Trade in transformation: The example of the textile business as an innovator of urban life-style

Abstract

The textile business is an excellent example for permanent transformations of the life-style of consumers. The first cycle in the Darwinism of the European textile sector was dominated by traders ‘knowledge about the sources of the product-materials and opportunities for processing. In a second phase covering the start of industrial mass-production and professional mass-distribution outlets for textiles were established with benchmarks at high frequency spots in down-towns of agglomerations like Berlin, Cologne, London or Paris. Department stores became the anchor of cities and for life-style driven citizens. In the third phasis the outlet-dominance is attacked by IT-driven businesses by the development of tools like the European Article Numbering-system, chips and QR-codes, clouds for big data and data-mining, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. For the textile traders it is an improvement of the efficiency by the ability to control the total supply chain electronically; for the consumer the potential interconnectivity with the internet and smartphones is an empowerment of demand because the choices for alternative points of sales are permanently increasing and mobile shopping decreases the dependance on locations of brick-and stone. Of course, this is resulting in big changes for the supply patterns.