Globalization and low-technology industries: the case of Italian eyewear

In this paper we explore the SMEs emerging business models in the Italian eyewear industry. The Italian eyewear industry has developed spectacularly during the last three decades, achieving a world leadership position with few large firms (i.e. Luxottica) and a myriad of SMEs. In the last fifteen years, globalization and digital technologies have challenged this position, particularly through Chinese competitors. Whereas large firms have been able to successfully compete maintaining their position at the forefront of the industry with international operation and strategies of vertical integration, most of the SMEs have entered an irreversible status of crisis and gone out of business at an unprecedented rate. However, a closer look at the data and fact behind this general picture reveals a more complex situation with several SMEs able to survive and, in some case to thrive, by successfully adapting their business model. Our analysis sheds light on the variety of business models emerging in the eyewear industry both in the case of small and medium-sized eyewear producers and small-part and component suppliers. New business models vary according to the firms’ position in the vertical contracting structure of the industry but share the attempt to generate sustainable diversity. We propose that firms must pursue the creation of difference as the strategy that can lead to competitive advantage and that sustainable advantages must be rooted on business models that are internally consistent sets of choices, repertoires of capabilities and configurations of activities, and externally coherent with the industry value drivers.