Footwear Brands Find Success at Project’s Smaller Format New York Show
Men’s trade show Project was in full swing this week in New York, as the event marked its return to the smaller format show.
The trade event, owned by Informa Markets Fashion, brought together about 50 brands across footwear, apparel and accessories between July 17 and 19. Continuing its move away from being known as a strictly men’s show last year, the event this year featured a slew of gender fluid brands spread out across the trade show floor, mixed in among other vendors.
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“It is known as a men’s event,” Edwina Kulego, VP of men’s and international business development at Informa Fashion Markets, told FN in a sit-down interview at the event. “I don’t think we’ll ever be able to change that connotation. But it is a show for everyone.”
Kulego said that the team selected brands that they thought would resonate with buyers, rather than only choosing those that identified as menswear brands. While the show floor mainly consisted of apparel brands, shoe labels such as Sesa Footwear, Sperry, Paraboot, Bed Stu, Diadora and others were in attendance, mainly showcasing products for spring ’24.
Overall, exhibitors were pleased with the turnout of the event, though some brands noted they weren’t entirely out of the woods when it comes to persisting industry issues like excess inventory and order delays.
“It’s great to see unique shoe brands in the small venues like this,” said Jason Wiese, VP of sales at Bed Stu. “It makes it a little bit more intimate.”
The label, which offers handcrafted vegetable tanned leather products, has remained mainly immune from supply chain slowdowns because it owns its factory in Mexico, Wiese said. However, the brand has been somewhat impacted by the uptick in inventory in the retail marketplace.
Italian heritage brand Diadora also noted the benefit of owning its factory in Italy and producing shoes in Europe. “We don’t really experience supply chain issues in the same way that maybe some others are,” said David Greenwood, a representative for the brand.
Brian Stone, a senior account executive at Sperry, said his brand’s biggest challenge right now is inventory excess in the market.
“Coming off the pandemic, a wave of product started coming in and with the [economic downturn], everybody’s cut back,” Stone said. “So the combination of the two means over-inventory in shoes right now and having to move them and get rid of them because you’re paying storage fees and whatnot with a lot of products.”
At Project, Sperry emphasized a new collaboration with Japanese retailer Beams Plus, which highlighted Sperry’s circular vamp oxford (CVO), its first non-slip deck shoe.
For Paraboot, North American sales agent Cameron Shirvani told FN the brand had faced some order back-ups through Covid and beyond, but is now getting back on track to get its deliveries shipped to retailers.
“We’re working through everything with them. And thank God for the retailers, they’re just coping with their delayed deliveries, they are waiting to get them and they are working with us,” Shirvani said.
Moving forward, footwear will be larger focus for Project, which is slated to return to the same place next year.
Kulego said she is specifically looking for shoe brands that live in a more fluid category and can work for a variety of different consumers, like Birkenstock, which was at the show the prior year.
“It’s about just convincing them that they have a home here,” Kulego said. “And we’re working on that.”
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