REFLETS MAGAZINE |
Reflets magazine puts our alumni – both students and graduates – ESSEC professors and news from across the entire ESSEC ecosystem in the spotlight.
In our latest issue (100% bilingual!):
Our Guest: Jean-Baptiste Thomas (E99), Managing Director of Amazon France
 | Seventeen years with the same company, but never the same job. Jean-Baptiste Thomas (E99) became Managing Director of Amazon France in March 2026. An entrepreneur, former BCG consultant and later Chief Financial Officer at eBay, he joined Amazon in 2009, when the company was still relatively unknown in France. |
Interview with Pierre Boulud (E94), CEO of bioMérieux
 | “The global factory model is no longer suited to the world of tomorrow.” After working in consulting and then in the pharmaceutical industry at Ipsen, Pierre Boulud (E94) leads a French company with a strong domestic presence relative to its turnover: nearly 4,000 employees in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, while France accounts for less than 7% of its global sales. |
Interview with Nathalie Collin (E88), Deputy Chief Executive Officer of La Poste Group
 | “Even when it comes to digital services, human interaction remains invaluable.” One billion human interactions a year, 17,000 contact points, declining footfall across its physical network and nearly €1 billion in underfunded public service obligations: La Poste maintains a network that its business model can no longer finance. Nathalie Collin (E88), Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of the Consumer and Digital Services division, explains how the company is striving to make its local presence sustainable – without reducing it. |
Special Feature: Luxury, the Price of Desire
 | Between 2019 and 2023, 80% of growth in the luxury sector came from price increases. The consequences soon followed. Some 60 million customers have turned away from luxury since 2022, just as multiple overlapping crises have become the norm: China increasingly favouring its own brands, US tariffs and a war driving away customers from the Gulf. Yet not all luxury houses are paying the same price… |
Focus: The Best Customer Is No Longer Human
 | Retail has always sought to appeal to human customers, winning them over and persuading them to buy. But could this seemingly obvious principle be about to change? A new wave of AI agents is preparing to compare, select and purchase products by interacting with one another, using criteria in which emotion will no longer play a part. It is a quiet but profound shift that retail brands will have to navigate. |