How the Fashion and Luxury Industry Challenges the Crisis Redesigning Value Chains

The fashion and luxury industry is part of the Made in Italy fashion system that represents an important constituent of the Italian industrial system, where Italian apparel sector represents 7.1% of the national manufacturing industry turnover, with 516,700 employees, 59,750 firms and total revenues of 52,835 million euro in 2006. However, the industry turnover has been -15.1% in the first quarter of 2009, due to the global crisis and fierce low labour cost country competition. This research project aims at studying Italian fashion and luxury apparel firms to: understand how companies can react to the current crisis in order to remain competitive; to explain how companies can redesign their value chain to improve their efficiency; and to evaluate new managerial and organizational models that support business development. The multiple-case study method is adopted to investigate these research questions. We conducted 12 in-depth case studies using a semi-structured interview protocol specifically designed for this research.