Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better examines the performance and operation of the US homebuilding sector based on a detailed survey of large home builders conducted by the authors in the period of the great building boom of the 2000s. In contrast to the many books that have focused on the financial side of the housing sector prior to the Great Recession, the book examines the operational side of the industry and what did, and, more importantly, what did not, happen during the period of unprece...

The apparel and textile industries have always been at the mercy of rapidly changing styles and fickle customers who want the latest designs while they are still in fashion. The result for these businesses, often forced to forecast sales and order from suppliers with scant information about volatile demand, is a history of stock shortages, high inventories, and costly markdowns. But, as the authors explain in A Stitch in Time, technological advances in the 1980s paved the way for ...

The CEO behind Rakuten and Kobo reveals how his unique approach to empowerment and collaboration defies conventional wisdom, and isthe future of growth and globalization strategy.If Web 2.0 described the shift from static to interactive life on the Web, then 3.0 is the next sea change — driven by personalization, intelligent search, and user behavior. And that evolution has huge implications for everything we see, buy and do online. Rejecting the zero-sum, vending-m...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A hard-hitting behind-the-scenes look at how luxury fashion went global, revealing manufacturing secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don’t want you to know“Fascinating . . . The story of luxury goods today is really about globalization, capitalization, class, and culture.”—Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek“What Fast Food Nation did for food service, this book does for fashion.”—Los Angeles Times**Luxury wa...

Once a luxury that only the elite could afford, fashion is now accessible to all. High street brands such as Zara, Topshop and H&M have put fashion within the reach of anyone, whilst massive media attention has turned designers such as Tom Ford, Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney into brands in their own right. Fashion Brands takes you 'behind the seams', so to speak, exposing how the use of advertising, store design and the media has altered our fashion 'sens...

American manufacturing is on life support—at least, that's what most people think. The exodus of jobs to China and other foreign markets is irreversible, and anything that is built here requires specialized skills the average worker couldn't hope to gain. Not so, says Dan DiMicco, chairman and former CEO of Nucor, America's largest steel company. He not only revived a major US manufacturing firm during a recession, but helped galvanize the flagging domestic steel industry when many of his ...

At the age of thirteen, David Alliance was taken out of school by his father and apprenticed into the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, where he learned the business skills that were to prove invaluable in one of the most successful business careers of modern times. In 1950, with just ?14 in his pocket, he arrived in Manchester in search of textile bargains, going hungry and sometimes forced to sleep on the street. Six years later, however, when he was still only twenty-four, he bought a loss-making...

The entry of transnational retailers into emerging markets inevitably disrupts the existing retail and distribution structures. Thailand experienced such disruption to its traditional retailing system beginning in 1990 and continuing through the following two decades, to the extent that many observers have called it a “revolution.” But the term “revolution” is a misnomer, according to this study. The new retail and distribution formats, rather than replacing traditional markets, have conti...

Due to the profound growth in international trade, the need to pursue global supply and institute risk management practices has never been greater. The globalization of world markets has reconfigured supply networks, causing increasing complexities and challenges in sourcing and risk management. Managing Global Supply and Risk blends three distinct but interrelated topics—international purchasing, global supply management, and global risk management—to present the critical...

Would you like to know the outlook for Luxury consumables in China in 2015 and beyond? This specialist report has it all.Adriaan Brits is the lecturer for a large international group on Udemy where he teaches the International Marketing Diploma. As a specialist consultant in this field, he created this report to help companies who seek an entry strategy into the Chinese Luxury Market. This report acknowledges that whilst experts do not find Chinese consumer data reliable, by analyz...

The popularity of recent television drama series such as The Paradise and Mr Selfridge, and the splendid three-part documentary Shopgirls: the True Story of Life Behind the Counter, is evidence enough of the level of public interest in the history of the retail trade. Even today, Norfolk boasts a remarkable collection of genuinely independent stores which have survived just about everything that has been thrown at them: wars, bombs, fires, recessions and depressions, family fallings out, t...

This book offers a critical analysis of recent developments in the automotive industry of East-Central Europe (ECE). Economists, industry specialists and national governments have considered the rapid development of the automotive industry in ECE in the past twenty years an unqualified success. This rapid growth has been based on large inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Western Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea, and it significantly contributed to GDP growth, create...