180 exhibitors at tag it!, the co-located trade fairs showcased trends and innovations for the coming Spring/Summer season for 12,500 retailers.
Running from 26 to 28 July, and for the first time from a Tuesday to a Thursday, the dates of the Global Destination for Shoes & Accessories avoided falling on a Friday – one of the strongest retail-sales days. This allowed retailers to fully capitalise on everything the trade shows had to offer.
Altogether, approximately 12,500 retailers travelled to Dusseldorf to visit the two shoe trade shows. Werner Matthias Dornscheidt, president and CEO of Messe Düsseldorf, commented: “Neither the sector nor we can be satisfied with this visitor attendance. Which is why we have decided jointly with the Advisory Board to once again intensely consult with industry and retail on the optimisation of GDS over the next few weeks.”
An extensive trend platform
GDS provides as an essential information platform for the sector, as well as well-placed overview of international collections. Strategic themes such as sustainability, social media and future trends are part and parcel of GDS, explained director Kirstin Deutelmoser. “Personal exchange and the new collections are, of course, centre-stage at GDS, but in challenging times new impulses are also key for the sector. This is why we offer our visitors a multitude of services in these fields and aspire to be up to date.” Visitors took an avid interest in the GDS catwalk shows in the separate Catwalk Area of Hall 2, whose programme had been expanded even further for the 2017 S/S season.
Further trend services included the GDS Trend Spots, which provided retailers with perfect blueprints for visual merchandising with their displays, and the GDS Trend Codes, which answered one of the key questions for advising shoppers at the PoS: “Which shoes go with what outfit?”
Social Media Consulting received well
Enthusiastically received at the previous GDS in February, the free ‘Lounge & Learn’ session was developed further into a series of lectures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and blogger relations. Over the first two days of the trade show, the social media experts at styleranking discussed issues such as how social media strategies can impact brand success, and how fashion labels can use Facebook etc for their own marketing in a targeted manner. The styleranking experts not only shared their longstanding blogging and social media expertise with interested parties, but also granted exclusive insights into the blogosphere and its influence.
Green Shoes Workshop informs the sector
The last day of GDS saw interested shoe manufacturers and retailers learn details about sustainability concepts in the footwear industry as part of a workshop. Under the heading ‘Green Shoes for a Sustainable Life,’ visitors enjoyed a lecture on the results of the Step to Sustainability project as well as two panel discussions with key industry representatives, who presented and explained ‘Best Cases for the footwear sector’.
On the morning of the second day of the trade show, GDS and APICCAPS (Portuguese Footwear, Components, Leather Goods Manufacturers’ Association) hosted a joint press conference featuring analysing the shoe industry in terms of output, exports, imports and consumption in a total of 79 countries, and evaluating the strategic position of the various actors in this sector. In 2015, for example, 23 billion pairs of shoes were produced worldwide – 0.4% fewer than in the previous year.
The next editions of GDS and tag it! will take place from 7 to 9 February 2017 and 25 to 27 July 2017.
