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In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was noted that retailers in Britain had started providing increased variety and fashionability to their customers, had added mid‐season purchasing to their previous two‐season calendars, and that a high fashion and low price ‘throwaway market’ had appeared on the retail scene. Since then mid‐season purchasing has evolved into purchasing throughout the year; and the ‘throwaway market’ (now called fast fashion) has become almost the norm. Here we revisit one of those British retailers (Marks & Spencer) together with its Turkish suppliers and observe a trend towards the diffusion of design capabilities to suppliers that is more widespread than is suggested in the literature. We also consider the question of how most appropriately to conceptualize the nature of these retailer‐ supplier relations in today's circumstances. We especially look into the manner in which these relations are reflected in price negotiations, the eventual distribution of the value‐added, and the nature of everyday interactions such as accreditation and reclamation practices. We conclude that even though Turkish suppliers seem to be successfully upgrading into design–a high value‐added activity–the question of whether or not this development has entailed a renegotiation of power between retailer and supplier remains a complicated one.

Since 1984, Erak Clothing, a Turkish contractor, has manufactured jeans as a full‐package producer for international brands, such as Calvin Klein, Guess, and Esprit. Following the creation of its own brand, Mavi Jeans, in 1991, the firm has been transforming itself into an original brand‐name manufacturer and retailer. Mavi Jeans are now sold worldwide at more than 3,000 sales points, including Nordstrom, Macy's, and Bloomingdale's department stores, and five directly owned and operated flagship stores in Vancouver, New York, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Montreal. In this article, the authors tell the exceptional story of the firm's transformation from a full‐package manufacturer into an original brand‐name manufacturer and retailer. They discuss how a peripheral manufacturing firm has managed to achieve a high value‐added competitive advantage by gaining access to global networks of production, consumption, and information in the clothing industry: a buyer‐driven industry in which the world's largest retailers, branded marketers, and manufacturers without factories are the dominant players with asymmetrical influence and power. The case study supports the theoretical position that individual firms have some room for autonomous action and that power relationships have some fragility that can be exploited by firms with strategic intent.

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