Buying and "Sustainability" internship at a Denim Brand Part 3

 Hej everyone, 

 

it is nearly the end of my internship, and this will be my last post. In general, I must say I learned a lot throughout the internship, especially about the challenges small companies in the dynamic fashion sector are facing. This insight resulted in me wondering, how is it even possible for startup firms in the fashion industry to render a sustainable competitive advantage in this dynamic, global and highly competitive environment? I became so preoccupied with this question that I decided to change my topic for the report and dedicate it to this question instead. Within the internship I observed and was involved in several collaborations between the brand and other companies. These companies were not just other brands but included firms from various sectors. One of them was for example with a local Stockholm based burger restaurant, another one with a data analytics firm. I started to think, that maybe these collaborations with partners who are experts in their field might enable the firm to tackle the challenges in the industry, such as sustainability and digitization. Talking to the founder of the brand he confirmed my supposition. He described his network as jar full of expertise, and whenever they needed a certain know-how or capability he would go back to the jar and pick out the right fit. According to him this would even be the future of the industry. Companies would focus more on their expertise, perfect these and share them with others if they require them and vice versa. Thereby companies would not have to spend resources in building every competence themselves but would rather work together, share knowledge and thereby be able to increase the overall productivity of the sector. So based on this very interesting conversation and insight I decided to write about alliance management capability as key dynamic capability for startup firms in the fashion industry. 

 

Even though I enjoyed research in this topic and my work with the various partners of the firm, I kind of missed the focus on sustainability. However, if following the above described approach, it would probably make more sense to cooperate with a sustainability expert anyhow ;p

 

 So, within the last two months I moved from sustainability to daily buying business to strategic alliances. All in all a very interesting and steep learning curve with the special lesson that in research and in business rarely anything goes according to plan. Staying flexible, sensing new opportunities and seizing them is key in research and in business. 

 

I hope you all had a great internship! Enjoy you summer break and hopefully see you all soon. 

 

All the best, J.W.