The effect of globalisation on industrial districts in Italy: evidence from the footwear sector

took adavantage of differences in production costs at the international level, instead of
considering them a threat for future competitiveness.

A further change in the 1990s was a shift in the international demand for sporting
shoes, in favour of high quality goods with high technological content on the one hand,
and of low quality fashionable goods on the other hand. The former were the domain of
big multinational groups (such as Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Diadora, Lotto), who had and
still have the ability and the financial capacity to invest in product innovation and to
organise international production systems at a global level. The latter forced local
producers to rapidly change marginal features of the product, and more importantly to
supply lower amounts of production to buyers (as big retailers required lower quantity
of goods in ordr to reduce the amount of their stocks) with the consequence that Barletta
producers faced increasing overproduction capacity.

The 1990s have been characterised by a radical re-organisation of production in the
district, including the displacement of some firms and a massive delocalisation of
production in Albania. In a sense, Barletta has been replicating its own model of
production by displacing - as Vigevano did in the past - part of its production capacity
on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea. As a consequence, there has been a significant
reduction in employment and in the average firm size. This delocalisation can be
interpreted as a functional upgrading for Barletta, as lower value added operations are
externalised. However, there are doubts whether this strategy alone will be enough to
cope with international competition.

Nowadays, the transition to a new model of production has not yet been completed.
Some firms have decided to move to different value chains (such as technical footwear)
which do not face price competition from low cost producers. The majority of producers
delocalised a relevant part of production to Albania, but this does not seem to be a
sustainable competitive strategy, because Eastern European producers still face the
same competitive pressures from Asia.

In the light of the argument above - that low quality producers in industrial
countries face severe competitive pressures and do need urgent strategies for upgrading,
much more than high quality producers - we here present a recent development which
we believe will be positive both for industrial districts and for the Italian footwear
sector as a whole. Recently, a further option for upgrading was followed by local

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