Applying Storytelling Approach to Analyze Kojima Jeans District Based on Slow Fashion Perspectives

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper focuses on a topic which is relevant and timely. This study uses the narrative approach and establishes an analytical framework based on keywords from the slow fashion perspective, namely localism, quality and value, applied to the Kojima district in Japan, known as a centre of vintage jeans production. This study aims to explore how Kojima district has sustained community-based fashion business and analysis that contributed to its regeneration from the perspectives of slow fashion. In this paper the authors provide a very comprehensive study on how the application Storytelling Approach to analyse Kojima Jeans District based on Slow Fashion Perspectives. Overall, the paper is comprehensive in terms of application. However, there are many problems as follows:

- The authors adequately present the topic and research question; however, they should present in more detail the research gap that the paper aims to answer.

- The structure of the article should be improved, it is suggested the inclusion of a chapter dedicated to the theoretical framework, which supports and justifies the theme and the data analysis, inserting the most relevant and current concepts of the theme under study, namely regarding business strategy and marketing (relational, authenticity and community-based fashion business).

- Thus, the literature review should be more developed, the authors, by including a chapter dedicated to the theoretical framework, will improve the overall quality of the article if they use very recent references and perhaps add a figure/model that comprehensively explains the relationships explored in the data analysis.

-Additionally, it is suggested that the conclusions include two more sections, one dedicated to the contributions/implications of the study for academia and the slow fashion management/industry and another dedicated to the limitations of the study and future lines of research.

-In section 4, Figure 2 presents the total production of jeans for the period: 1971-2005, which allows us to see the evolution until this date. Nevertheless, more than 15 years have passed and it would be important to know what happened from 2005 to the present day.

- Thus, the paper presents potential interest needing the introduction of these suggestions, to become more robust and improved and so as to be published in this journal.

Author Response

Thank you for providing the insightful comments. I am thankful for the time and energy you expended. My responses to your comments are as follow:　

1. Theoretical framework

I reviewed literature, which consists of business strategies and community-based fashion business.

2. Conclusions

I have revised the conclusions. Following your suggestion, I divided the conclusions into three sections; (1) contributions for academia, (2) the slow fashion management and (3) future lines of research.

• Contributions for academia

Contributions for academia is this study clarified enabling factors that regenerated series of industrial structural adjustments for community-based fashion business in Kojima.

• Slow fashion management

I suggested business strategies for fashion management in two folds; one is about the Kojima’s authenticity strategy which dedicated to developing niche market. Another strategy is about creating agglomeration strategy to transform the regional characteristics from Ajino shopping street to Kojima Jeans Street. This also presents case study of how local networking creates the spacious ingenuity.   

• Future lines of research

Future research could focus on the fashion industry in neighboring areas such as Ebara city and Fukuyama city to understand relationships among three areas.

3. Figure2

Following your direction, I have added data from 2005 to 2009 in Figure 2. The data sources are basically same because Saeki is an executive in Japan Jeans Association.

Reviewer 2 Report

Title: Applying Storytelling Approach to Analyze Kojima Jeans District based on Slow Fashion Perspectives

Overview

This paper conducts a case study of the Kojima, a community-based textile businesses district, which underwent a rise and fall in past booms and worldwide crises. The author employs the expanded storytelling method and establishes the analytical framework based on keywords from slow fashion perspectives, namely, localism, quality, and value. This study conducts interviews with three industry-relevant people from Kojima to get the qualitative data. The secondary data derived from the previous study, website, books, statistical yearbooks, and some other historical documents. Based on the expanded storytelling method, the author combines narrative and numbers. This study summed up a series of effective strategies that contributed to sustainability of the community-based fashion business.

Overall, I admit that this manuscript provides us a detailed view of the history and development of the textile industry in Kojima. The author spends a lot of time and energy to explain the glorious history and representative community-based fashion development process through many charts and data. However, I cannot fully recognize the contributions of this paper. The results were supposed to be some universal strategies for SMEs to regenerate from the worldwide crises or cope with the challenge of industrial structure adjustment trends, but its conclusions seem to have few enough persuasiveness. Follows are my comments on this study. I hope these will be helpful to improve your paper.

Major Concerns

1. First of all, the length of the statement of the regional recession cause analysis in the paper is too short. Especially on the part of facing the challenge of worldwide crises. Considering the author mentioned COVID-19 three times in the first page, I thought this study would provide us many targeted analyses about how businesses in Kojima handle with the challenges of COVID-19 or similar economic crisis. Just like the author argued in the introduction part “the result of this study is expected to contribute to the literature on SMEs at the local level as they face the challenges posed by COVID-19.” Unfortunately, the author only mentioned 5 times of COVID-19 in the whole paper, among which 4 times located in the abstract and introduction parts while only 1 time in the last conclusion part, which means that we cannot find any analysis of the challenges caused by COVID-19 from the main part of this paper. As is known to all, COVID-19 is completely different with any other financial crises we experienced before, in order to make the results more persuasive, it is better to build the logical connection between the influence of COVID-19 and the results of this paper
2. In page 5, the data of Figure 2 ended on 2005, the eve of the phase out of the Multifiber Arrangement (MFA). As you mentioned in this part “Kojima obtained severe damages from the influence of the free trade regime…” Because of the data were broken at a crucial point, we can't get the quantified influence of the abolition of this economic protection policy. The constructive recovery strategy should be based on a clear analysis of the dilemma. As the author mentioned, the number of stores in Kojima plummeted from 250 to 4 during this period. The data of production of Jeans after 2005 is essential when we want to distinguish the primary and secondary causes of the dilemma Kojima faced, which could help us to understand the exact extent of the damage of MFA abolition. The main strategy the author mentioned in this part is to improve the quality of Jeans and create uniqueness advantages. These methods seem powerless if the Kojima’s industrial drying caused by the developing countries’ lower labor costs and mass production of cheap clothes on the context of Japanese bubble economy. Thus, the whole data of production of Jeans could help to reveal truth of the problem.
3. In page 8, one of the most important interviewees in this paper argue that “the opening of new stores was mainly reliant on acquaintance and trust in CEO Manabe and the shop owners were mostly peers in the same businesses or outside of merchant businesses…However, the characteristics of new entrants were gradually changed due to the increasingly good reputation of the Kojima Jeans Street.” There are two points confused me very much. Firstly, if the initial reason of the recovery of Kojima Jeans Street is the CEO Manabe’s personal attraction, how can the other district with the similar problems replicate the miracle? Even for Kojima itself it is so hard to make it again without CEO Manabe when facing other crises such as COVID-19, which means this story has little universal value at least in this extent. Secondly, in the last part of this sentence, the new entrants’ characteristics aroused my interest. Because these are the real drivers of sustainable development for Kojima Jeans Street. It’s better to focus on the reproducible successful experience rather than weight too much on the random events.
4. Qualitative data were only derived from 3 interviewees: a manager and a publisher from Japan Blue Co., Ltd and a manager from the Chamber of Commerce of Kojima(Page 3). On the one hand, the data exclusively collected from the core plate could lead limitations. As you mentioned in the article, the community-based fashion business district including not only Jeans company but also many supporting industries , such as sewing manufacturing, processing, and washing. On the other hand, all the interviewees come from the top class, who are far away from the first line of production and sales. Widening the sources of respondents would make the conclusion more logical and convincing.

Minor Comments

1. In page 2, the author explained the storytelling method and made a comparison with Magretta’s paper in 2002. Actually, after reading through that paper, I find few common points between these two study in terms of methodology you conducted. More advantages and benefits of the proposed approach should be given. If the author want to explain this method in detail, more recent or similar references should be added.

2. The description of the chart is too tedious and repetitive. Such as par-2.2 in page 3 and Figure3 in page 7. To be honest, it is clear enough to get the information from your word explanation or concise charts. There is no need to make too much descriptive charts highly repeat the text.

3. In part 4.2,ranging from page 5 to 7, the hybrid use of time narrative and attribution narrative is confusing. Please retrospect the structure and framework of this part. This part occupied the most important declination causes, the reasonable paragraph breaks benefit to the theme comprehension.

Author Response

Thank you very much for providing important comments. I am thankful for the time and energy you expended. I made you misunderstandings due to the structure problems and ambiguous wording of my papers. My responses to your comments are as follow:　

Major comments

1. COVID-19

Following your suggestions, I deleted the sentences related to COVID-19 at the beginning because of avoiding misunderstanding. I rewrite the implications for this research into the SMEs issues regarding pandemic, globalization, and rise of fast fashion.

2. MFA

In this section, my intention to write about MFA has two points. One is about how Japanese fiber and textile industries suffered damages from MFA. Another one is about how the phase of the MFA impacted on fashion industry. Following your direction, I have added data from 2005 to 2009. The data sources are basically same.

3. Causes of new entrant characteristics

• I have replaced the sentences “the initial reason of the recovery of Kojima Jeans Street” to “business leadership”. It is more appropriate to describe the situation.
• New entrants mainly came from neighboring area such as Ibara city, and Fukuyama city. They are also known as a center of textile and apparel industry, but characteristics are slightly different from Kojima.

4. Qualitative data

You may think this is just excuse but I tried to reach other manufacturing companies but I failed it. I asked managers in Japan Blue to introduce me a washing company because I am interested in how to deal with discharged water. It regards as one of the problems of making a pair of jeans. At that moment, a manager promised it, but there is no response at all. Additionally, I tried to reach another jeans shop, which has worldwide popularity but I was refused the interview.

Minor comments

1. I have comments from other referees to develop theoretical framework. Thus, I conducted literature reviews, namely business strategies including recent work from Joan Magretta, concept of authenticity, and community-based fashion business.

2. Following your direction, I deleted Table 2 in page3 and Figure 3 in page7.

3. The reason why I used the attribution narrative because I would like to describe the achievement of the Kojima jeans street. Following your suggestion, I established a new paragraph.

Reviewer 3 Report

While this article deals with a very timely and important topic, there does not appear to be a discernible amount of new material/research to warrant publication. There is a lot of information collected and presented, which certainly has value and is interesting. Inferences are drawn from that, which is normal when information is presented. This appears at this point to be a summary of data more than anything else.

Author Response

Thank you for your suggestion. I am thankful for the time and energy you expended. I agree with your opinion. I have incorporated your comments by changing the paper structure. The reason why I used the data because I would like to presents the achievement of Kojima jeans district. It is not just the summary.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I commend the author's effort to try to respond and incorporate the suggestions indicated in the review report. These changes have substantially improved the quality of the paper however it is believed that the author could have gone even further in incorporating the suggestions. An additional effort is encouraged in order to obtain the high quality of this journal.

Author Response

Thank you very much for giving me another chance. I have incorporated your comments by changing the conclusion. I think this manuscripts fits in the literature compared with the last submission.

Best Regards.

Reviewer 3 Report

Much better after the edits. Now it fits in the literature and shows its contribution! 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. I fixed the conclusion based on your direction.