The Apparel Industry

Citation

Murray, R. (2002), "The Apparel Industry", Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 417-418. https://doi.org/10.1108/jfmm.2002.6.4.417.1

Richard Jones has a mission, as indicated in his preface, to try to compensate for the limitations of earlier literature on the economics of the apparel industry. The Apparel Industry is a major help in this respect and will provide a very good vehicle through which those working in the industry, researching it or studying aspects of it as students, will quickly be able to gain a grasp of apparel markets.

The book is unashamedly UK centric in its early chapters, then moves to global considerations and offshore production strategies, dealing with these from more universally applicable principles before refocusing on the UK for the final three chapters. The author is refreshingly free of economics dogma and takes the opportunity to help the reader to challenge received wisdom across a range of aspects important in gaining a better understanding of apparel markets.

Richard Jones has written for producers, retailers, academics and students in the UK, but it would be easily possible to substitute another country’s industry data into the UK centred chapters to give a different perspective. It seems that Richard Jones is leaving academics in other countries to make these adjustments for themselves and this helps to keep the book to a manageable size, whilst providing good detail.

The author is not afraid of including tables of data and his collection makes this a rich source book. It is interesting, nevertheless, to read the author’s frustrated attempt on p. 77 to try to pin down production figures for each year by the USA or to gain an adequate estimate of China’s contribution to apparel production which has not been known since 1992. Of course, each country produces data for its own purposes rather than to enable the assembly of a worldwide overview.

His summary analysis of the EU as the home market for the UK on pp. 268‐70 is worth noting, especially the argument leading to the conclusion that concentration by UK manufacturers on European markets may not be a desirable long term strategy. The discussion about lack of convergence and homogeneity of consumer demand highlights that it would be wrong to believe that consumers across Europe would all want the same things simply because of joining the EU.

This book is full of interesting perspectives on the apparel industry and should be read both in the UK and internationally as a sound source of data and ideas. As the author indicates, the data collected within the book must be expected to change on a regular basis, so we look forward to frequent updates in subsequent editions.