Transforming the Business Offering from Products to Solutions. An Inquiry into the Textile Industry

The paper studies and discusses business companies’ transformation of their offering from product-based to solution-based and the connected changes in the companies’ supply chains. Despite the extent of literature and the increased attention to the supplier’s rethinking of its offering from well-defined and tangible to an a-priori indefinite and intangible one, research lacks in detailing what actually means for a company to shift from focusing its offering on a product to managing its core offering as a complex customer-based solution and how this impacts at the supply chain level. The empirical context of the research is represented by four companies of the textile industry and their supply chains. Multiple case study approach has been accompanied by a longitudinal analysis that have observed and analyzed the development of the four companies’ offerings and supply chains in the latest 20 years and envision the present on-going changes. Our analysis shows that the new offering of the examined companies takes the form of a technological, knowledge-based, and relational application platform which is malleable and adaptable leveraging on a variety of supply chain contexts. That demands companies’ abilities to acquire new roles and positions as linking nodes of suppliers and customers