Supplier-customer relationships for sustainability-led innovation in the textile industry

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate sustainability-led innovation, focusing on the interplay between product and process innovation for sustainability goals and the underlying supplier-customer relationships. Thus, the paper delves into sustainability-led innovation and how it affects supplier-customer relationships, and vice versa, thus providing a twofold perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe textile industry is the empirical context of this study, which is exploratory research based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, managers and experts in the textile industry.FindingsIn the textile industry, sustainability-led product innovation concerns mainly product durability and performance, product recyclability and the use of waste for new product development. Process innovation deals with circular economy, traceability and water and chemical use minimization. The paper also shows how sustainability-led innovation is implemented in more technical terms and regarding supplier-customer relationships.Originality/valueThe paper adopts an original perspective on how processes take place in the relationships between suppliers and customers, where there is no dominance of one actor, but innovation emerges from interdependence and interaction. Such perspective allows to provide an in-depth analysis of the supplier-customer relationships and underlying dynamics that affect sustainability-led innovation; moreover, the authors study how such innovation impacts supplier-customer relationships and the underlying relational dynamics. The value of the paper also stands in delivering a real representation of the innovation processes grounded in the textile industry.