Tata International may turn to Vietnam, Korea to import footwear components

V Muthukumaran, head of leather products, Tata International, said, “China is not one of our major exporters but we source about 25-30 per cent of our footwear components from there. Although the virus has not affected business yet, unless the situation improves in two to three weeks, the company may have to consider other countries forimport.”

Speaking about the potential import countries, Muthukumaran said, “We are looking at Taiwan, Korea and Vietnam, but our priority will be to source from local companies.”

On the domestic front, the top executive said they have big plans for their range of children’sfootwear. “Fifty per cent of the shoes that we make are for children. Our target is to make 5.3 million pairs of shoes this financial year of which 2.7 million will be for kids. For the next financial year, we aim to make 7 million pairs of which 3.6 million will be kids’ footwear,” Muthukumaran said. He added that in four years, the company wants to touch the 5-million mark.

Elaborating on why the company chose to focus of this segment, Muthukumaran said, “Even though it’s more difficult to make kids shoes than other variantsbecause we have to keep changing thestyles and focus a lot on the colours, we chose to go ahead with thisbecause of the volume in sales.Kids outgrow their footwear quickly and hence we end up selling more from this segment than most others.”