IMPORTED FOOTWEAR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23886, 14 August 1939, Page 10

IMPORTED FOOTWEAR

STOCKS DIMINISHING NEW ZEALAND LINES SCARCE DELIVERIES OF ORDERS LAGGING (Special to Daily Times) AUCKLAND, Aug. 13. ! Stocks of imported footwear are described by retailers as now being very much diminished, some classes being exhausted. This condition applies to both warehouses and shops, and, furthermore, some lines or sizes of New Zealand footwear are scarce, and factories are lagging with deliveries of orders, which are often four months in arrears. The situation in factories is ascribed to several reasons. One is the execution of large orders for defence purposes, which naturally have precedence; another is the very determined effort being made by manufacturers to produce footwear of high quality and finish, to take the place of imported manufactures, and this has sometimes led to an easing up of production in their normal standard lines. This easing up has been enforced through difficulty in obtaining sufficient labour. The most pronounced shortage, in the opinion of several retailers, exists in some sizes of children's shoes. In stating that a steady tendency toward higher prices has been apparent for some time, retailers point out that it is evident more by prices for new lines than by actual advances in old lines, that new styles appear to be replacing former patterns, and the prices of these are often higher than those of the old styles, although retailers admitted that higher production costs had been forceo* on the manufacturers.