Fashion Branding to Retailers and Consumers in Consortium Marketing. Insights from a Case Analysis in the Italian Leatherwear Industry

This article describes the creation of consortium marketing through the integration of marketing activities among the small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in the Italian fashion leatherwear industry. This industry faces a continuing challenge from the type of competition that characterizes the present-day international fashion marketplace, which is increasingly evolving towards buyer-driven and geographically diversified networks. Such a situation stands in contrast to the more traditional systems of marketing and coping with competition by Italian fashion SME firms. Consortium marketing is a category of interfirm collaboration (Kingsley and Klein 1998) whereby multiple firms with complementary knowledge, skills, and/or supply chain positions plan and implement strategies to achieve synergies in innovating, designing, manufacturing, promoting, and/or delivery of products and services to their immediate customers and downstream customers. Consortium marketing organizations represent more than the coordination of activities by independent firms in a supply chain; usually planned collaboration in innovation processes in creating and adopting superior technologies, designing products highly desirable by customers, and manufacturing to meet the demands greater than the production capability of any one member are common characteristics of consortium marketing organizations. An additional characteristic of consortium marketing organizations is the concentration of members within a local area, for example, “Industrial Districts” in Italy in the design and manufacturing of fashion brands of textile and leather goods. A close reading of the consortium marketing literature indicates that all such meta-organizations do not include the same design characteristics. However, commonalities do exist especially in given geographical-and-industrial contexts. The present study focuses on explicating how members within the fashion leatherwear industry in Italy interpret the start-up and on-going strategic planning and implementation using this form of meta-organizational design. The aim of this article is to describe interfirm marketing cooperation as a strategy for SME players in local systems of fashion firms. More precisely the paper presents a case analysis concerning Italian leatherwear manufacturers that join together to create an interfirm consortium which acts as a sole manufacturer-marketing player. Such interfirm integrated-marketing strategy assumes noteworthy significance both in industrial marketing and in branding and retailing to consumers. The case study observes marketing policy orientations toward the final consumers while remaining consistent with the aim of preserving cooperation with the big international retail buyers. The thick description provides propositions relevant for advancing a theory of interfirm cooperation and marketing behavior.