Company distress in the fashion/textile industry. Questing for discriminant variables

This paper addresses the relationship between company survival and industry-specific discriminant variables in the fashion/textile industry. Our analysis is based on Italian SMEs. The data set is made up of 393 fashion companies and a control group consisting of 1268 companies. After running the discriminant model on the two datasets, we found in the fashion model, a higher discriminant power for variables that were connected to return on sales when compared to the general model. In this way, “intangible assets” or other variables related to return on sales may provide an indirect explanation of the higher capacity of survival for fashion companies in the market.