How Italian Fashion Brands Beat COVID-19: Manufacturing, Sustainability, and Digitalization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, the paper is well prepared, at the same time it should be revised:

- add references to the section "4.1 The Italian fashion industry facing the pandemic";

- in Table 5. "Managerial strategies of Italian fashion companies during the pandemic" add different forms of Product Reconfiguration, Product Innovation, Social sustainability, New customer relationships and specify which ones were implemented by each company.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

we thank you for the evaluation of our article and the useful comments that allowed us to improve the paper. Specifically, as suggested by you, we have added references in the section “4.1 The Italian fashion industry facing the pandemic”. In this sense, we have to specify that in the first submission unfortunately we didn’t we realise that we had lost the footnotes which now have been incorporated as references.

Moreover, we have changed Table 5 “Managerial strategies of Italian fashion companies during the pandemic” replacing the x in each cell, with the different forms of “Product Reconfiguration”, “Product Innovation”, “Social sustainability”, and “New customer relationships”. In this way, it easier to understand which strategies were implemented by each company.

Additionally, we have revised the English.

Sincerely,

The Authors

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Congratulations for this interesting article! 

The paper brings to the fore important aspects regarding the impact of the pandemic on the Italian fashion industry. Like other fields of activity, the fashion industry was affected by the pandemic and had to reinvent a series of processes both at the level of production and at the level of distribution. Thus, elements such as sustainability and digitization can be considered solutions for the recovery of this field. The italian fashion industry is recognized throughout the world by the famous ones that take care of a certain status of clients. Rapid adaptation to new challenges was necessary and in this way progress was also made in adapting to the demands of the markets.

The paper contains a good documentation on the effects of the pandemic on the entire industry, the risks and challenges of the companies, as well as the role of CSR in the process of aligning the concept of sustainability in the textile industry. Through the analysis of sustainability strategies, the authors point out that the companies in the Italian fashion industry are receptive to new trends both in terms of social and environmental protection.

A major challenge was that of digitization. Even though many marketers had online stores, this concept had to be expanded and the presence of brands in the social media community were intensified.

The qualitative analysis highlights the main challenges that Italian firms had during this period through the follow-up analysis of several press texts. In relation to sustainability, the authors also observed a strong relationship between the pandemic and the sustainability strategies of Italian fashion companies.

I appreciate the authors' highlighting of CSR strategies of Italian fashion companies during the pandemic and Digital strategies of Italian fashion companies during the pandemic.

The discussion and conclusions component is consistent and highlights the importance of the subject and the research for the readers.

The bibliographic references are corresponding to the topic approached in the paper.

The authors used both references from recent literature and the results of studies relevant to the phenomenon studied. Is the article adequately referenced.

 Good luck!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

we would thank you for the encouraging evaluation of our article. For us it has been a great pleasure to read your comments.

To improve the article, however, we have revised the English.

Sincerely,

The Authors

Reviewer 3 Report

For last two years, there have been many articles about the impact of covid on companies and branches of industry. The conclusions concerning the organization of production or social issues are more or less similar. Nevertheless, each new publication of research results is valuable. But in recent years, the concept of sustainability has been used quite freely and widely in all areas of life. The authors need to refine what they understand by the concept of sustainability, which appears in the title. Is it about development in which the needs of the present generation can be met without reducing the opportunities of future generations, as described in the United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development, or is it about sustainable management of company capital? See: A model for the sustainable management of enterprise capital, Sustainability, vol.13,no.1, 2021.  I suppose the authors write about changes in tangible and marketing capital (supply chains), structural capital (digitalization) and social capital, so it seems about balancing capital

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

we thank you for your useful comments that allowed us to improve the article. Specifically, we have revised the section on sustainability to better specify the definition and giving more relevance to the aspects of the sustainability goals. In doing so, we better explained our version of sustainability which refers to the first of your suggestion, which is “about development in which the needs of the present generation can be met without reducing the opportunities of future generations, as described in the United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development”.

To improve the reading and understanding of the article, we have revised the English.

Sincerely,

The Authors