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The French apparel industry is in a long term crisis. After three decades of postwar growth and prosperity, the industry has steadily lost market share resulting in widespread factory closing and sharply falling employment. Large firms have almost entirely disappeared and the only small and medium-size firms that survive are those that belong to local production systems or districts", such as the Sentier in Paris and those in the regions of Roanne and Cholet. The proximate causes of the crisis are cost pressures from low cost foreign suppliers, the substantial delocalization of domestic production and the enormous transformations in the French retail sector that have hastened import penetration and delocalization. Meanwhile, dramatic changes are also occurring in high end fashion products where French manufacturers have had a strong market position. Brand-name fashion houses that built their reputations on the quality of their designs are still the major customers of the small and medium suppliers that survive in Roanne and Cholet. This paper will examine the responses to the apparel industry crisis in two fashion garment centers, Roanne and Cholet. Both remain devoted to high end products and production standards, but they have different specializations and have responded to retail restructuring and globalization in different ways. Cholet invested early and heavily in training in new skills and methods and it now has a network of small firms that support a diversified set of product specializations. Roanne's response is more recent, but represents a unique approach in which small firms are seeking to preserve the district's traditional specialization through a collective plan to rebuild their markets. The comparison of these two survival strategies provides instructive lessons for the future of small firm garment districts and networks.

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