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Who captures most of the profits created in the global apparel industry? When discussing distributive issues in apparel global value chains, scholars, policy makers and activists tend to focus on distributive struggles between five groups of actors: Consumers, fashion brands and retailers, manufacturers, workers, and states. Much of the analysis concludes that the rise of global value chains since the 1990s has enabled fashion brands and retailers (also known as ‘lead firms’)

The global economy has faced major disruptions in recent years, challenging the stability of the globalized production model and prompting expectations for more resilient, localized supply chains. These discussions mirror broader debates in economic geography and political economy on the possible ‘regionalization’ or ‘de-globalization’ of production networks. Across industries, these debates are shaped by disruptions such as climate change, digitalization, and geopolitical te

Over the past two decades, Ethiopia has pursued an ambitious goal: to become Africa’s light manufacturing hub and reach lower middle-income status by 2025. Inspired in part by China’s state-led development model, Ethiopian leaders embraced industrial policy, special economic zones, and export-oriented manufacturing as the path to transform. For a while, the story looked promising. Ethiopia recorded doble-digit economic growth between 2004 and 2017. Industrial parks proliferat

Supplier firm value capture in global value chains (GVCs) has typically been approached through the lens of economic upgrading. In the seminal work, Gereffi’s (1999)  argues that East Asian apparel suppliers could increase value capture by moving beyond assembly into input sourcing, transnational subcontracting, and design within the apparel GVC. The prevailing assumption was that progression from contract manufacturing to design and eventually to own-brand production would g

As global brands have expanded their supply chains, apparel production has increasingly shifted to low-wage countries in the Global...

Who captures most of the profits created in the global apparel industry? When discussing distributive issues in apparel global value...

The ‘Creating and Capturing Value’ project seeks to understand how various actors in the global apparel industry – including brands and...

The global apparel industry is characterized by the outsourcing of labor-intensive production to countries with low-cost labor, and as a...

Explaining variation in apparel workers’ wages and working conditions, both between producer countries and over time, is a key objective...