Danish Footwear Maker Ecco Shuts Portugal, Vietnam Factories in Restructuring Move

Change is underway at Danish shoemaker Ecco Sko A/S as the company has decided to cease operations at its Portugal and Vietnam factories . Ecco is dissolving operations at both factories as part of a global restructuring to cut costs. A warning was already on the table last year in April when the shoemaker shut down its Slovakia facility in Martin without notice to its factory workers.

That factory, in operation since the late 1990s, employed over 640 workers. The Vietnam factory — it began operations in 2020 — in the Bầu Bàng Industrial Park in Ho Chi Minh City closure impacts between 1,400 to 1,600 workers. The Portuguese factory in Santa Maria da Feira, which opened in 1984, has about 650 workers.

Ecco’s global restructuring also includes about 400 additional positions that will be lost across global and regional functions. Ecco was founded in 1963 with an eye toward vertical integration, hence the ownership of factories across Europe. But these closures also means fewer options for manufacturing across Europe as more production continues elsewhere, such as China, Indonesia and Thailand.

Ecco has been under pressure over the years. According to its 2025 income statement, the shoe firm posted a net loss of 25.0 million euros on top of a net loss of 37.6 million euros in 2024. Net revenue fell 5.2 percent to 1.41 billion euros from 1.49 billion euros in 2024.

Its 2025 annual report cited sales impact in 2025 from lower consumer demand, tariffs and cautious consumer spending across most regions in which Ecco operates. “All sales channels experienced declining sales, most profoundly in our own operated direct-to-consumer business,” the company said in the report.

And the report also indicated that Ecco discontinued operations at its leather operations in Dongen, the Netherlands, following a fire at the tannery. “Ecco leather will continue to develop and deliver premium leathers to Ecco and selected customers from our tanneries in Asia,” wrote former chief executive officer Thomas Gøgsig in his opening letter to the annual report, dated March 2026.

Gøgsig left the company at the end of October. Ecco said it has started a search for his successor. The shoemaker has seen sales decline since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

At the time, many Western multinationals elected to suspend operations in Russia, but Ecco elected to keep its stores in operation. That led to retail chains cutting ties with the brand. In addition, Ecco’s ability to display the Danish crown logo via Denmark’s Royal Warrant system was severed in 2022 due to political and public pressure.

Ecco was founded by Karl Toosbuy, and is still controlled by the Toosbuy family. Ecco recently showed at the Atlanta Shoe Market in August its line for Spring 2027, which included low-wedge mary janes, block-heel pumps and two-tone ballerinas. Also in August , the shoe firm hired Dr.

Martens alumnus Adam Meek as chief product officer and promoted Americas chief executive officer Neal Taylor to executive vice president and chief commercial officer. And in July, one year after its last designer collaboration series, Ecco returned with a new collection in collaboration with Natacha Ramsay-Levi, Craig Green and White Mountaineering founder Yosuke Aizawa.

The collaboration relaunched Ecco.Kollektive for autumn/winter 2026, with the aim of bringing their own perspective to the Danish shoe and leather firm’s materials, technologies and archive. The stitching on an upper by an Ecco factory worker. CREDIT: Courtesy of Ecco.

Jim Graham