Related Keywords: Asian competition, fabric industry, globalization, industrial loom maker, Italian fabric manufacturer, Italian textile industry, Itema
Italian fabric manufacturers have been struggling since globalization opened the sector to cheap Asian competition at the end of the 1990s. Though Italy's fabric industry has improved productivity in recent years, it has not been able to compete on wages.
This has put Italy behind two groups of competitors in recent years: high-tech, high-end competitors in countries such as Germany and the United States, and low-end producers in places like China, Bangladesh and Turkey.
