Abstract:

Polish companies, including clothing companies delivering finished products and B2B garment manufacture services, increasingly internationalise their business. At the same time, the lines of internationalisation are determined by the companies’ lines business. In order to establish the areas of international cooperation and the meaning of internationalisation in Polish clothing companies, an investigation using a review of pertinent literature and observation of the actual situation was undertaken. The second approach consisted of a number of specific methods that will be discussed in more detail in the article below. To fulfil the goal of the research several questions were asked: What aspects of clothing companies’ internationalisation are covered by statistics? How has internationalisation changed their organisational structure? Why do clothing companies outsource manufacturing processes not only to Asian countries, but also to countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where labour costs are much higher? What criteria do they apply to choose the location of a foreign provider of supplies and materials? Is the selection of a fabric manufacturer secondary to the that of the location of a clothing manufacturer? The conclusions drawn from answers to these questions support the thesis that Polish clothing companies have internationalised three spheres of their activity: manufacturing (outsourced to Asia, Central and Eastern Asia, North Africa), sales (EU, Eastern Europe), the procurement of fabrics and supplies (EU, Asia), and the procurement of machinery and equipment (Western Europe, Asia).