Iris Publishers_Journal of Textile Science & Fashion Technology (JTSFT)
Fashion Design Entrepreneurship: Skills and Solutions to Create a Fashion Business
Abstract
Purpose: This study proposes a vision of entrepreneurship in fashion design. Higher-education courses have adapted, and fashion design courses have evolved and moved to a more entrepreneurial concept, as a generation of fashion designers has transformed past experiences and professional vision to become entrepreneurs. Authors and reports linked to entrepreneurship observe more than ever the importance and necessity to bring entrepreneurship very early to classrooms. Studies are more divided on that opinion and show that the introduction of such concepts in early stages of education can be harmful for the future of entrepreneurship if those concepts are poorly taught to students.
Methodology: This study employed a mixed-methods approach, as it considered the use of questionnaires to collect data from students and recently graduated students from fashion design schools, in Portugal and abroad; and semi-structured interviews to collect opinions of three main groups of industry professionals: fashion design entrepreneurs, solvers, and specialists. Linear regression & multivariate linear regression was used to analyze the quantitative data obtained, using SPSS. For the qualitative data obtained through interviews, QSR NVivo was used to analyze and encode answers. Finally, a project methodology was used to create a digital platform, proposed as a solution in this study.
Findings: Findings obtained in this study show a lack of support from entities for fashion-related ventures, as well as an evident lack of entrepreneurial thinking in fashion design courses, translated by enormous difficulties for young fashion designers willing to create their own business. Therefore, the need for a solution helping fashion design entrepreneurs was also clearly highlighted by the results obtained. Considering the results obtained through this study, a model for the creation of an entrepreneurship platform will be proposed to create value in the fashion industry.
Research limitations: The main limitation of this study is related to the definition of entrepreneurship itself, as many authors still diverge on this subject. Adding fashion to this topic is also controversial, as the definition of a fashion entrepreneur as yet to be made. Although highereducation courses have made transparency efforts in order to clarify their curricula, this study shows that the specificities presented on the courses and institutions official pages are not very easy to dissect, as many courses present business creation as a potential outcome, without referencing any specific topic on this subject in their curriculum.
Originality / value: This study inserts itself in a multidisciplinary field, mainly composed of two great areas: fashion design and entrepreneurship. The creation of this new subject and the parallelism created between design thinking and entrepreneurial thinking is also crucial. Moreover, the creation of value in the fashion design industry is the main goal here, as it is believed that fashion design SMEs can change the very controversial fashion and textile industry by adding new solutions and value to this billion-dollar market.
Introduction
The Portuguese textile and clothing industry have undoubtedly experienced many changes in the last few years. After the international crisis that stroke hard the economy of many countries, the crisis has been the catalyst for unemployment and austerity as its consequence. However, countries like Portugal are showing a real evolution since those dark times. The textile industry of Portugal has ended the year 2016 with 5063 million euros in exportations, a number that had not been reached since the beginning of the century [1], encouraging and pushing the Portuguese textile and clothing industry further into former previsions made by the director of ATP (Textile and clothing industry association), Paulo Vaz.
Portugal has also experienced a major augmentation regarding higher-education demand from students. Fields like fashion, apparel and textile design have seen the number of entering students increase in their higher-education courses, considering years 2009/2010 in comparison to 2015/2016 [3,4].
Entrepreneurship has also been unquestionably one of the most used words in the past few years, in Portugal and internationally. In Portugal, such affirmation can be confirmed through the number of entrepreneurial models and incentives proposed and created, most of the times linked to regulatory proposals made to emphasize such ventures [5]. In this context, entrepreneurship has become more than something achievable with “luck” and is now considered by public opinion on a global scale as an objective of improvement by many countries, seeing an opportunity and solutions through the growth of entrepreneurship.
More generally, students coming from various fields related to creative arts may benefit considerably from an entrepreneurial mindset, as innovation and multidisciplinary contents are part as these fields as they are part of entrepreneurship itself and can very well lead to a variety of jobs [6] . On the other side, the fashion design field has come to adopt entrepreneurship in another way for the past few years, in the sense that it can be conceded that some individuals have always created their businesses in the field, even if entrepreneurship cannot be reduced to such definition.
In such circumstances, the fashion industry has come to understand the need to innovate in an ever-changing field that comes across crisis on a daily-basis [7], even if on a national level, many are the family SMBs that cannot evolve and grow through innovation, entangled in their traditions, many times associated with the need for family union and only decider of the business's future [7].
As governmental entities have understood the importance of entrepreneurship for the future, many studies are also being made to determine whether or not entrepreneurship education can be the engine for a new generation of entrepreneurs [8-12].
Years after the most recent economic crisis that stroke the world, it is important to reflect on the current reality in which our society inserts itself, as well as how the powerful fashion industry has seen a new generation of fashion design entrepreneur rise, in order to change a paradigm where only fast-fashion and historical luxury brands were in.
Even with the recent numbers of unemployment keeping at their lowest since 2009 [13], Portugal is still sixth in the ranking of highest unemployment rates in the European Union, and fourth when only considering the Eurozone [14]. More importantly, youth unemployment is still a massive problem for the country, as its rate was 28% in the last trimester of 2016, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE), putting young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years old in a critical place [15].
According to Thomas Friedman, editorialist at The New York Times, paradigms have changed, and generation used to the reality of finding a position after graduation are now in need to create their way into the job market by becoming self-employed, in comparison to the previous generation that “had it easy” [16]. In Portugal, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lead the numbers, generating low rates of employment at the time [17]. As the socioeconomic frame in which we are inserted has come to create an impulse and evidence the need to develop alternatives to traditional jobs or, when they do not exist, created through new businesses, entrepreneurship can become a solution.
According to the European Commission 2008 report on entrepreneurship education, up to 20% of students who participate in an entrepreneurship education program in secondary school will later start their own company. However, as the primary objective of this investigation aims to understand entrepreneurship as a potential solution for young fashion designers, entrepreneurship education will be approached in the higher education environment. Moreover, this study will also approach the definition of the word entrepreneur [18,19], as many still reduce it to the creation of a business, yet, being an entrepreneur is far more than creating selfemployment [20-24].
Furthermore, by exploring entrepreneurship in the fashion design field, this study has for objectives, firstly, to clarify if fashion design higher education programs are prepared for the new challenges of a society always more directed to entrepreneurship; secondly, to understand what specific skills and attitudes young fashion designers lack when it comes to creating their venture in the industry and finally, and thirdly, an exploration of existing solutions aiming to help fashion design entrepreneurs will be made as well as a search for qualities and functions that could be gamechanging.
This study inserts itself in a research gap, where very few studies address fashion design entrepreneurship as a field. This topic, which is very new regarding scientific research, is approached locally and globally, to contribute to the scientific exploration of fashion design and entrepreneurial activity in the field. Moreover, this study seeks to understand who are these fashion design entrepreneurs in Portugal and abroad, as well as comprehending their stories, the point of view as professionals of the industry, the main difficulties they encountered in their journey, and most importantly, if fashion design higher-education can contribute to the increase of such behavior.
A mixed-method approach is used to cover as much information on both sides of this issue [25]; fashion design students in their senior year will be inquired as well as recently graduated students and on the other side of the fence. On the qualitative analysis side, three groups of distinctive professionals related to the fashion industry will be interviewed to understand the crossroads between entrepreneurship and fashion design.
The results obtained through this analysis aim to contribute to the scientific research in the field by choosing a topic of investigation socially relevant, a problem that belongs to the disciplinary field of design, using a model that can be applied in future investigations, and finally, a process involving users [26]; as the results obtained will directly contribute to the creation of a solution, proposed here as a model, aiming to help fashion design entrepreneurs.
Research Questions
In an interview on the French late show “On n'est pas couché” [27], Olivier Rousteing, creative director at Balmain reflected on his dream as a young child, knowing that he liked to design clothes at a very young age and declared that for him, having a passion was great, but it would be even better to turn it into a job. Rousteing also proclaimed that he senses that this is an actual issue among young people nowadays, as many of them dream to turn that dream into a profession but are never able to. As the scientific field of fashion studies is still very recent [28] the study of multidisciplinary topics involving fashion design is crucial, this study inserts itself in this logic, as it aims to comprehend the relation between fashion design and entrepreneurship.
The challenges and opportunities that come into the path of Fashion Designers is the core of this investigation, considering higher education and its transcription on the job market. The discussion of such thematic develops itself around a set of research lines, considering the education of Fashion Designers: youth unemployment that affects almost every field of activity, the professional skills of these students leaving the educational system, the lack of experience from these young people at the end of their education, as well as the perspective of self-employment.
Considering for that matter fashion design as the nucleus of this research and the particularities of fashion design research [29,30], the following research questions appear: are fashion design higher education courses prepared for the new challenges ahead, in a society that is more entrepreneurial than ever? What specific skills, knowledge and attitudes of young designers lack of to be finally able to launch their venture in this particular field? What are the solutions that are created or can be created to help young designers aspiring to become entrepreneurs? These are the main lines in which this study inserts itself.
The research questions are based on all the previous investigation made to this moment, and it is believed that they reflect what Moreira da Silva interprets as the four conditions essential to produce an investigative work in design: “the problem must belong to the disciplinary field of design, the methods used must construct themselves into a model that can be applied in future investigations or in the profession of design itself; the topic of investigation must be socially relevant, the process must involve the users ”[26]. The four conditions presented by Moreira da Silva were adapted in the context of this study and were used as a guide to elaborate the following figure, demonstrating the importance and articulation of the research questions.
In Figure 1, it can be observed that the first question reflects the necessity to understand if students from higher educational programs developed the necessary skills to face the challenges of an entrepreneurial society. For Frideman T [31], developing skills and being innovative is crucial, as being able to use information that has been taught in the classroom is more important than the information itself. Through the research that was previously conducted, it can be noticed that many factors are contributing to a devaluation of education, as it was the case for the Bologna process. This depreciation that was also the object of study of many researchers of the design field, namely Alexandra Cruchinho, who approached this thematic in her doctoral thesis entitled “Design- The construction of skills continues” [32].
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