Víctor Martínez de Albéniz is Associate professor in IESE’s Department of Production, Technology and Operations Management. He joined IESE in 2004 after earning a Ph.D. at the Operations Research Center of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an engineering degree at École Polytechnique in France. His research focuses on supply chain management, where procurement, production and distribution decisions can help companies compete more successfully in the global arena. In particular, he has studied in depth procurement and supply issues, where a balanced sourcing portfolio can provide low cost, flexibility and innovation opportunities. More recently, he has worked on retail topics, especially in the fashion industry. He has published his work in journals such as Management Science, Operations Research, Manufacturing and Services Operations Management, or Production and Operations Management.

In addition, Prof. Martínez de Albéniz teaches IESE courses on operations management, operations strategy and new product development, both at the executive and MBA levels. He has also taught regularly at MIT

Topic: The Role of Quick Response in Accelerating Sales of Fashion Goods

Quick response has been proposed as an appropriate operational strategy to serve volatile markets. In fashion, postponing design, production and distribution as much as possible may indeed reduce the uncertainty related to product success. His research provides an empirical study of the influence of lead time and sourcing origin on product success, based on data provided by a European fast fashion retailer. A model of sales diffusion over time where product success is characterized by the speed of sales. His latests paper then evaluates how the speed of sales is influenced by the time-to-market of each particular product which shows the speed of sales is more stable with short time-to-market, which suggests that the risk of bringing to market products out of fashion is reduced and that the timing of product introduction affects the value of quick response: it is more valuable at the beginning of the season, because at that time the uncertainty about seasonal trends is highest.