The right supply chain strategy can still make the difference: how Italian Textile and Apparel SMEs quest for competitiveness

International competition has severely hit the Italian textile-apparel industry, causing reductions in the number of firms, revenues, value added, export and employment. However a closer and more rigorous look at the data and facts behind this general picture reveals a more articulated situation with wide variation in firms’ performance and significant differences in the supply chain strategies that they have come up with to survive, and, in some cases, to thrive. Using data from the Italian Ministry of the Economy annual industry revenue survey (Studi di Settore), we apply multiple correspondence analysis and cluster analysis to a sample of over 30,000 small-medium Italian textile-apparel firms to map this variation of firms’ performance onto the business models they have adopted. Some of them, characterized by some supply chain strategies like internationalization, investment in technology and skills, move up scale in the market are associated with higher productivity and innovation, while the others lead to decline. These business models provide an interesting diagnostic and predicting tools for business practitioners and policy makers who believe firms in mature industries can still play an important role in the economy and wish to support them as they strive to compete globally.