Retail Refined

In this episode of Retail Refined, host Melissa Gonzalez, Principal at MG2/ Founder of The Lionesque Group sits down with Tracy Benaman, Deep North VP of Retail Sales, at NRF's Big Show to discuss how AI video analytics is revolutionizing the retail industry. Tracy shares how retailers are using AI video analytics to gain valuable insights into customer behavior, improve in-store experiences, and...

Currently, the customer journey for shoe shopping is quite involved and tedious. Consumers shop for shoes, read reviews and shoe sizing graphs, maybe even go in store to try shoes on, and often buy multiple pairs in various sizes. Sometimes they even buy the same product in different sizes — only to ultimately return many if not all that don’t fit. Clearly, this isn’t the most effective, profitabl...

Steve Kramer, CEO at WorkJam, is a twenty-year veteran in e-commerce. His specialty is finding the gaps in how organizations manage their frontlines. He founded WorkJam in 2014 as a digital frontline workplace to solve retail industry issues. “Our platform essentially helps retailers and companies and other industries, such as healthcare, manufacturing, and distribution, to orchestrate their front...

Successful retail requires flexibility. Recently, omnichannel was groundbreaking, but Retail Dive now reports it as a consumer baseline expectation. Let’s say a consumer is shopping on their mobile device. They transfer to their laptop to complete the transaction only to find an empty cart. These disconnections create enough friction for shoppers to jump and abandon ship. Platform unification is m...

The popularity of BNPL (buy now, pay later) has grown tremendously over the past decade. The attraction of breaking purchasing payments up over weeks without interest or late fees is undeniable. In fact, “BNPL spending in the US is up 230% since 2020, per a September report by Accenture... [and] it’s estimated to total ~$226 billion this year, according to a Juniper Research report.” And while the...

Retail in 2022 and surviving as a brick-and-mortar store means keeping up with the consumers and consistently improving the customer’s experience. Keeping up with the consumers means being able to know what is convenient for them and what drives a consumer to make a purchase. In this episode of Retail Redefined, hosted by Melissa Gonzalez with special guest, Nick Delyani, Director of Retail at Xov...

With over 12K retail locations closing in 2020, leaving 159M square feet of retail space unoccupied, many might be thinking that the future of brick and mortar retail locations is permanently on the decline. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, retailers opened more stores than they closed in 2021, “with a nearly 40 percent increase in year-over-year store opening announcements” (AZ B...

It’s the age-old question advertisers ask themselves: How do I ensure the brand is placed at the right place and right time to successfully engage our target audience throughout the customer journey? Discussing this loaded topic with Retail Refined Host, Melissa Gonzalez, is Karl Haller, partner of the consumer center of competency at IBM. One major player is initiating an omnichannel business str...

The Head of Global Expansion at HugePOD discusses custom apparel with Retail Refined host Melissa Gonzalez. HugePOD is a global leader in print-on-demand apparel design and manufacturing. Formally launched in 2021, HugePOD includes a worldwide network of diverse manufacturers and has developed a flexible fashion supply chain for world-class retailers, including Steve Madden, Forever New, Land...

HugePOD is a global leader in print-on-demand apparel design and manufacturing. Formally launched in 2021, HugePOD includes a worldwide network of diverse manufacturers and has developed a flexible fashion supply chain for world-class retailers, including Steve Madden, Forever New, Landmark, and SHEIN. HugePOD has more than 200 employees across its offices on three continents. Its primary offering...

The convenience of online shopping means those crowded malls are no longer. No more waiting in a long line to purchase an item, no more pushing through crowds. But also, no longer being able to see the item in a room, on display. No more walking into a store and seeing the products incorporated as designed. But what if that could change? Retail Refined host Melissa Gonzalez sits down with Head of...

The convenience of online shopping means those crowded malls are no longer. No more waiting in a long line to purchase an item, no more pushing through crowds. But also, no longer being able to see the item in a room, on display. No more walking into a store and seeing the products incorporated as designed. But what if that could change? Retail Refined host Melissa Gonzalez sits down with Head of...

The days of retail clothiers needing to stock multiple garment sizes could be drawing to a close. NOBAL Technologies developed a product poised to revolutionize the customer retail experience with its interactive iMirror solution. Daniel Maher, VP of Technology at NOBAL, joined Retail Refined's Melissa Gonzalez at NRF to talk about the positive impact iMirror is already having on retail customers....