Omni Talk Retail

In this week's Fast Five, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, A&M’s David Ritter and Michael  Prendergast joined Chris and Anne as they debated: - All the news out of Starbucks this week, but most specifically its plans to roll out its community store concept to 1,000 locations by 2030. - Who made the bigger waves this week – DoorDash with its returns pi...

Livestreaming is quite the hot topic now that everyone from Walmart to Amazon is doing it which means many of you have likely been asked by your bosses or your boss’s boss to livestream something as part of your 2022 content strategy. So to make sure you avoid the three mistakes so many people make when designing their livestreaming strategy, Omni Talk is pleased to announce that one of the foremo...

Long have we talked about Visual AI as the most important technology that will shape retail over the next decade. So Omni Talk is pleased to announce that ViSenze Chief Commercial Officer Brendan O'Shaughnessy joins Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga for the latest installment of their Omni Talk Spotlight Series to share his knowledge on the most practical applications of Visual AI in the here and now...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: - Amazon's shrewd move and likely "deke" to close 68 physical stores. - Lululemon finally getting into footwear. - Dollar General trying to become everyone's new local bank. - Walmart's extremely disappointing new fit technology it unveiled this...

Sure, the pandemic has “accelerated digital trends” throughout retail, but what the heck does that phrase really mean? While it is easy to say, it is quite another thing to know what to do about it. So Omni Talk is pleased to announce that Microsoft’s very own Chris Dieringer, Ricardo Belmar, and Sue McMahon and Adobe’s Taylor Schreiner joined Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga for the latest installm...

Buy Now, Pay Later is one of the hottest trends in retail right now, and, while most of the BNPL activity happens online, that is about to change . . . rapidly. Because BNPL is now set to take over physical retail stores, too. To help us understand how fast and just how easy it is to allow retail customers to pay in-store with BNPL, Sezzle’s very own Chris Bixby joined Chris Walton and Anne Mezzen...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: - All the new curbside drive up features Target is testing, including ordering Starbucks and taking returns. - Just how big of a leap forward Amazon putting its Just Walk Out technology into Whole Foods really is. - Why Foot Locker expressing con...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, A&M's David Brown and Chad Lusk join Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga as they discuss: - Amazon’s gobsmacking first-ever reported ad revenue figures. - Another airport-based convenience retailer, this time a British one, WHSmith, licensing Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” tech in LaGuardia airpo...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: - Why Domino's new marketing scheme to tip customers $3 for using order pickup is a big fat dud - Aldi's big U.S. store expansion plans - All the recent union troubles brewing at Starbucks - NYC bodegas striking back against the instant delivery...

IoT devices in retail increased drastically within recent years, especially as the desire for digital and touchless solutions reached peak demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. And, as a result, while retailers have accelerated their digital transformation deployments at a record pace, all too often we see retailers driving IT purchases faster than IT can keep up, leading to untalked about and unfo...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: - Why Walmart's RFID push into home goods is already the front runner for the omnichannel retailing headline of 2022. - All the reasons to be skeptical about Walmart's new store design in Springdale, AR. - Albertsons' continued AI push, this time...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: - Who wore it better: Amazon Style or Amazon Go in the suburbs? - 7-Eleven's new 30 minutes or less subscription delivery program - Chris's utter distaste for the shareholder activists at Kohl's - Walmart's $400 million investment in vertical far...

In our latest Omni Talk Spotlight Series Podcast live from the Manifest Conference in Las Vegas, brought to you in association with 1010data, we are pleased to bring you Delivery Solutions Co-Founders Manil Uppal and Arshaad Mirza. Arshaad and Manil sit down with Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga to discuss what it feels like to be the pioneers of delivery orchestration software. Together, they: – Go...

In our latest Omni Talk Spotlight Series Podcast live from the Manifest Conference in Las Vegas, brought to you in association with 1010data, we are pleased to bring you ECU Worldwide Chief Transformation Officer Philip Blumenthal. Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Philip to get his perspective on all things related to shipping products across an ocean. Together, they discuss: – How e-c...

In our latest Omni Talk Spotlight Series Podcast live from the Manifest Conference in Las Vegas, brought to you in association with 1010data, we are pleased to bring you 1010data CEO Inna Kuznetsova. Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Inna to get her insightful and oftentimes hilarious take on why data collaboration holds they key to getting out in front of retail trends. Together, they...

In our first podcast to kickoff the Manifest Conference, brought to you in association with 1010data, we are pleased to bring you Buyk CEO James Walker. Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with James to get his take on what to make of the ultra fast delivery trend. Together, they discuss: - The consumer psychology involved - The importance of private label - Vertical differentiation as the key...

As part of their Spotlight AI Series from the NVIDIA and Lenovo NRF Innovation Lab, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sat down with Vistry. AI Founder and CEO, Atif Kureishy, to learn how his company is leveraging Ai to improve the overall operations and consumer experience in the QSR industry. In this podcast, Atif does an excellent job of relaying all the different ways QSRs can find benefits from...

As part of their Spotlight AI Series from the NVIDIA and Lenovo NRF Innovation Lab, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sat down with Deep North VP of Retail Sales, Tracy Benaman, to learn how her company leverages computer vision AI to observe consumer and employee journeys in a much more objective way than standard consumer or employee surveying. In this podcast, Tracy does an excellent job of relayi...

In what had to be one of our favorite podcasts on AI from the NRF Innovation Lab, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sat down with Compass Digital Labs CTO, Scott Wu, to learn how his massive company, the Compass Group, is looking to bring computer-vision based checkout-free retail to food service and the many micro-markets it is opening at an astonishing clip. In this podcast, Scott does an excellent...

AI is helping retailers improve business agility in these unprecedented times. Using store analytics, retailers can understand consumer behavior and optimize processes for better shopping experiences and faster, contactless checkout in stores with improved ROI. But knowing where to start is always the big question. So we have brought together a senior retail asset protection executive and a system...

In the first of our special weeklong Spotlight Series highlighting AI in retail, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga interviewed Anand Muralidaran of NVIDIA and Andi Huels of Lenovo live from the NRF Innovation Lab. Anand is NVIDIA's Head of Global Growth Strategy and AI Business Development for Retail, Consumer Goods, and QSR, and Andi is Lenovo's Head of AI for North America. In other words, they are...

How to fight online return fraud when all the players don't play by the same rules is a growing problem in retail. And nowhere was this more evident than this past holiday season when the overall rate of e-commerce returns increased and so, too, did the rate of online return fraud. Resident Omni Talk expert and retail commerce protection expert extraordinaire, Signifyd’s SVP of Operations and Corp...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, David Ritter and Jonathan Sharp of A&M join Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga as they discuss: - Walmart's porch delivery program. - Gopuff's overt move into private label. - Who made the bigger move in the checkout-free retail war this week: Aldi or Wakefern? - The relative value of voic...

In a special NRF edition of The Omni Talk Spotlight Series, sponsored by Cleveron, Firework, and Scandit, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Gopuff Co-CEO and Co-Founder Rafael Ilishayev. Gopuff started delivering a hundred or so products to college students back in 2013, today they're delivering over 4,000 SKUs in as little as 15-20 minutes to customers in many major cities in the US an...

In a special NRF edition of The Omni Talk Spotlight Series, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Leap Co-founder and CEO Jared Golden to talk about how his company's proprietary platform helps retailers and brands take the "leap" in licensing the soup to nuts operations of their physical stores. From Mack Weldon to Ashley Stewart, Jared and his team at Leap are launching brands with one st...