Editor’s Note
This article from our Back Stage series examines the often-overlooked strategic role of logistics in the fashion industry. It details how companies like Tous build resilient operations to navigate global uncertainties.
Back Stage
Mercè Valldeperas, the logistics director of the jewelry company Tous, highlights a diversified supply chain that allows it to avoid excessive dependence on geopolitics. With a single logistics center, it transfers its operational methods to others.
Irene Juárez
October 17, 2025 – 05:00
Although the required investments and the projects it undertakes are enormous, logistics is the most invisible link in the fashion value chain. If everything works well, no one notices it. But when problems arise, it becomes the focus of all attention. After years of global disruptions that have led to transportation interruptions and supply issues, logistics and operations have become protagonists. Where to install a logistics center and to what extent to robotize it? Where to produce and how to move the goods? Or, how will Artificial Intelligence help make operations more agile and efficient? The series Logistics, the Wolf of Fashion, driven by the logistics operator Logisfashion, seeks to answer these and other questions through the voices of experts and executives in the sector.
Logistics, the Wolf of Fashion
With over twenty years in operations and logistics behind her, Mercè Valldeperas has developed the bulk of her professional career at Tous. The current logistics director of the Spanish jewelry company has held the position for more than 17 years, since 2008. She joined the multinational in 2002 as head of purchasing and distribution in the accessories department, a position she held for six years. “I know the house,” summarizes Valldeperas. By training, she is an industrial engineer and completed a Program for Management Development (PDD) at Iese Business School, as well as a master’s in operations and innovation at Esade. “Logistics is my world,” she maintains. If asked, the key to success in her management is, without a doubt, in knowing how to balance.
Question: Tell me how the logistics area is organized: Does it depend on operations? What areas do you oversee?
“Logistics is coordinated by the financial director and the general manager, who handles everything related to the financial part, the production of our own factory in Sabadell (Barcelona), and logistics. This allows us strategic coordination between the financial part, production, and the final part of global logistics.”
Q: And, sourcing, is that also included?
“No, the sourcing area is not, although there is a lot of coordination. What is managed in logistics is the import and export of all product categories. We ship to more than 40 countries, where we have over 600 stores. And we are also shipping from here, from Manresa (Barcelona), what comes from the online channel worldwide, and also wholesale. All the management of imports, purchases, etc., is indeed managed in logistics.”
Q: Is logistics outsourced or carried out internally?
“We have the logistics center in Manresa, which is our own, with over 8,000 square meters, near the headquarters. This allows us to coordinate very well with the other areas. And there is a team of people responsible from reception to the preparation and dispatch of orders to our stores around the world. In other important markets, we manage it with external platforms, but always with our way of working transferred to those centers so that the impact on the customer is not different and everyone has the same shopping experience. In the markets we have outsourced, our goal is always to have the fastest possible shipment to the end customer. Even so, from Manresa we also manage shipments worldwide. We try to have all logistics fed from these different logistics centers and hubs to be able to maximize the global chain of everything we move.”
Q: What changes in a logistics process between moving apparel or moving jewelry?
“The main processes (reception, preparation, dispatch) are the same for all products. But in jewelry we do have peculiarities because we have to comply with the law on metals. Everything received must go through a manual punching process, one by one, and it must be done by an independent external party that certifies it. This is the most complex to manage. Then, apart from that, in all processes there are very strict quality controls. The advantage jewelry has is that it is small, which facilitates preparation.”
Q: Mexico and the United States are two very relevant markets for the company. Is the company prepared for a tariff shock?
“We are a hundred-year-old company, in which many things have happened. Therefore, we have a sufficiently diversified supply chain so as not to have to depend on geopolitical issues. Luckily, we work in 40 countries. The diversification of suppliers and the way we operate in logistics allows us to have that leeway to withstand these problems. We also have our own factory here in Spain, which is a plus. It is a factory that is modernized with cutting-edge technologies in jewelry, and this also gives us more peace of mind in all these aspects.”
“We have a diversified supply chain so as not to depend on geopolitical issues.”
Q: Both are large markets, also in terms of size. Is logistics structured the same in Europe as in the United States or Mexico?
