Five Takeaways from ShopTalk 2025 – Day One

ShopTalk 2025 - Day One (And ChatGPT learns to spell!)

Las Vegas | March 2025

The lights. The music. The pacing.

There’s no question - ShopTalk knows how to put on a show. From the moment I walked into the conference space, it was clear that real thought had gone into the experience. And honestly, it made me think: retailers need to bring that same energy, intentionality, and orchestration into their own ecosystems. Likely the point that ShopTalk was trying to constantly reinforce. I get it!

I came into Day One looking for clarity. For ideas worth chasing. For validation that we’re doing the right things - and potential course corrections for where we may not be.

Running around (I got my steps in for sure), not every session delivered - some leaned heavily on surface-level storytelling. But across the day, there were tangible insights - not just hype cycles or buzzy terms, but ideas with traction.

Here’s what stood out most from my perspective, as a brand strategist, an educator, a student, and a practitioner navigating this moment in retail… or should I say, commerce (more on that later).

1. Retail Hospitality is the New Floor Plan One of the more consistent threads across sessions was the shift from “customer experience” as a feature to hospitality as a foundation.

Kim Waldmann and Frank Bracken from Foot Locker laid out their store evolution, where layout changes are designed to invite interaction - not just move product. The two heroes of their format: the customer and the associate (or "striper"). That human interaction is leading to double-digit lifts in conversion and cash-on-cash returns.

It wasn’t just about store design. It was about tools, training, and culture:

• Associates equipped with handhelds that enable product discovery

• Loyalty programs designed with frictionless enrollment

• Bite-sized mobile training that empowers teams to be confident educators

Hospitality isn't a department - it’s the entire experience. It’s what happens when you stop designing for transactions and start designing for trust. Let me also say how much I love the term "Hospitality" in this context, given the blending of experiences, travel, and retail, and the opportunity to bring them together. 2. AI Works Best When It's Not Trying to Be the Star

AI was everywhere on Day One - but not as a silver bullet. The conversations are shifting away from hype toward practicality. I said in my earlier post that "AI is messy", practical application is helping to clean it up.

• Lands’ End shared how personalization efforts - particularly through targeted promotions and product customization—helped lower their average customer age by nearly a decade, all without discounting the brand’s legacy.

• Acumatica and other tech platforms demoed AI-powered demand planning and business intelligence tools that remove friction from operational workflows.

• And in a refreshingly candid panel, multiple CMOs admitted that their most useful AI integrations were the least flashy - like automating contact center call routing or optimizing paid search bidding logic.
  

The most grounded take? "AI should make people more human - not less necessary." And that may be the most powerful outcome of all. A sentiment echoed in the private roundtable that I had the opportunity to attend.

3. The Supply Chain Is Now Customer-Facing

We used to treat the supply chain as a backstage function. Now? It’s part of the brand experience.

One apparel brand described how they’ve started to shift toward manufacture-on-demand to reduce excess inventory and connect real demand to real production. Their framework: flexible fulfillment, smarter replenishment, and fewer empty promises.

Tech providers like Narvar are leaning in on post-purchase innovation—with AI-powered fraud prevention, shipping protection, and deeper platform integrations aimed at keeping customers informed and engaged long after checkout.

And startups like Wayvee Analytics are betting that real-time visibility and adaptive logistics will be a key differentiator - not just for cost savings, but for customer confidence.

Simply changing shipping routes to reduce expenses or attention to other singularly focused metrics is no longer a valid strategy. It has to be an end-to-end orchestration that delivers not just efficiently - but when and what the customer the customer is looking for.

The lesson? If customers don’t trust how you deliver, they’ll never care what you sell.

4. Value is Evolving - It’s Not Just About the Price Tag

Value is still central - but not in the way we used to define it. This is a topic close to my heart because I try to teach that value is far more than price - if price is the main attraction in your value proposition, you are automatically at risk of being beaten at your own game.

• A major tote collaboration (yes, that tote with that celebrity) drove over 8 billion impressions and reignited a heritage brand - not by discounting, but by tapping into authenticity, creativity, and cultural resonance.
  

• One speaker described how product discovery moments - curated, algorithmically or by real people - outperform static category pages. Why? Because value today is about context, connection, and curiosity.
  

We heard it often: “The customer doesn’t just ask, ‘What does it cost?’ They’re asking, ‘Why is it worth it?’” The key is figuring out what makes it worth it for the customer - recognizing that each one may have a different answer.

And if we’re not ready to answer that, someone else will.

5. Unified Commerce Isn’t a Trend. It’s Table Stakes.

We’ve spent years talking about e-commerce and omni-channel. But the leaders I heard from? They’ve moved on. This makes me happy.

The conversation has shifted toward unified commerce - where platforms talk to each other, inventory is visible everywhere, and loyalty isn’t siloed by channel.

• Tractor Supply and PetSmart both spoke to the importance of having one system of truth across digital and physical touchpoints.

• Loyalty, returns, search, and recommendations are being rebuilt around connected experiences, not standalone campaigns.
  

The key metric? The customer never has to repeat themselves.

The winning move isn’t to add more channels. It’s to make the ones you already have work better - together. (And now I definitely need to change the name of my course!)

Bonus: Retail Media Has Momentum—but Still Needs Meaning

If there was a "bingo buzzword" that everyone came to ShopTalk expecting to hear (other than AI, of course), it was Retail Media Networks. There’s a lot of energy around retail media - and with the launch of The New Market showcase, it’s clear this space is maturing fast.

But brand-side panelists were quick to point out: just because you have first-party data doesn’t mean you have permission. The best examples blended storytelling with subtlety - where content meets commerce in a way that felt organic. Working for a command that has purpose in its mission, this was music to my ears.

I also heard a simple but memorable quote from a media buyer: “If it feels like an ad, we’ve already lost.”

Retail media will work - but only if it enhances the customer journey instead of hijacking it. One Last Reflection Before Day Two

Toward the end of Day One, I had the opportunity to sit in on a private roundtable with other retailers. I'd share more, but I’d have to invoke the Chatham House rule (or just say I value being invited back again).

Let’s just say this: there’s a collective hunger for clarity. Everyone’s trying to reconcile ambition with practicality. No one’s interested in building things customers didn’t ask for.

Later, I stepped over to a Brand Innovators panel titled “Meeting the Evolving Consumer Expectations in Retail.”  An audience member threw me a curveball: Is the word “retail” outdated? If so, what should replace it?

Maybe it was a setup. I’ve said it before quietly, and maybe I am more confident today in saying it out loud: We’re not just in retail anymore - we’re in commerce. A more holistic, human, interconnected system. This intricate web of relationships and impact points that go well beyond the traditional "box" and the long-ago adopted "funnel". But more on that later.

Today, I get to step onto The New Market stage as part of “CMO Rapid Fire: Funnels, Fallacies, and the Future of Marketing” hosted by David Katz, and with the heads of marketing for PacSun, and New York & Company.

Yes, I’m the underdog on that panel. And yes, I’m looking forward to it!

P.S. - As if to emphasize the AI is here to play, ChatGPT released its latest update yesterday, which vastly improves its ability to create images WITH REAL WORDS! Almost...