Factors Influencing success in fashion designer entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Factors influencing entrepreneurship success have long been established as an important research domain. Even though fashion designer entrepreneurship has been growing to be a significant industry sector in Sri Lanka, this sector has not attracted systematic academic research. This paper therefore attempts to identify factors influencing success in fashion designer entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka. The paper is based on an initial qualitative exploratory stage of an ongoing study. Based on in-depth interview techniques, this paper investigates factors influencing entrepreneurial success as perceived by the interview participants. The study reveals key success factors in four main propositions: behavioural factors, social capital, human capital and strategic factors. The most highlighted behavioural factors are being proactive, opportunity recognition and creativity. Innovative orientation strategies, competitive strategies and human resources strategies are the most emphasized strategic factors. Even though the sample size is limited to differentiate between the strategies implemented by the start-up and the established entrepreneurs, the innovation process can be differentiated between the two categories. The findings of this research will help practitioners and policy makers in nurturing entrepreneurial initiatives in creative industries, particularly in the SME fashion designers sector in Sri Lanka. The outcome of this initial exploratory phase will be used along with the literature findings to develop the conceptual framework and to identify operational measures for the quantitative survey. The outcome of the quantitative phase will be helpful to validate these research findings to a larger population of fashion designer entrepreneurs.