Guest editorial

Citation

Jones, R. (2009), "Guest editorial", Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol. 13 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jfmm.2009.28413baa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Volume 13, Issue 2

Lord Mandelson to unveil loans to bail out car firms; An industry worth saving (Daily Telegraph, 26 January 2009).

There is something ineffably sad about an island race having to buy its ships […] No, I’d go further than sad. I think it’s humiliating (Maconie, 2008, p. 297)

As the previous editor of this journal I was responsible for establishing the editorial line that arguments about “hidden” costs of offshore production were not sustainable and that the production of apparel away from the developed countries was irreversible. Statistics on the trends in employment in, and the import of apparel into, the UK between 1994 and 2006 make sobering reading (Figure 1). In the UK, employment in apparel manufacturing in the 1980s held steady at around 200,000 and then fell rapidly to around 40,000 in the early years of the new century seeming to have levelled out. However, by 2008 the figure had dropped again to around 29,000. Research into such declines has normally argued that three factors will have been responsible, viz. a lack of demand, increases in productivity and imports. In the case of the UK the first two can be ruled out (until the recession) so the main cause must have been rising imports. As shown in Figure 2, the negative correlation between employment and imports is very strong. I am aware that this does not conclusively prove the one caused the other, but it does give one food for thought! This association would not, in fact, be surprising given the phase out of trade controls by 2005 and the accession of China to the WTO in 2001. In the period 1998 to 2003 exports of apparel from the UK fell by 22 per cent and the number of enterprises fell by 50 per cent. As I pointed out in the editorial in Volume 9 Number 3, this rapid decline in the sector passed with virtually no comment in the press at all. The closure of the Burberry factory in South Wales in 2007 did attract a lot of media attention, as was discussed in the editorial in Volume 11 Number 2. However, I do not believe you could ever substitute the word “apparel” for the word “car” in the quotation at the head of the page in the current recession because no government in a developed country sees the apparel industry as strategically important any more.

Figure 1 UK apparel manufacturing sector (SIC 18) 1994-2006

Figure 2 Correlation between employment and imports, apparel UK 1994-2006

In relation to the statistics used above, I am aware that there are, at least, two alternative views on statistical trends in the apparel manufacturing sector in the UK. One approach is to widen the definition by including primary textiles, shoe manufacture and, most significantly, fashion retailing. This, primarily because of the latter, raises the total employed to around 300,000. I do not believe this approach is tenable because the retail sector could survive very well without any domestic production. In fact, the rate of import penetration in the UK apparel market in 2008 was over 100 per cent in most months. I have always felt that this approach is fanciful at best and academically dishonest at worst. Would we, in 2009, say that the redundancies being experienced in retailing represent a decline in apparel manufacturing? I do not think so. A second approach uses the concept of an industrial cluster to argue that, while the old manufacturing core is in terminal decline, a new core remains vibrant. This approach argues that there are many jobs which do not show up in the government’s statistical definition of apparel manufacturing (Standard Industrial Classification 18) but which should be seen as apparel employment. These would include design, wholesaling, sourcing, laboratory testing and quality control, for example. These activities are seen as forming a new core to which the remaining manufacturing capacity is related. This “cluster hypothesis” has been researched for the North West region of the UK by Dr David Tyler of Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and is reported in Textiles (Tyler, 2008). The conclusion drawn was that while the “manufacturing core has been dramatically reduced in size over the past decade […] the cluster of companies majoring in apparel products has been diversifying and growing”. This approach allows this new apparel cluster to be represented as still a significant player in the regional economy and one whose importance is understated by a concentration on the narrow SIC 18 focus. I believe this second approach has more to recommend it than the first. The new core does, of course, require different skills than the old one, which will have implications for trainers and educational establishments. For example, a recent report into the UK designer fashion sector revealed quite a promising picture (NESTA, 2008). The choice of approach is not value-free – it depends partly on what you are trying to prove. In general, advocates of the two approaches described above wish to represent the industry in a good light by maximising the size of the sector in order to impress on governments how important it is not to let the sector decline any further. There is no doubt that the traditional sector (as represented by SIC 18) has declined almost to extinction and I feel it is extremely unlikely that governments in developed countries could ever be persuaded in 2009 that apparel manufacturing is vital to the future of the economy – as it clearly is in many developing countries, by contrast. The danger then of trying to manipulate the numbers is that if there are remaining producers in niche sectors in, say, the UK worthy of support they will not get it because no one regards the argument from supporters of the apparel sector as credible any more. It might be better to concentrate on developing strategies appropriate to declining sectors – most strategic management texts contain these. This decline in developed countries is not surprising given that the competitive advantage in apparel manufacture (an extremely labour-intensive process) has moved to the low-wage economies of the developing world, as has been demonstrated in research by Kilduff and Chi (2006), as reported in this journal for example. As has been noted above, the UK now imports virtually all the apparel consumed and I suppose we could substitute the word “apparel” for “ships” in the second quotation at the top of the page, given that textiles and apparel were at the forefront of the industrial revolution in the UK. Whether or not this is a matter for shame or simply a natural sequence of development through which countries pass is open to question. In January 2009 a story came to light which suggested that the discount retailer Primark had hit on a novel response to global shift by employing (we do not know if this was deliberate or in ignorance) a local supplier in Manchester using illegal immigrants paid about 50 per cent of the legal minimum wage. I assume no one will see this as the way forward, but it does not help the image of the sector.

In my view there can no longer be any doubt that for most apparel manufacturers based in developed countries an essential element of a survival strategy will be the large-scale use of offshore production to replace domestic capacity. The only remaining question is who does what in the evolving multi-national supply chain? Some recent research published in this journal by people like Cao et al. (2008) suggested that partners in developing countries will become interested in taking over some of the so-called “clever” functions as opposed to remaining as mere assemblers, in a process described by Gereffi (1999) as industrial upgrading. I can end on an optimistic note by pointing out that our experience at MMU, following regular course modernisation, is that the job market for our graduates and for industrial placements within courses remains strong. The other more positive note is that one of the effects of the current recession has been to force people in the UK to question the wisdom of the de-industrialisation which has taken place over the years – at least the start-up costs in the apparel sector are relatively low, should a policy of re-industrialisation ever take hold.

Richard Jones