structured creatiVitY?

the organizational problems that oilily encountered since the late 1990s eventually led to its demise in 2009. they are a manifestation of the inherent paradox of fashion as both a work of art and a commercial commodity, both emotion and reason. on the one hand, marieke olsthoorn, Jean Philipse, and other members of oilily’s creative team could not get accustomedto the emergent managerial culture and left the company. on the other hand, Willem olsthoorn recognized that because creativity had always been placed above everything else, other aspects such as production and delivery schedules had been

given insufficient priority (gremmen, 2003). everyone acknowledged the value of oilily’s creativity, including the new managers who were blamed for destroying oilily’s soul, as can be read in several media reports and is summarized in box 5.1 (e.g. tiedemann, 2003; gremmen, 2003; tromp, 2008). But the changing market demanded that this creativity be put into an organizational framework (interview 120105). oilily’s new management aimed at achieving such a framework by changing organizational practices, which – as i will explain in the remainder of this section – are related to a widening gap between design and manufacturing.

the implementation of new organizational practices met with considerable resistance from oilily’s creative team, which reflected an ingrained organizational culture that had been effective for decades: “oilily had always been an emotional company at all levels. We were all very attached to each other, despite or probably due to our contradictions. it was nice to be part of it” (Willem olsthoorn cited in tromp, 2008, my translation).

the emotional component of oilily’s organizational culture seemed to clash with the new management’s more formal approach. stylist margot Vos, who was responsible for oilily’s photography and the visual representations of the collections explains: “’i am very emotional. i work intuitively, based on feelings and instincts. now i have to be patient.’ in the last years, the atmosphere within the company has become more formal. ‘We were not used to suits and hierarchy’” (Vos cited in tiedemann, 2003: 76, my translation). one of oilily’s later production directors even described it as a ‘culture shock’ for the creative team when new managers tried to implement a different organizational structure (interview 111012).

What changes in creative practice did this new organizational approach, adopted at the beginning of the twenty-first century, involve? first of all, it remained important to express the typical oilily style. even when taking into account the loss of oilily’s distinctive style and signature as one potential explanation for the company’s demise, the ‘new managers’ were all determined to retain the core values of quality and creativity, and to not follow fashion trends (tiedemann, 2003). however, the focus shifted toward a more market-driven approach. this approach included smaller, differentially priced collections, and more deliveries throughout the year – from two collections delivered twice a year, to four or five deliveries per season, leading to almost monthly deliveries (tiedemann, 2003; interview 120105). this was in contrast to oilily’s former supply-driven approach, whereby oilily delivered what it produced(interview 120105).

the number of items per product category and their price ranges. this collection plan is an instrument based on the commercial insights of the product group manager and the sales department (interview 120105). a collection plan, also called a line plan, is a well-known and widely used tool in the fashion industry. But in this case, it demanded a completely different way of working from the designers who used to have unlimited freedom. since the collection plan did not only determine the number of items, but also presented a thematic structure of the collection’s deliveries, designers no longer designed from scratch. they had to have a framework in mind that determined when they had to finish which types of styles. it was therefore not only a more market-driven, but also a more calendar-driven approach (interview 120105). the traditional two-season fashion calendar involving spring/summer and fall/Winter (see also tyler et al., 2006), transformed into a rhythm of up to ten annual ‘seasons’.

this way of structuring the creative process further involved a different way of organizing the relation between design and manufacturing. the new structure included a product development department, led by three product group managers: kids, baby, and women (interviews 101029; 120105). Production and buying managers were in charge of communicating with the suppliers, performing price-negotiations and monitoring deliveries and quality control, while the product development department was established to bridge the gap between the creative minds of the designers and the rational minds of the production managers (interview 120105). that gap had widened geographically and organizationally, due to further outsourcing of preproduction functions such as sample making, as explained in section 5.2.2.

to a considerable extent, this gap was the result of changing power relations. the relationship between design and manufacturingused to be unbalanced; design used to overpower manufacturing, which resulted in an expensive product. But ever since the late 1990s, production and sales began to restrict designers’ creativity. the aim of product developers and product group managers was, therefore, to keep in mind both the creative and commercial needs of the collection and to communicate with designers about what was possible in terms of sales and production – and what was not. as one of oilily’s former product developers explains,

in fact, you [i.e. the product developer] are the connection who has to make sure that the designer’s nice drawings on paper and ideas in their head are technically executable. so, you are involved in the design process and simultaneously have to control its feasibility. after all, one can make beautiful drawings, but if it cannot be realized or when it becomes extremely expensive, then it does not make much sense of course (interview 100923, my translation).

the question then is why this ‘gap’ between design and manufacturing suddenly became an issue, and, whether it had ever been an issue at all. after all, oilily had been working with spatially distant suppliers since the 1970s and apparently was capable of managing these distant relationships fairly well. What changes in the organization or the industry might have caused an increase in that distance’s significance? i would argue that the geographical distance between design and production was never considered problematic due to a particular way of working, especially in terms of the creative practice. as we can read in oilily’s second magazine:

oftentimes a sketch is made first, or the designer makes a new pattern altogether, although it also happens that, while improvising in cooperation with the sewing crew, something new is created. the designers are of course always busy to create designs that are technically feasible. a designer has to be able to draw patterns and needs to know and be aware of the possibilities of the production technique. in such a design department it becomes clear what “talent” really means: a combination of sensitivity, intuition, technique and knowledge of production problems (de graaf, 1984b, emphasis in original).

since (print) design and pattern and sample making were so closely related in practice, the gap between this creative practice and the actual manufacturing did not really exist – the garment was already physically made by the time it was sent to the supplier for assembly. thus, while distance played a role in terms of geography and organizational separation, it did not play a significant role relationally. once pattern making and sampling became the suppliers’ responsibilities, the relational distance between the practice of design and the practice of making garments increased, and the coordination between the two consequently required more attention. oilily had to develop new organizational practices to coordinate the relationship between design and manufacturing at a distance, and find ways to create shared understandings between the creative team and the brand’s suppliers.

the relationship between design and manufacturing, and between oilily and its suppliers, was also strongly affected by the more calendar-driven approach, including the collection plan and its strict deadlines. once the number of deliveries per year increased, and prototypes and samples were to be made by the suppliers, it became impossible to plan production after the sales period had been closed; by then, the final deliveries would have always been too late. indeed, the market changed in such a way that customers were no longer accepting late deliveries and designers could not continue changing their designs all the time. more importantly, designers had to change their way of working and find a way of visualizing their ideas in such a way that suppliers could translate these ideas into actual garments. next, they had to wait for the prototypes, which could either exceed expectations

or turn out disappointing. in this way, by shifting responsibilities of pattern making and sampling from the coordinating firm to the suppliers, oilily and its designers became more dependent on the capabilities and reliability of their suppliers.

for oilily, it was a matter of balancing between keeping control over the creative process on the one hand, and making use of the knowledge and skills of the suppliers as much as possible, on the other. suppliers, however, due to their knowledge and skills, appeared to have their own ideas of how to organize production and, consequently, their own preferences of what kind of design information to receive.

a recent occurrence during the development of one of the first collections of oilily World is a good illustration of this situation. apparently, marieke olsthoorn insisted on using oilily’s own paper patterns, like in the old days, and sent them to thesupplier (interview 101029). however, when the prototypes arrived, it was clear that the manufacturer had not used these patterns at all (ibid.). many garment manufacturers do not work with paper patterns anymore, since cad/cam systems are much more efficient and widespread. despite marieke olsthoorn’s conviction that pattern and sample making should ideally be part of the design practice, she eventually had to acknowledge that their indian manufacturers were highly equipped for pattern making (interview 120314).

again, this example illustrates how the long-term relationship between oilily and its indian supplier, as discussed in section 5.3.1, was not only a case of trust and mutual understanding, but did also involve an important learning process through which the manufacturer could acquire and further develop knowledge and skills.

the above analysis of oilily’s ways of organizing design and production shows that the creative practice of the brand needs to be compatible with the organizational structure of the supplier, and that it is not sufficient to select suppliers based on the aesthetics of their product alone. this may seem obvious, but i consider it a key issue in the development of oilily and its struggles to successfully transform its organization. Without aiming to determine a definite cause for the company’s failure, it seems that oilily’s creative freedom – one of the brand’s main strengths – became its main weakness, once it was no longer compatible with the organization of production and the changing practices in the dutch and global fashion industry.

5.4 the stRUCtURinG foRCes of oililY’s CReatiVe

pRaCtiCes

the development of oilily from a manufacturer to a licenser is an exemplary case of increasing distance between design and manufacturing. the main question is how this distanciation affects the relationship between the two and how organizational practices are key in understanding this relationship. in the final part of this chapter, i will argue that in the case of oilily, the relationship between design and manufacturing is manifested in the ways in which creative practices have structured the entire organization for a long time. the observation of former product and production managers that oilily B.V. was marked by an ‘absence of structure’ perhaps tells us more about oilily’s organizational practices than its structure. one way to explain this point is by recalling my research process. in analysing oilily’s organizational structure and the development of its global production network, i focused on ownership, partnerships, and sourcing strategies. at first, this seemed a rather straightforward way to determine what type of firm oilily was in specific periods in history, and how the production network was organized accordingly. however, throughout the research process, mapping these structures turned out to be a complex exercise. the absence of corporate documents such as organization charts, and my consequent reliance on human memory in this regard, is just one reason why reconstructing oilily’s organizational structures has been complicated.

another reason is related to the apparent blurring boundaries between retail, wholesale, and manufacturing, as discussed in chapter 2. in its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s, oilily engaged in both retail and wholesale, controlled manufacturing without actually owning factories, and combined a variety of cmt and fP based sourcing strategies. depending on the product and the location of the garment supplier, fabrics were either developed in- house, sourced by oilily’s fabric buyers, or developed/sourced by the ready-made garment suppliers. more and more functions were being outsourced, but there was no clear-cut distinction between keeping capabilities in-house or sourcing them out. except for the two bankruptcies, it was a gradual transformation that usually involved a combination of different organizational structures.

While this difficulty in determining definite, clear-cut organizational structures and boundaries can be conceived as problematic in the research process, my argument points in another direction: the distinction between structure and practice. in this case, this distinction seems more of an analytical construction than an observable reality. asking designers, product developers and production managers about what they do, how they

work, and how their work relates to other practices, revealed structuring principles that can, but not necessarily do, relate to the organizational structures, as discussed above. as the case of oilily clearly illustrates, organizational practices can be more rigid and structuring than organizational structures. this case thus demonstrates how analysing organizational practices, as a source of both stability and change, can sometimes better account for the organization’s development than the structure of a global production network alone. as discussed in the previous section, one of the problems that oilily encountered was its inability to successfully adapt its creative practices to the new organizational structure and industrial requirements without losing its creative strengths. oilily’s organizational structure constantly changed during its growth from the 1960s to the 1990s, but the design practice remained driven by unlimited creativity. organizational change thus had to be compatible with the creative practice – not the other way around. When the new management tried to change oilily’s organizational structure in such a way that it had a significant impact on the company’s creative practice, the emergent resistance was a consequence of a practice that had become the structuring principle of the entire company.

for a long time, oilily was literally driven by creativity; design was the leading organizational practice within the company. from a capabilities perspective, it thus seemed a logical decision for oilily to outsource manufacturing more and more. after all, the company was founded by a salesman (Willem olsthoorn) and a textile design teacher (marieke olsthoorn), so in-house knowledge of large-scale industrial production was never fully developed. in the 1960s and 1970s, as more and more dutch clothing firms relocated their production facilities to lower-wage countries, many domestic manufacturers were confronted with rising competition and thus focused on ways to organize production as cost-effectively as possible.

although olly’s in the 1960s and 1970s can also be defined as a manufacturer, the main driving force was always the development and sales of a unique product. manufacturing was a means to an end, not the goal itself. it thus represents a different case from companies with manufacturing legacies of many decades that started to add ‘fashion content’ to their products in the second half of the twentieth century. in the case of olly’s, the point of departure was the creative content, to be supported by the location and organization of manufacturing. since domestic production was common practice in the 1960s, organizing its own manufacturing in the netherlands was a logical choice for oilily at the time. once domestic manufacturing was no longer sustainable, it may be argued that oilily, to some extent, benefited from the fact that the main strengths of the founding fathers were

not organizing manufacturing, but design and sales – the core business of a head-and-tail type organization. to reiterate, oilily’s creative practice worked as a structuring principle for the entire organization: as long as the design practice and its creative freedom could be fully achieved, it was not that important whether manufacturing took place in alkmaar or delhi. the structure of the production network had to facilitate the design practice, and, in that way, the design practice ‘structured’ the way production was organized.

the role of oilily’s specific way of organizing the creative process is also crucial in understanding how design became detached from manufacturing. taking into account the role of oilily’s own sample room, its in-house development of fabric designs, and its integrated practice of design and pattern making, we see that working with physical garments constituted a substantial part of its creative practice for a long time. oilily’s strong control of a large part of the supply chain was the result of its conviction that design is a tangible practice. once this design practice had to change – due to organizational changes such as the closure of the sample room, but also because of the development of technological tools such as computer-aided design – the relationship between design and manufacturing was also bound to change. hence, it was not the geographical and organizational separation of design from manufacturing as such, but the eventual change of the creative practice itself that resulted in a greater detachment.

as mentioned, marieke olsthoorn preferred to design and create without the help of computers because she was strongly convinced of the added value of handcrafted designs. this way of working requires specifically educated designers who have thorough knowledge of pattern making and sewing techniques. according to marieke, these qualities have become difficult to find; oilily World now has to rely on a woman in her late seventies when they want to physically try out things (interview 100903). this indicates that design within the dutch fashion industry of the twenty-first century is less concerned with the actual practice of constructing a garment in the way that marieke olsthoorn understood it.

this finally brings me to another set of structuring principles that goes beyond oilily’s organizational boundaries: the fashion system. even though oilily’s founders and their successors claim they do not make fashion, their business is situated within an industry that follows the cyclical nature of the fashion system. in the early years, oilily’s novelty and exclusivity allowed the company to pay less attention to lead times and price issues. But the growing number of fashion brands offering ‘different’ children’s wear collections, and the consequent growing competition among brands and retailers, led to a situation in which it seems impossible to entirely escape the rules of the fashion industry. When retailers buy