Biography — Caroline de Baëre

A Career of Service and Style in the Footwear Industry

Caroline de Baëre is a footwear product development and design consultant whose exceptional range of product and market expertise, gained over a sixteen year career, has enabled her to provide beautiful and functional style designs, precise and powerful marketplace strategies and significantly increased profits to footwear manufacturers across the U.S. and the world.

For the past two and a half years, Caroline has offered this potent design and marketing services package on a freelance basis as president of Caroline de Baëre, Inc., establishing long-term relationships with industry leaders including Birkenstock, Sperry Top-Sider, Ariat International and Brighton Accessories.

Making Her Mark With Style

The key to Caroline’s success is the impressive spectrum of benefits she brings to her clients. A talented and accomplished designer with a string of industry success stories, Caroline also has a strong foundation in business and marketing. Some companies hire her for her design talents only, but the majority of Caroline’s clients have preferred to take advantage of her wide array of skills and services. These include creative, in-depth market and trend research, material selection, color palette creation, product briefs, and detailed, on-target merchandising strategies that help her clients’ sales personnel maximize their volume and their profits.

Major projects for Sperry Top-Sider and Birkenstock provide excellent examples of Caroline’s impressive industry accomplishments. Caroline researched and designed the entire Sperry Top-Sider Spring 2003 women’s collection. Her contributions have helped propel the line well on its way to reaching Sperry Top-Sider’s goal of doubling their business in the women’s market. Among the many Birkenstock brands Caroline has worked on, she delivered a full range of services, including trend and market research, product designs and material and color selection, for the Fall 2001 recreation of Birkenstock’s Footprints Division, a distinctive line of shoes and boots that garnering huge sales in the U.S. and Germany. Both Sperry Top-Sider and Birkenstock are ongoing Caroline de Baëre clients.

Learning the Industry from the Ground Up

After earning a degree in International Business Administration, Caroline began her fashion industry career in 1986, joining Esprit’s Footwear Production Department. She moved into design with Esprit in 1990 as assistant to the Design Director, simultaneously studying at San Francisco’s Academy of Art for two years. In 1992, Caroline began a tenure as Director of Product Development for LA Gear’s Women’s Division. Four years later, she became Director of Product Development for Ariat International.

Caroline’s five-year experience at Ariat was so successful that when she announced she was leaving to start her own design and consulting business, the company quickly signed her to a one-year freelance contract. Stepping out on her own in impressive fashion, Caroline immediately landed Birkenstock as her first client. Along with Birkenstock, Sperry Top-Sider and Ariat, Caroline’s client list includes Fletcher Limited, and Deckers Outdoor Corporation. She’ll soon be working with Brighton Accessories to develop a new collection of women’s footwear.

Her years of product experience help Caroline accurately foresee product trends, and her broad industry perspective — from her excellent relations with suppliers to her international market knowledge — are at her clients’ disposal as well. Her team-building skills, friendly demeanor, and organized, professional style are further reasons that Caroline’s clients often retain her services season after season. Her reputation in the footwear industry fully established, Caroline was recently invited to deliver a series of guest lectures at the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco, extolling the virtues and challenges of shoe design to a new generation of fashion and industrial designers and artists.

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