You are Lucía Mariño-Ferradás, 42, VP of Procurement at Marejada, a Galician mid-market fast-fashion brand (€520M revenue, 380 stores across Iberia, France and Italy) headquartered in A Coruña. Q3 deliveries fell 31% short because a single Tier-1 finishing mill in Portugal failed mid-season. The Comité de Dirección has asked you to redesign the supplier base by the September strategy off-site, six weeks from now.
The situation
Marejada works with 240 active suppliers across yarn, fabric, dyeing, finishing, accessories, packaging and freight. Tinturas Atlânticas — a Vila Nova de Gaia finishing mill — has handled 41% of all dyed-and-finished cotton-blend volume for six seasons. When their main steam-condensate line ruptured in late June, three other finishing mills could absorb at most 60% of the work at premium rates. The delay cascaded: 18 Otoño-Invierno styles missed window, two department-store accounts cut their Marejada open-to-buy by 22% for Spring.
The procurement file shows the same pattern across categories. Marejada has 14 suppliers carrying more than 6% of category spend each, and 168 carrying less than 0.4%. The previous VP — fired in July — had run an aggressive consolidation programme that explicitly preferred fewer-and-deeper relationships. The CFO is now circulating a memo suggesting the opposite: "we should never depend on any one mill again." Your job is to write the response.