Meet Martin Sneider, adjunct professor of Marketing at Olin Business School. He teaches retailing to undergrad and grad students. Sneider’s long career in retailing, includes serving at the helm of a multi-unit department store operation, St. Louis-based Edison Brothers. He brings a wealth of retail knowledge and experience to the classroom. If you sign up for his Luxury Brands course, you’ll travel to Europe for behind the scenes meetings at Gucci, Prada, Chanel, and Burberry (to name a few).

In 2009, Sneider published a memoir recounting his career in retail. The self-published Toast: How a Leading Retailer Went from Toast of the Town to Just Plain Toast, chronicles the rise and fall of Edison Brothers Stores, along with Sneider’s long affiliation with the company.

Sneider’s childhood memories of helping in his grandfather’s grocery in Omaha, Neb., to his days as a Washington University undergraduate (A.B. ’64) also are recounted in the book. His story from unsuccessful shoe salesman to co-CEO of Edison Brothers is interwoven with the evolution of retail in the last half of 20th-century America.

Sneider’s tenure at the helm of Edison Brothers began in the late 1980s after a successful expansion into the apparel market that peaked with 3,000 stores and sales topping $1.5 billion. He left the company months before it filed for bankruptcy in 1995.

“A major theme of the book is the challenge of operating a mature business as malls began to lose market share to category killers and discount stores,” Sneider says.

“In the case of Edison Brothers, we had a fabulous run when shopping centers were being built by the dozens and our store brands were fresh and vibrant, but when growth slowed and our concepts became dated, the ability to build shareholder value became ever more difficult,” he says.

Sneider majored in history at WUSTL and earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University.

He has taught at Olin since 1992 and has won numerous teaching awards. Sneider has chaired the Alumni Board of Governors and served on the Arts & Sciences National Council. He received a distinguished alumni award in 2009.