Textile and Apparel Industries

Secrets in Fashion Entrepreneurship: Exploring Factors Influencing Success in U.S. Fashion New Ventures

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Abstract

In today’s global fashion industry, fashion entrepreneurs push the global fashion industry forward through design innovation and new business models. Consumers’new shopping patterns and emerging technologies have created various opportunities, as well as challenges for fashion entrepreneurs. Many new ventures fail in the early stages (Shirokova & Shatalov, 2010). To achieve research goals, two theoretical perspectives were used in this study. Barney’s(1991) Resource-Based View of the firm helped reveal secrets to success from the firm’s perspective. The Social Cognitive Theory can be used as a supplemental theory to explain secrets to success from the individual(founder/entrepreneur)’s perspective (Boyd & Vozikis, 1994). Thirteen entrepreneurs were recruited to participate interviews using the purposive sampling technique. The data reveal that there are two types of fashion entrepreneurs: pre-determined fashion entrepreneurs and accidental fashion entrepreneurs. The findings also revealed major resources at both firm and individual levels.

Keywords: Fashion Entrepreneurship, Resource-Based Theory

How to Cite:

Zhao, L., Davis, L. & Davis, D., (2019) “Secrets in Fashion Entrepreneurship: Exploring Factors Influencing Success in U.S. Fashion New Ventures”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 76(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.8358