Defines and discusses quick response (QR), with its relationship to vendor partnering, short-cycle manufacturing, demand-flow manufacturing, "virtual integration", re-engineering, just-in-time (JIT), and efficient consumer response as an introduction to the results of a study on which firms are implementing QR and at what stage they are regarding their implementation strategy. The results of the study show that 73 per cent of the responding retailers claimed to be implementing some phase of QR. Implementation is slow, however, with only two of 15 QR components reported to be as much as half-implemented among the retail respondents.