Geox Lost 11% of Its Sales on Purpose — And Its CEO Says He’d Do It Again

Most chief executives presenting an 11.4% sales decline reach for the word “challenging” and hope the audience moves on. Francesco Di Giovanni did something rarer. He said the loss of volume was the point.

Geox reported first-half 2026 sales of €270.4 million, down 11.4% year-on-year and 8.8% on a comparable basis. In the same period, adjusted EBIT rose from €0.6 million to €5.6 million — a near tenfold increase in operating profit on sharply lower revenue.

“Geox has faced a challenging and sharply contracting market, already impacted by an extremely fierce competition as well as by natural and other extraordinary events, leveraging all the measures within its control to restore profitability even at the risk of losing sales volumes,” said the CEO.

That last clause — even at the risk of losing sales volumes — is the strategy stated out loud.

Where the Sales Went

Wholesale fell 13.0% (12.8% at constant exchange rates) to €87.5 million, reflecting weaker order intake for the Spring-Summer 2026 collection across key markets. Retail dropped 8.5% (8.7% at constant rates) to €113.5 million, split between a €3.9 million negative perimeter effect from store closures and a €6.9 million hit from weaker store traffic.

Digital sales fell 14.0%. But within that, Geox’s own website posted like-for-like growth of 9.2%. The decline came from wholesale web and marketplace platforms — a distinction that matters enormously. The brand’s owned digital channel is growing; the third-party channels it does not control are shrinking. For anyone tracking the marketplace shakeout in European footwear, that split is a data point worth filing.

The store network tells the same story of deliberate contraction. Geox ended June with 525 shops, 231 of them directly operated, down from 570 at the end of 2025. Thirteen opened, 58 closed.

Regionally, nothing was spared. Italy fell 7.5% to €83.7 million (31.0% of group sales). The rest of Europe fell 9.5% to €131.0 million (48.4% of sales), dragged by the DACH region and France. Other countries fell 20.6% to €55.7 million, hit by instability in the Middle East, Africa and Russia.

The Case for Shrinking

Gross margin improved to 52.6% from 51.2%, supported by collection and channel mix optimisation. Adjusted operating costs fell €19.1 million to €136.6 million, driven by lower personnel, services and consulting expenses alongside reduced logistics and store network costs. Adjusted EBITDA excluding IFRS 16 reached €12.6 million, up from €8.6 million.

Inventory came down from €246.9 million to €194.4 million, and bank debt from €100.5 million to €95.3 million.

Put those together and a coherent picture emerges. Geox is closing unprofitable stores, walking away from low-margin wholesale orders, cutting overhead and clearing €52 million of inventory off the balance sheet. Every one of those actions reduces revenue. Every one of them improves the quality of what remains.

Why This Is Harder Than It Sounds

There is a reason few footwear brands attempt this. Shrinking a business is operationally punishing and commercially dangerous.

Closing 58 stores means exit costs, redundancies and abandoned catchment areas that competitors immediately occupy. Declining a wholesale order means a retail partner fills the shelf with someone else’s product and may not come back next season. Cutting inventory by €52 million usually means selling through at reduced prices, which risks the very margin you are trying to protect — yet Geox expanded gross margin while doing it, which suggests the clearance was more disciplined than most.

The technical risk is subtler. Geox built its identity on a patented breathable sole, and the value of that patent depends on manufacturing scale and continuous investment. A brand that shrinks too far loses the volume that funds the R&D that justifies its premium. Di Giovanni is walking a line here.

The Guidance Confirms the Plan

For the full year, Geox expects sales of around €550 million — a high single-digit decline against 2025. Adjusted EBITDA excluding IFRS 16 is forecast at around €34 million, up from €25 million, and adjusted EBIT at approximately €21 million, up from €9 million.

Read that carefully. The company is guiding to lower revenue and more than double the operating profit for the full year. Management is not describing a bad year it hopes to escape. It is describing the intended outcome.

The Verdict

There are two ways to lose 11% of your sales. One is to be beaten by competitors while doing nothing. The other is to fire your worst customers, close your worst stores and refuse your worst orders.

Geox is clearly doing the second, and the margin numbers back it up. Whether it can stop shrinking once the balance sheet is clean is the open question — restructuring builds institutional muscle for cutting, not for growing.

But an Italian footwear brand that trebled its EBIT in a contracting market has earned the right to be judged on 2027 rather than on this half.

Source: World Footwear

TL;DR

Geox Lost 11% of Its Sales on Purpose — And Its CEO Says He’d Do It Again Most chief executives presenting an 11.4% sales decline reach for the word “challenging” and hope the audience moves on.…

Frequently Asked Questions

2?

Geox Lost 11% of Its Sales on Purpose — And Its CEO Says He’d Do It Again Most chief executives presenting an 11.4% sales decline reach for the word “challenging” and hope the audience moves on.

2?

Geox Lost 11% of Its Sales on Purpose — And Its CEO Says He’d Do It Again Most chief executives presenting an 11.4% sales decline reach for the word “challenging” and hope the audience moves on.

2?

Geox Lost 11% of Its Sales on Purpose — And Its CEO Says He’d Do It Again Most chief executives presenting an 11.4% sales decline reach for the word “challenging” and hope the audience moves on.

2?

Geox Lost 11% of Its Sales on Purpose — And Its CEO Says He’d Do It Again Most chief executives presenting an 11.4% sales decline reach for the word “challenging” and hope the audience moves on.

Key Takeaways

Geox Lost 11% of Its Sales on Purpose — And Its CEO Says He’d Do It Again Most chief executives presenting an 11.4% sales decline reach for the word “challenging” and hope the audience moves on. The implications extend across the leather, tannery, and footwear value chain—signals that buyers, suppliers, and investors should track closely.

Related Articles

• Richemont’s 20% Sales Surge Validates Luxury’s Resilience — and Leather’s Role Within It
• When Leather Colleges Close: What Britain’s Lost Institutions Teach the Global Industry About Skills and Survival
• Antiba’s Open Day: The Italian Tannery That Put Its People First — and Why That Matters