RETHINK RETAIL

Beyond Vanilla AI: The Era of Agentic Commerce The retail industry has moved past experimentation. We are now in the realization phase where AI agents deliver frictionless, store-like expertise to digital channels. Vic Miles from Microsoft and Crispin Lowery of Rezolve AI join Jeremy Goldman to discuss why the early adopter advantage is now a requirement for brand survival. Key Discussion Points:...

Store design used to be about defining a set path for the customer. Today, it is about providing a flexible canvas. Crate and Barrel's VP of Store Design, Nicholas Effler joins Top Retail Expert Cynthia Ortiz to discuss how Crate & Barrel balances historic architecture with the high-tech expectations of the modern shopper. Inside the Episode: - Digital Echoes: How the pace of app-scrolling transla...

Retail design is at a crossroads. As customer expectations rise, physical stores must offer more than just products: they must deliver animation, meaning, and connection. Steve Calhoun and Andy Hunt, from The Hershey Company, join Top Retail Expert Elisa Servais to discuss how Hershey’s uses technology to amplify nostalgia and joy without overstimulating the shopper. Inside the Episode: - The Digi...

On the latest RETHINK Retail Podcast, host Toby Pickard of the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) sits down with Aidan Mittra, Co-founder of OrderGrid. They explore how real-time inventory technology is transforming store efficiency, supply chain management, and the future of grocery retail. KEY TAKEAWAYS: - Location and expiry awareness is now essential: Retailers need to know exactly where...

Traditional retail is designed to drive the next transaction, but Patagonia is built to drive a movement. Angela Clark, VP of Digital at Patagonia, joins Marie Schwartz to discuss leading a digital organization where activism is a primary KPI and short-term conversion is never the goal. Activism as a Metric: Why Patagonia treats a local cleanup sign-up with the same weight as a high-value product...

The real bottleneck in retail planning isn't a lack of data; it's the time lost reconciling it. When planners spend the first half of their week manually pulling reports, they aren't strategizing—they're just catching up. The tension for 2026 is moving past "Black Box" AI that demands blind faith to Agentic AI that provides actionable transparency. Karen Beebe, CTO of Bealls, Inc., details how a 1...

Emerging brands cannot outspend the giants. They have to out-think them. Avani Oswal, Head of Digital at Elizée, joins Marie Schwartz to share how they build trust for a high-price product in a market dominated by legacy names. THE HIGH-LEVEL INSIGHTS: - The Margin Trap: Why focusing on contribution margin is the only way to build a sustainable luxury business. - The Discovery Layer: Moving beyond...

Innovation is often confused with complexity. In this episode, Jennifer Peters, Director of DTC and Martech at OLLY, argues that the most successful brands in 2026 are the ones that execute the fundamentals with relentless consistency. They move past the hype of custom builds to focus on what actually moves the needle for a modern wellness brand. WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN: - The Headless Trap: Why the...

The long waves of efficiency are over. If your brand waits 18 months to pivot, you have already lost the margin. Jason O'Toole, Head of Connected Commerce & Media at Gildan, and guest host Spencer Lian-Thornton, VP Growth & Partnership of Mindgruve, discuss why the "Fail Fast" culture is now a requirement for survival. INSIDE THE EPISODE: - The ROAS Trap: Why high returns often hide cannibalizatio...

On the latest RETHINK Retail Podcast, host Fritz Finlay sits down with Jeannie Scarlet Freis-Terry of Albertsons and Aidan Mittra, Co-founder of OrderGrid, to discuss how grocers can modernize their technology stack. They explore building lasting vendor relationships and laying the operational foundation for an AI-driven future in the grocery sector. KEY TAKEAWAYS: - Great partnerships solve big p...

The era of curiosity is over. Retailers are finding that moving from a flashy demo to a trusted, scalable production environment is much harder than a slide deck makes it look. In this episode, op Retail Expert & AI Leader, Charisma Glassman sits down with Mark Abramowitz, CMO of Dataiku, to discuss how leaders can hit their performance targets before the 2026 budget reckoning. WHY YOU SHOULD LIST...

Consumer habits are shifting fast, and the pressure on grocery retailers to keep up has never been greater. On the latest RETHINK Retail Podcast, R.J. Hottovy of Placer.ai and Aidan Mittra, Co-founder of OrderGrid, discuss the state of the industry and how retailers can adapt to modern demands. THE KEY TAKEAWAYS: - Shoppers are more fluid than ever: Consumers are moving freely across in-store, pic...

Here is the Spotify-optimized version for the Inventory Truth episode with Ted McCaffrey and Tom Meehan. I’ve focused on making those "Core Perspectives" pop so listeners can quickly see the technical value of the conversation. The Optimized Spotify Version Copy and paste this text directly: DESCRIPTION Retail transformation fails in the gap between corporate data and the sales floor. In this epis...

Most growth leaders spend their lives chasing the promotional calendar. Ankur Goyal spent his time building a brand that didn't need one. In this episode, Marie Schwartz sits down with Ankur Goyal, the man who helped lead Coterie to a major acquisition. They move past the standard "growth hacks" to reveal the discipline required for true innovation. THE GROWTH BLUEPRINT: 📊 The Data Foundation: Be...

The era of "testing" AI is over. For retail leaders, the tension has shifted from theoretical potential to a mandatory operational overhaul. If you aren't actioning data within 24 hours, you’re already behind. Recorded at Shoptalk, quip CEO Meredith Glansberg joins Kimberly Morgan, a Top AI Leader, to dismantle the hype surrounding retail tech. Glansberg argues that AI isn't a "point solution"—it...

Most brands treat influencers as a side project. At Allbirds, it is a unified revenue engine. Sarah Grosz joins Marie Chevrier Schwartz to discuss moving the brand beyond ad-hoc product seeding to a 3,000-plus member network that drives predictable ROI. THE CORE STRATEGY: 🛑 The Problem: The Ad Plateau: Traditional paid channels hit diminishing returns as spend increases. An influencer ecosystem c...

Most organizations break the same way: they get bigger, slower, and more rigid. Ujjwal Dhoot of Tractor Supply Company argues for the opposite approach: if you want to scale, you have to build like water—not like a box. ADAPTABILITY OVER RIGIDITY: 💧 Build Like Water: Scaling doesn’t mean chaos; it means fluidity. The best teams know when to standardize—and when to flex. 🏗️ Structure Without Const...

Top Retail Expert Joshua Rockoff was joined by Yuliya Samsonava from EPAM and Vic Miles from Microsoft onsite at Shoptalk Spring to explore how agentic AI is being applied within luxury retail. In this episode, we dive into connecting data across systems, supporting decision-making in real time, and elevating the role of store associates. RETAILERS WILL GAIN INSIGHTS INTO: 📱 The Modern Associate:...

If your digital team and your store team are arguing over attribution, you don't have a measurement problem. You have a customer problem. Most retailers still treat stores like isolated P&Ls—judged on what happens inside four walls. But something else happens the moment a store opens: Search spikes. Traffic shifts. Conversion improves—everywhere. On the ground with Courtney Hawkins of CH Retail Gr...

Most retail AI isn't solving problems; it's hiding them. The industry is currently addicted to "overlays"—cheap, automated layers that promise instant compliance—but building on a mask is just waiting for the legal or operational consequences to catch up. At Shoptalk, Gustavo Cardona, VP of Technology at Levain Bakery, joined us to dismantle the "plug-and-play" fallacy. For a brand scaling from a...

The Central Nervous System: Rewiring Retail with Modular Architecture Diebold Nixdorf and Kitestring explain how modular architecture serves as the foundation for resilience. Guests Bernd Kraus and Eugene Park move beyond the "rip and replace" mentality to show how retailers can modernize while keeping the lights on. Core Insights: - By separating hardware from software, retailers gain the freedom...

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) gave brands control over experience, data, and customer relationships. As brands grow, that model alone becomes limiting. This episode explores how brands move from subscription-based models into retail and multi-channel strategies — and what changes when products leave controlled environments and enter broader distribution. Podcast Overview Fritz Finlay is joined by Reba...

Most retailers are still optimizing for a world where a human types a keyword into a bar. But at Hanna Andersson, Matt Ezyk is architecting for a reality where AI agents browse and filter on behalf of the consumer. In this episode, we discuss the architectural survival of brand identity in a decentralized world. - The Bilingual Storefront: LLMs crave data density (fit, texture, origin) that ruins...

What if the real problem with AI in retail isn’t intelligence—but expertise? Recorded live at Shoptalk Spring in Las Vegas, this conversation breaks down how Boot Barn is tackling one of retail’s hardest challenges: scaling deep, technical product knowledge across 500+ stores—without losing credibility on the floor. Instead of relying on generic chatbots, Boot Barn built a custom AI “associate” de...

Moving Beyond the Buzzwords Unified Commerce isn't a new term, but true execution remains the "Holy Grail" for enterprise retailers. In this episode, Steven Bailey, Partner at EY and Jonathan Aitken, SVP at RADAR, discuss why the gap between vision and reality is still so wide, and how to close it. The Foundation of Real-Time Retail From the friction of in-store returns to the high cost of order c...