Brigitte de Faultrier

Brigitte de Faultrier is Professor in Retail Buying at ESSCA School of Management, and currently Director of ESSCA Bordeaux Campus. She has been in charge of developing this new campus since its opening in 2016. Brigitte has over 20 years of academic experience at ESSCA and has, amongst other things, set up a work-and-study master in Sourcing and Supply Chain Management, supervised the school’s master thesis programme, and developed a postgraduate programme in Fashion Marketing. Brigitte was Head of Marketing Department for 6 years. She has also been a member of the School Board for 8 years.

Summary of Industry experience:

Brigitte has extensive experience in the retail sector having held management positions with large retailers at both the point of sale and central purchasing functions. As a store manager and buyer, she gained good practical knowledge of the distribution process; she entered academic life to explore the theoretical anchors of the practices she had experienced in her professional career.

Brigitte used her retail expertise to help NovaChild/Pole enfant, a cluster of companies focused on children. She was a member of the board of the cluster for more than 10 years and contributed to different projects, including the coordination of the Pole Enfant ethical charter, the development programme for the Pole Enfant collective brand, and the ‘KidPack’ project (towards sustainable packaging for children’s shoes)

Summary of Academic experience:

Brigitte holds a PhD in Management Science from the University of La Reunion on customer decision-making. She teaches the subjects of retailing, retail buying, fashion supply chain and store concept. She has been visiting professor at the Estonian Business School in Tallin and at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, as well as at the International School of the Vietnam National University of Hanoï.

Her research works focus mainly on fashion supply chains. She published in relevant academic journals on retail buyer competences, inter-organisational decision-making for shoe packaging and comparative analysis of fashion retailers’ supply-chain. Her most recent work is aimed at understanding the contribution of the children to the commercial space in the context of the increase of available selling channels (digital channels) and the social responsibility of retailers.

She has organised the International Colloquium on Kids and Retailing. The 3rd edition of the colloquium aimed at understanding the wellbeing of the child. Brigitte has been a guest-editor of the International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, she is an ad-hoc reviewer for various academic journals and has authored two books on retail buying.