Carlos Crespo, aged 48, is a technological profile of very high level. Mr. Pablo Isla appointed him to assist him in the position of M.D of Inditex Group. Crespo has been a pillar within the digital transformation of Inditex. He will take office in July 2019, following the vote of the Board. He will be in charge of technology (datas, omnichannel), logistics and purchasing. Carlos Crespo joined Inditex in 2001 to lead
the Accounting department and took the helm of the internal audit team from 2008 to 2015. Last year, he has been appointed C.O.O. “Inditex has invented “fast fashion” and Carlos Crespo is the man who rolled out the project of unified inventory between stores and warehouses, said Laurent Thoumine, Head of Retail at Accenture. He understood that as long as a firm cannot identify the stock in real time, it cannot guarantee a consumer promise of hyper speed. Crespo knows that having a super-fast manufacturing cycle is not enough. Retailers also have to be ultra-responsive in delivery, being able to give immediate order to a shop seller to ship an item of a special size and colour to a special store”.
In 2005, Pablo Isla was appointed C.E.O of Inditex and the position of M.D was simply removed from the organization. If Isla has been alone heading the Inditex Group since, this appointment highlights Isla’s move to work in a duo, in a context where Inditex broke sales and profit records in 2018 but posted the slowest growth in its history. The Group faces an array of challenges for the future. Crespo will need to continue monitoring operating expenses, which keep increasing due to rising returns of e-commerce orders (in women’s fashion, they reach nearly 50% in Germany and 15% in France). He will also keep reorganizing the physical network as Inditex focuses on large “flagships” on one side and on smaller stores in the other side. “These units cover much smaller areas and primarily serve for pick-up, preparation of orders, and showrooms for the best-selling units, added Thoumine.”