Bringing Manufacturing Activities Back Home: a Born Local Strategy in the Textile Industry Enabled by a Business Model Innovation.

Juliette KEOHANE^1,*,+, Thierry RAYNA¹, Benjamin CABANES²,

¹Ecole Polytechnique; ²Ecole Polytechnique; ³Ecole Polytechnique;

*[email protected]

⁺Additional remarks that might be necessary

Abstract

In the textile industry, the dominant business model for a couple of decades is cost cutting and efficiency to maintain a competitive advantage. Nevertheless, underestimate total cost were associated with operations abroad: cost advantages of offshoring locations deteriorate or when knowledge needs to be transfer and integrated. Therefore, several companies reshored their activities seeing potential benefits in local production. The changing market dynamics in the global textiles and apparel market makes the analysis of the born local strategy and the associated business models in the sector more relevant. Business model innovation is essentially about developing new ways to capture, create and deliver value and moves beyond more narrowly defined categories, such as product, service, and process innovation. The empirical research will study a French brand in the apparel industry, 1083 that reshored the entire production process in France regions, historically linked to the textile industry. The findings describe how the disadvantage of being born local (high costs, resources constraints and no flexibility) can however be counterbalanced by a business model innovation though an active multi-stakeholder’s governance and engaging the audience by creating value communication.

Keywords 

Business model, innovation, manufacturing, textile industry, suppliers, location