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The textile and clothing industries are good examples to analyse emerging industrial trends in international co‐operation and to map the globalisation effects on outward processing, jobs and technology. The research focuses on the development of economic indicators and is based on the results from consulting and research projects, as well from enquiries in the German textile and clothing industries, which are exposed to intensive cost competition and trying to find a new position within the process of globalisation. A reduction of demand, a change in consumption patterns, the modification in the retailing system, the development of personal income and a global shift of production have triggered the decline of the domestic production of textiles and clothing. Emerging producers from eastern, developing and newly industrialising countries are now the main suppliers for the German textiles and clothing market. The German clothing companies defend a rest market and use intensively the outward processing in low‐wage countries. As a result of the tremendous differences in production costs, the demand for clothing textiles shifted globally towards low‐cost places of clothing production. The outward processing from industrialised countries established a very efficient, well‐organised global production network in low‐wage countries, enabling new potential for economic development. This research focuses on the view of producers in industrialised countries. The analysis shows that the future of textiles and clothing companies is not in producing but in the management of markets, organising a global supply chain of subcontractors and in retailing. The experiences within the global outward processing network shows very high innovation and learning rates in low‐wage countries, enabling a serious potential towards a self‐contained economic development. The economic and social liberalisation within the EU region and the out‐phasing of the WTO in 2005 will give new power to the globalisation process and will influence the structural change of industry. This paper is written as a rational position sensing of the German textile and clothing industries prior to the out phasing of the WTO regulations and the 2005 liberalisation of the EU textile and clothing sector.

The purpose of this study is to examine the delocalization trend of the EU's clothing production to Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) and North Africa, focusing on the geographical shift of outsourced clothing production pattern within the two developing regions.

In total, 14 CEECs and North African countries were selected and classified into 1st‐tier and 2nd‐tier regions according to their GDP/capita values. Clothing trade statistics were obtained from the Eurostat database, and the clothing trade pattern was examined during 1995 to 2004. Trade Specialization Coefficient (TSC) was employed to measure the international competitiveness of clothing exports of the selected CEECs and North African countries.

Results concluded that the EU's clothing production had significantly delocalized to the proximate CEECs and North African regions, with further geographical shift to less‐developing 2nd‐tier clothing supplying countries in recent years. The TSC analysis reflected that the competitiveness of clothing industry in 2nd‐tiers had outperformed the 1st‐tier economies, indicating Western European firms had shifted their sourcing practices to those lower‐waged countries.

This study gives insight into the EU clothing production industry and their delocalized pattern to the CEECs and North Africa.

Global economic growth provides new opportunities for the development of clothing enterprises, but at the same time, the rapid growth of clothing customization demand and the gradual increase of clothing costs also pose new challenges for the development of clothing enterprises. In this context, 3D printing technology is injecting new vitality and providing a new development direction for the vigorous development of clothing enterprises. However, with the application of 3D printing technology, more and more clothing enterprises are facing the problem of business model innovation. In view of the lack of relevant research, it is necessary to carry out exploratory research on this issue.

The business model canvas method was adopted to design business model for clothing enterprises using 3D printing. The simulation model of the designed business model was constructed by a system dynamics method, and the application of the designed business model was analysed by a scenario simulation.

Mass selective customization-centralized manufacturing (MSC-CM) business model was constructed for clothing enterprises using 3D printing, and a static display was carried out using the BMC method. A dynamic simulation model of the MSC-CM business model was constructed. The future scenario of clothing enterprises using 3D printing was developed, and a simulated enterprise was analysed. The results show that the MSC-CM business model has a good application value. The simulation model of the MSC-CM business model performs the function of a business strategy experiment platform and also has a good practical application value.

The MSC-CM business model is only a typical business model for clothing enterprises using 3D printing. It is necessary to further develop other business models, and some elements of the MSC-CM business model need to be further improved. In addition, the MSC-CM business model simulation uses a general model, which is not suitable for all clothing enterprises using 3D printing. When the model is applied, the relevant enterprises can further adjust and optimize it, thereby improving the validity of the simulation model.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper on the MSC-CM business model for garment enterprises using 3D printing. Secondly, it is the first time that the business model of clothing enterprises using 3D printing has been simulated. In particular, the proposed business model simulation provides the possibility for testing the business strategy of clothing enterprises using 3D printing. In addition, a positive attempt has been made in the collaborative research of using both a static display business model and a dynamic simulation business model.

This paper examines the performance in value‐added terms of the local clothing manufacturing industry. A longitudinal study was carried out by means of analysing industry production data over a period of ten years. Results seemed not to support the proposition that the industry had shifted to focus on higher value‐added production so as to improve its productivity. On the contrary, there was a strong indication that a gradual decay of productivity in value‐added terms had occurred. The paper concluded with suggesting a few probable reasons for the apparent reduction in value‐added productivity of the industry and recommendations for further research in related areas.

The central purpose of this paper is to explore how implicit knowledge capabilities and sharing helps secure organizational survival and success. This article explores the challenging in better management knowledge in the South African clothing and textile industry. In moving from a closed protected market supported by active industrial policy, South African manufacturing has faced intense competition from abroad. The ending of apartheid removed a major source of workplace tension, facilitating the adoption of higher value-added production paradigms. However, most South African clothing and textile firms have battled to cope, given cutthroat international competition. The authors focus on firms that have accorded particularly detailed attention to two instances characterized by innovative knowledge management. The authors highlight how circumstances may impose constraints and challenges and how they paradoxically also create opportunities, which may enable firms to survive and thrive through the recognition and utilization of informal knowledge, both individual and collective.

This study is based on in-depth interviews, primary company and industry association and secondary documents.

The study highlights how successful firms implemented systems, policies and practices for the better capturing and utilization of external and internal knowledge. In terms of the former, a move toward fast fashion required and drove far-reaching organizational restructuring and change. This made for a greater integration of knowledge through the value chain, ranging from design to retail. Successful firms also owed their survival to the recognition and usage of internal informal knowledge. At the same time this process was not without tensions and paradoxes, and the findings suggest that many of the solutions followed a process of experimentation. The latter is in sharp contrast to many South African manufacturers, who, with the global articulation of production networks, have lost valuable knowledge on suppliers and their practices. At the same time, both firms have to contend with an increasingly unpredictable international environment.

At a theoretical level, the study points to the need to see informal knowledge not only in individualistic terms but also as a phenomenon that has collective, and indeed, communitarian features. Again, it highlights the challenges of nurturing and optimizing informal knowledge. It shows how contextual features both constrain and enable this process. It further highlights the extent to which the effective utilization of external knowledge, and rapid responses to external developments, may require a fundamental rethinking of organizational structures and hierarchies. This study focuses on a limited number of dimensions of this in a single national context but could be replicated and extended into other contexts.

The study highlights the relationship between survival, success and how knowledge is managed. This involved harnessing the informal knowledge and capabilities of workforce to enhance productivity, in conjunction with improvements in machinery and processes, and a much closer integration of design, supply, production and marketing, underpinned by a more effective usage of IT. Paradoxically, other clothing and textile firms have survived doing the exact opposite – reverting to low value-added cut-and-trim assembly operations. At a policy level, the study highlights how specific features of South African regulation (above all, in terms of job protection), which are often held up as barriers to competiveness, may help sustain the knowledge base of firms.

The preservation and creation of jobs in a highly competitive sector was bound up with effective knowledge management. The study also highlighted the mutual interdependence of employers and employees in a context of very high unemployment and how the more effective usage of informal knowledge bound both sides closer.

There is a fairly diverse body of literature on manufacturing in South Africa, and, indeed across the continent; however, much of it has focused on challenges. This study explores relative success stories from a sector that has faced a structural crisis of competitiveness, and as such, has relevance to understanding how firms and industries may cope in highly adverse circumstances.

This chapter concerns itself with a garment factory in Trinidad, West Indies, producing brand-name clothing for the Eastern Caribbean market. Workers in this factory not only stitch garments for an hourly wage; but also stealthily operate a secondary assembly line, creating precise duplicates of the factory's products for themselves to take home and wear. Manufactured on the shop-floor alongside “legitimate” production, the copied garments are identical in every way to the genuine ones they mimic. In this chapter, I argue that workers have created a “loop” in the value chain: a simultaneous moment in which they are both producers and consumers of the factory's products. While “genuine” garments circulate through market-capitalist networks of exchange, copied garments only circulate through social networks – thereby accruing and representing forms of “value” that are distinct from market value. By looping the value chain, factory workers create non-market values alongside market-oriented ones, showing both sets of values to be interdependent. Workers’ own commentary on these processes offers a unique window onto contested meanings of “value” at work on the shop-floor.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze raw materials, labor, capital, demand, related industries, strategies and policies influencing international competitiveness of Chinese textile and clothing industry.

The analysis is conducted using “Diamond Model”, in which raw materials, labor, capital, demand, related industries, strategies and policies are included as explanatory variables, and the impacts of international competitiveness on market share (MS), trade competitiveness(TC) and revealed comparative advantage(RCA) are examined based on the estimated coefficients of these variables.

These factors have different effects on TC, MS and RCA. While their effects on TC and MS are similar in sign even though their degree of significance differs, their effects on RCA are opposite to TC and MS except for capital. Raw materials and capital have negative effects on TC and MS, while the other factors have positive ones. Raw materials have positive effects on RCA, but all other factors have negative ones.

The results from this study imply that it is necessary to increase investment in fixed assets of Chinese textile and clothing industry, speed up the pace of upgrading equipment, improve the level of industrialization, while strengthening the supply of textile raw materials, and lowering raw material prices, thereby reducing the cost of textile and clothing enterprises.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical research made using econometric model about the impact of the main factors of trade competitiveness in Chinese textile and clothing industry based on the “Diamond Model”.

To provide an opinion as to the demise or metamorphosis of the UK clothing industry within the wider European context. Recently conducted research, along with a range of pertinent published (1978‐2004) statistical data are used to inform the authors' viewpoint on the development of the UK clothing industry. The statistical evidence describing the change in import penetration, employment levels and the impact of the national minimum wage support the view that a new typology of the clothing industry is emerging from the ashes of a rapidly declined manufacturing base. Some of the detail of garment types is hidden by the SIC system. Conversely, at times, the very categories used appear to have little contemporary relevance. Three areas of concern would remain: first, that over time the cluster itself would lose its critical mass; second, that the cluster might collapse if the central core of manufacturing is hollowed out; and third, that over time some of the “knowledge based” tasks such as design and product development might themselves be subject to migration to lower‐cost locations. This paper contributes a carefully considered, and compiled, viewpoint from experienced observers of the UK clothing industry that augments the debate centred on the development of the EU clothing industry.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the issues currently involved in social and environmental sustainability in the clothing industry.

The paper adopts a case study approach to investigate a business that operates successfully in this challenging market.

As a consequence of increasing demand for ethical clothing, it has become standard practice for UK clothing retailers to develop CSR policies which impact upon their methods of garment sourcing and partnerships with suppliers. There is also a significant trend for retailers to offer ethical clothing ranges made from organic cotton or produced by Fair Trade manufacturers. The paper includes a case study on People Tree, which sells Fair Trade clothing sourced from developing countries. People Tree is rare amongst clothing companies in that it provides customers with a transparent view of its production sources via the internet. The company provides an example of how socially responsible and environmentally sustainable global sourcing can be applied in practice.

The study focuses on aspects of sustainability in an individual retailer. This could be extended to other ethical retailers in different countries, and a longitudinal study of such companies could be conducted.

Literature on ethical fashion companies and their use of socially responsible strategies is sparse, and there is a lack of research that covers both social and environmental sustainability in this market. This paper fills some of the gaps.

This paper examines recent developments in the Australian fashion and clothing industry as an example of a small‐scale industry attempting to come to terms with the impact of domestic industry restructuring within the rapidly changing global context of international trade. Most studies of the fashion, clothing and textile industries have concerned industries with major markets or highly specialised industries. There has been little attention to the particularities of smaller, peripheral industries and markets. The argument is that while the issues facing the Australian fashion/clothing industry are common to many industries, particular pressures have come from the contradictions between recent trends in industry policy (restructuring policies of recent governments) and in cultural policy (redefining aesthetic cultural production as industries). The paper discusses the implications of this conjoint approach to the iudustry.