Global Trade, European Integration and the Restructuring of Slovak Clothing Exports

During the 1990s the global clothing industry witnessed a series of profound transformations. Driven by increasing competitive pressures in the core markets of the USA and the European Union (EU), clothing producers and retailers in-creasingly undertook strategies that resulted in the further globalisation of the clothing industry (Gereffi, 1999). Throughout much of the 20th century the highly cost sensitive clothing sector has experienced increasing pressures of globalisation as manufacturers have sought out lower cost production locations (Dicken, 1998). Initially this process took the form of North American and EU producers seeking production locations primarily in East and Southeast Asia where labour costs were much lower and where export quotas under the Multi-fibre Arrangement (MFA) were available. A secondary level of outsourcing and offshoring soon followed with Asian producers accessing quotas of other semi-peripheral states (such as South Africa, see Pickles and Wood, 1989). The coun-tries of East-Central Europe (ECE) also played a role in this outsourcing of pro-duction especially during the 1980s when largely EU-based firms began to con-tract manufacturers in ECE under outward processing trade arrangements, no-tably in the former Yugoslavia. By the late 1980s, the most important suppliers were the former Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland...