It employs tens of thousands of people across nearly 1500 companies.

But manufacturers are having to adapt to survive as Europe grapples with further lockdowns.

Luxury shoe designer Louise on Afraid normally caters for Hollywood with the likes of Naomi Watts in Paris Hilton wearing his creations but with canceled social events, came canceled orders.

It was a scary period.

We had 2 to 3 months March, April May, when we practically stopped on.

I think that happened almost the entire industry.

At least 70% of it stopped.

Portugal exports more than 90% of its shoes on brands like on a phrase largely rely on international fairs to reach clients, but most were canceled this year.

Between January and August, exports have already dropped 17% from a year ago.

For us in fashion, it will be extremely difficult because we already had a summer during which shopkeepers didn't sell their loaded with stock.

They'll have to sell next summer.

Some brands are pivoting from luxury to comfort marketing shoes designed for wearing at home or plastic shoes for health care professionals.

Others are taking more radical steps valuable.

Not that I know in the first wave we didn't have a big drop in terms of orders, which was very good.

But we obviously had a problem receiving raw materials, and that's when we had to reinvent ourselves a bit and adapt.

That's Orlando Andrade, head of marketing for To Work for a brand that specializes in safety issues for the construction industry, the company radically transformed its production lines, making masks and developing other products something positive exported.

If anything positive can be taken from this is that it made us look at reality in a different way to see potential where it wasn't before because we were in our comfort zone.