How Italian Fashion Brands Beat COVID-19: Manufacturing, Sustainability, and Digitalization

Eleonora Di Maria, Marco Bettiol and Mauro Capestro ()
Additional contact information
Eleonora Di Maria: Department of Economics and Management, University of Padova, 35123 Padova, Italy
Marco Bettiol: Department of Economics and Management, University of Padova, 35123 Padova, Italy
Mauro Capestro: Department of Economics and Management, University of Padova, 35123 Padova, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-20

Abstract: COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on the fashion industry. Fashion brands had to restructure their value chains and refine their strategies to overcome the negative consequences of the lockdown. An analysis of the Italian fashion industry is used to examine how companies responded to the challenges of the pandemic and how they were able to find competitive solutions. Qualitative analysis is used to discuss the case of Italy, a country that was particularly affected by COVID-19. The research shows that companies invested in three different directions to overcome the obstacles posed by the COVID-19 emergency: refocusing on manufacturing, investing in sustainability (especially social), and relying on digital technologies (e.g., e-commerce and videoconferencing) to interact with remote customers. The theoretical and practical contributions of this study are discussed.

Keywords: global value chain; sustainability; COVID-19; manufacturing; digitalization; fashion industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/2/1038/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/2/1038/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:2:p:1038-:d:1026713

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().