Industry overview
The Manufacture of leather and related products sector across Germany comprises approximately 1,371 enterprises employing about 18,626 people and generating €3.2 bn in net turnover in 2019. The average enterprise size is – employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a healthy operating margin of 9.0% of revenue in 2019, the sector reports €283 M of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
The Manufacture of leather and related products cost mix is reasonably balanced: cost of revenue at 67.8%, personnel at 21.2% and energy at – of turnover. Without a single dominant cost driver, margin management requires attention across the full operating envelope rather than focus on any one line.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2008 to 2019 the operating margin moved from 7.9% to 9.0% (+1.0 percentage points), an encouraging upward trajectory. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.