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This paper aims to provide an insight into how fashion designer businesses work and survive in London, with an understanding of business techniques and the survival strategies of British fashion designers.

The initial research demonstrated a need to define “innovation” as well as recognise the approach of “creative people” in business by exploring existing literature. This was followed by a series of structured interviews with nine British Fashion Designers in London, and three with intermediaries aimed at putting the designers' activities within a business context: a fashion PR; a lawyer specialising in fashion business and a creative director of a fashion distributor.

The research suggests ten survival strategies employed by fashion designers. The five fashion designers in a sustainable business all operated all of these principles. Those no longer in business operated between one and five of these principles. As designers gain experience and realise their “value“, there is evidence that they can get leverage for contractual agreements with licensors, which has led to financial growth of the designers' businesses. Strategies for diversification and consultancy, if managed without diluting design values, have also led to business growth and stability.

Further research is required to consider innovation and entrepreneurship in the different creative and cultural industries, particularly concerning issues and challenges for the creative person.

The implications are that designers need to be quick to understand the business and wider environment in which they are operating. More published material needs to be widely available to them concerning role models and business models relevant to this unique and problematic industry.

The value of this original research is to share experience and inform designers and practitioners of current practices.

This paper aims to deal with the issue of business model change in industrial markets. It considers the fast-fashion supply chain by addressing the following research questions: What are the paths of change of the supplier’s business model to match the business model of fast fashion customers? How can a supplier’s business model be adapted to customer’s requirements in these paths of change?

Empirically, the paper presents a multiple case study of 10 semi-finished textile suppliers, carried out through a long-term research programme in the Italian textile industrial district of Prato.

The multiple-case study shows some key drivers of change in the suppliers’ business models. Three main paths emerged from the interactions with fast fashion clients. Paradoxes in the supplier’s business model changes are identified and discussed.

The paper proposes implications for suppliers interacting with fast fashion clients and discusses how the adaptation of business models may be interpreted. This study points out how matching the business model of the customers does not call for alignment of similar features.

The paper deals with an understudied topic within the literature: business models change in business to business markets, taking into consideration the perspective of the supplier. It considers buyers-seller relationships in industrial supply chains as being part of a chain of business models and the need for the supplier’s business model to adapt and match one of the clients. The paper proposes two potential interpretations of such adaptation.

Using resource-based theory and social cognitive theory, this study aimed to investigate crucial resources that new US fashion ventures need to survive the initial stage of business development. It also intended to discover the role and characteristics of founders that contribute to the success of a fashion business, as well as challenges and struggles that fashion entrepreneurs face.

For the study, a qualitative research method with in-depth personal interviews was conducted. Participants were recruited through purposeful sampling methods. Using a grounded theory approach, we analyzed the approximately 308 pages of primary source data, transcribed from the records of the interviews.

Findings were categorized into three major themes. First, financial resources and literacy, marketing, merchandising, as well as legal resources were identified as critical resources at the firm level. Second, at the individual level, four important human agency factors, including intentionality, forethought, reactiveness and reflectiveness were revealed as essential for the success of fashion entrepreneurs. Lastly, relationships and networks were highlighted at both firm and individual levels.

This study contributes to the understanding of fashion entrepreneurship, an understudied area. The study identified critical resources for the success of fashion startups, especially during the initial business development process. The findings also emphasized the importance of human agency factors and networks at both firm and individual levels.

Globalization and its impacts on economies, societies and cultures has been a hot topic of research and discussion in the past few years. Recent times are witnessing the upsurge of another doctrine in the international arena – the practice of isolationism, a policy majorly related to political affairs but extendable to business, sustainability, green behaviour and various other spheres.

Globalization has resulted in various kinds of disordering and reordering of business objectives and practices. Modern day consumers have new needs and lifestyle orientations. The flip side is that increased global operations have precipitated newer challenges for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). But for managing globalization, isolationism is not the answer (Altman, 2007). Isolationism cannot be expected to have reciprocative effects of globalization. In fact, it may be in dispute with interests of many social stakeholders.

Responsible businesses have reoriented their CSR initiatives towards environmental and social stewardship. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the more recent strategic tools that provide a more focussed mandate to address sustainability issues emerging from increased production, consumption and disposal. In the times of vulnerabilities and disruption, there is an increasing emphasis on developing CSR as a horizontal enabler of SDGs.

Fashion & textile industry is the second most polluting industry globally. Fast fashion is having catastrophic impacts on the environment. Due to the massive size and magnitude of the global fashion & textile industry (USD 920 billion in 2018 and projected to grow to USD 1,230 billion by 2024), it becomes important to examine dimensions of CSR, in reference to SDGs in this sector. The fashion & textile industry is one of the most globally integrated. Sourcing, production, supply chain management, market development and retailing are all dependent on integration and collaboration amongst various business entities and regulatory bodies across national boundaries. Isolationism may result in disorientations in the enabling environments of this industry.

As sustainability is going to be the most important directive in coming future, the study aims to examine the cohesiveness between the current CSR initiatives of the fashion & textile sector and the prescribed SDGs. The study will further investigate if the instantaneous momentum of isolationism could cultivate multifaceted challenges for the horizontal integration of CSR in SDGs; and if yes, what will be the nature of these challenges?

The purpose of this paper is to explore the key features of fashion rental from a business model perspective with a focus on the role played by digital platforms.

A qualitative research design was used based on multiple case studies of three Italian fashion rental enterprises.

The findings reveal the key aspects characterizing fashion rental business models and the centrality of digital platforms in value creation, configuration and capture activities. The study also found that fashion rental platforms are likely to exhibit further successful development in the future.

The academic literature on fashion rental has been mainly focussed on examining consumers' motivations and concerns, paying little attention to the enterprise's viewpoint. To date, no previous study has examined fashion rental business models from the retailer's perspective. This paper is the first to explore the key components of fashion rental business models and how digital platforms influence them from the perspective of retailers. The originality of the study is further strengthened by the unique context of analysis, namely, Italy, a leading country for global fashion.

This paper aims to present an original conceptual model that captures the orientations of new business founders in the fashion design sector as they navigate the tension between creative endeavour and business practice.

The start‐up experiences of 38 fashion designers from the four main fashion centres in New Zealand were examined using an interpretive narrative approach. The designers' enterprise development narratives were analysed using in‐depth literary and conceptual analyses to reveal the nature and context of their start‐up behaviour and the conceptual frameworks they employed to make sense of their start‐up behaviour.

The designers were, to varying degrees, preoccupied with a perceived tension between creative processes and business practices. This tension was typically experienced as a disjunction between self‐identity and the identities supported by the business models designers worked within. Successfully navigating this tension could require significant conceptual shifts or fundamental adjustments in business approaches which challenged designers' original rationales for start‐up. The analysis of designers' responses to the creativity‐business tension and how they made sense of this produced a conceptual framework, a space delineated by three basic enterprise orientations: creative enterprise orientation (CEO), creative business orientation (CBO), and fashion industry orientation (FIO).

This conceptual framework has major implications for policy makers and providers of design education and business support as it offers a means of differentiating between the lived‐in experiences of designers. In so doing it could be used as a tool for tailoring support more appropriately to designers' needs. The narrative approach produced rich, contextualised insights and a template for the further studies that will be required to establish the wider applicability of the framework.

The original conceptual framework presented here provides much needed insight into creative business start‐ups that will allow better targeting of education, support and policy development. The approach used to create this framework is an innovative example of how narrative and sensemaking approaches can be combined to provide rich insights into enterprise creation from the entrepreneur's perspective.

The purpose of this research is to develop a multidimensional measurement of fashion domain entrepreneurial self-efficacy (FDESE) based on which fashion entrepreneurs will be able to better develop strategies to gain and sustain success in their business development. The research is crucial to advocate fashion entrepreneurship and will provide direction for fashion business incubation services.

This research included three stages with mixed qualitative and quantitative approaches: conceptualizing construct definition and specifying domain(s) to generate initial items, scale purification and scale validation. This study started with reviewing the literature and individual interviews among 19 fashion entrepreneurs, which generated 72 initial items. An online survey was then conducted with individuals who are running or have the intention to run fashion businesses, yielding 249 useable samples for scale purification, which generated 21 items for the validation phase. Lastly, another online survey was administered to individuals who are currently running fashion businesses which resulted in 258 valid responses included for scale validation.

A measure of FDESE that is both reliable and valid was developed, including 21 items across four distinct dimensions: passion for fashion business (five items), marketing and branding (seven items), financial management (five items) and creativity (four items).

This study is the first attempt to develop practical scales measuring self-efficacy that focus on fashion domain entrepreneurship. The newly developed FDESE scale indicates that entrepreneurship not only involves marketing skills, financial knowledge, creativity, leadership, and proactivity but also requires passion and persistence.

Creative industries, such as the designer fashion industry (DFI), are among the toughest in which to establish sustainable business ventures. While studies have examined how networks and social capital contribute to independent DFI start-ups and why such businesses fail, these studies have been largely restricted to well-established entrepreneurial spaces like London, which differ in structure and size compared to emerging DFI entrepreneurial spaces in small economies like New Zealand. This chapter addresses this gap in the creative enterprise literature by presenting findings from an examination of 12 New Zealand fashion designers’ accounts of their responses to start-up challenges. The analysis, which paid particular attention to the relationship between social capital and reported strategic practice, revealed that the designers’ challenge profiles and strategic responses were linked to very ‘biographical’ personal networks and their personal enterprise orientations. While those designers with well-established networks started the most resilient businesses, the analysis revealed that even these designers were not necessarily particularly strategic when tapping into the social capital embedded in their networks. Overall, the findings provide further confirmation of the importance of social capital and network management during start-up. Most significantly, they demonstrate why designers need to be forward looking and employ a strategic approach to developing and accessing social capital and when making business decisions. Those who did so were more likely to have viable ventures than those who accessed social capital in order to react to unanticipated challenges.

The purpose of the perspective article is to review relevant literature on family business and ethnic fashion and establish links across identity (defined as culture, tradition, heritage and status) and fashion (color, design, pattern and fabric/texture) and internationalization (foreign market entry), and develop a conceptual model using the identity theory and qualitative method.

This is a qualitative study by design. We used a systematic research and ethnographic method for this study. Specifically, the author used the participant observation aspect of ethnography to collect information and images relating to ethnic fashion. Ethnography is a well-established methodology widely used in social sciences research, including fashion.

The study's conceptual model proposes that (1) ethnic fashion mediates the identity-internationalization relationship, (2) knowledge transfer moderates the identity-ethnic fashion relationship and (3) family business size moderates the ethnic fashion-internationalization relationship. It is also revealed that a person's status can be judged by their dress and fashion in under two minutes.

This study is limited to the African continent, though it has 54 countries with a current population of about 1.5 billion people, which is expected to be roughly 2.5 billion by 2050.

Implications of the study for the entrepreneurs and family businesses are that they should realize the opportunities presented by ethnic African fashion and tap into the most crucial key to success—local design, color, fabric and patterns associated with meaning and messages. Cross-cultural collaborations and digital innovations can help the internationalization of African fashion while preserving local heritage and identity. Another implication is that quality and consistency in branding are equally essential to be on par with intentional luxury brands.

The social implication of the study is that culture and fashion are correlated and influence designers' creations, reflecting and conveying identity, status and societal values. Fashion allows people to express their identity, individuality and values. The proper fashion and outfit can boost mood, self-esteem and confidence, resulting in healthy social interaction and mental health. Fashion can also raise social issues (e.g. inclusiveness, diversity and gender by featuring various models and designs) and environmental issues (e.g. sustainable practices local and ethical production).

The paper synthesizes ethnic fashion in the context of family businesses in Africa, highlights specific examples of ethnic fashion of African people with the potential for internationalization and proposes future fashion perspectives for family businesses. It adds value in that it focuses on fashion family businesses in the African continent.

This study aims to develop and test a methodical approach to assessing the effectiveness of business models in fast fashion.

The approach allows one to identify the key features of companies' adaptation strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper analyzes the economic profitability of the fast-fashion industry and establishes business opportunity trends. The author identifies a set of general characteristics of business related to supply and demand before and during the pandemic crisis. The study relies on descriptive statistics and statistical processing methods, including regression analysis, arithmetic mean and the indicator of market economy dynamics.

The study found that the fast-fashion business model allows companies to adapt to the new market norms because of its dual strategy: demand-driven transparency and supply-driven sustainability, within the logic of consumption. The results indicate that focus on sustainability and transparent stakeholder engagement helps companies to remain relevant in the fashion industry.

The results of the study can be used by general managers of companies, marketers and administrative managers to select strategies and make decisions under the current and future fashion industry demands in markets at different developmental stages.