A fashion retailing legend, Martin Sneider has been a leader in the shoe and clothing industries for more than five decades and has served as a multi-award-winning adjunct professor of retailing at the Olin School of Business at Washington University since 1992. At the Olin School of Business, Martin created and taught a course devoted to luxury goods merchandising and marketing that included trips with students to Milan, Paris, and London to visit the showrooms of Armani, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Burberry, and Cartier.

A fourth-generation retailer, Martin started as a shoe salesman and rose to president, co-CEO, and chief merchant of one of the nation’s largest fashion shoe and apparel specialty chains. He served on the Alumni Board of Directors of Harvard Business School, was chairman of St. Louis Children’s Hospital, and received the Distinguished Alumni award from Washington University. He is the author of a highly acclaimed nonfiction book on the shoe industry. Shelf Life is his first novel and the first of a projected series of four novels about fashion and family. Martin has two children and four granddaughters and lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and New York City.