Retail Unwrapped from The Robin Report

How Barnes & Noble Made a Comeback

Mark Faithfull — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:01:00 +0000

Depending on what you read, no one is reading books anymore. Are we addicted streamers? A 2025 study found that daily reading for pleasure dropped by over 40 percent in the last 20 years, with nearly 46 percent of U.S. adults not reading a single book in 2023. Americans are reading an average of 12.6 books per year. Invoking the 80/20 rule, in 2025, 19 percent of adults (those who read 10+ books) accounted for 82 percent of all books read.

The numbers would validate the fact that the iconic Barnes & Noble bookseller was pushed to the edge of extinction, accelerated by the unrelenting digital rise of Amazon. So, it is all the more counterintuitive that Barnes & Noble stands as one of the most remarkable retail turnarounds of the past decade.

How did Barnes & Noble turn around a dying business? And the answer is: James Daunt revitalized an iconic brand by re-humanizing the business.

B&N Rising from the Ashes

If you follow the readership numbers, it is surprising that under the leadership of James Daunt, the English-born bookseller has not only clawed back relevance but has also expanded to the point that its private equity owner is readying an initial public offering for the combined Barnes & Noble and Waterstones business.

Elliott Management is expected to hire investment bank Rothschild & Co. to advise on options for a public offering of its retail group, which could happen as early as the second quarter of this year and is likely to be on the London Stock Exchange. So just how did an ailing bookseller turn the tables on a global digital giant with endless bookshelves and its own e-readers glued to its proprietary screens? And then is the 20 percent of book-reading consumers responsible for Barnes & Noble’s success? It’s a logical assumption.

Elliott Takes Waterstones Formula to the U.S.

When Elliott Investment Management acquired Barnes & Noble in 2019 for $683 million, revenue was in decline, losses were mounting, and it faced a formidable competitor in Amazon; the digital behemoth had fundamentally changed how Americans bought and consumed books. For years, Amazon’s market dominance, ease of purchase, low prices and proprietary Kindle e-reader left traditional bookstores struggling to turn the page.

James Daunt’s arrival in New York was greeted with cautious optimism. A former banker, he had his own successful, eponymous bookstore group in the U.K, which he continues to own. Daunt brought a philosophy radically different from the corporate uniformity that had defined Barnes & Noble’s operations for years as a mall and main street staple. Drawing on his experience at Waterstones, where he had been at the helm since 2011, he insisted local stores be run more like independent shops than cookie-cutter chains. Daunt undertook a sweeping cultural overhaul. Local store managers were empowered to curate selections tailored to their communities, shelving displays were reimagined, and the emphasis shifted from broad and deep inventory to curated discovery.

“Everybody thinks that we must be doing one thing; either we must be going small, or we must be going large. The fact is, we’re doing everything,” Daunt told me about the range of store formats Barnes & Noble is now operating. He stressed his long-held belief that physical retail can compete with the utility of online bookstores as long as it offers variety and relevance to its local customers.

Barnes & Noble Expansion

The transformation has been dramatic. Barnes & Noble opened over 60 new stores across the U.S. in 2025 and pushed its holdings above 700 locations, with plans for 60 more in 2026. Waterstones in the UK is approaching 400 stores, with more expansion planned.

The company remains determined that the store portfolio will be just as eclectic as the site selection, although the new stores are generally smaller than its traditional larger-footprint outlets. This reflects the change of emphasis to a curated rather than all-encompassing offer and the more cost-effective nature of smaller units.

Daunt said that when expanding locations, he was less interested in the plethora of analytical location data and more focused on gut feel. New locations are driven by “self-observation” from the company’s field team, who identify possible sites and store managers ready for the next step to run their own stores. While he is reticent to admit his personal satisfaction, Barnes & Noble took over some former, shuttered Amazon Books stores. It’s hard not to conjure up the image of Daunt’s victory stroll through a repurposed and more relevant bookstore.

Building Loyalty

“The model that we now have, which devotes considerable responsibility and accountability to the store teams, means you can set up a store appropriate to the place in which you find yourself. We’re not trying to have the same store on the Upper East Side as we would if we’re opening in, say, Montana or indeed the Bronx, just a few miles away,” Daunt added.

In recent years, Barnes & Noble has also reconsidered what it sells, reducing reliance on technical or specialist volumes in favor of broader lifestyle offerings, including stationery, greeting cards, gift items, the prerequisite Starbucks café, and other categories that drive both discovery and sales. There are special events including readings and signings, a children’s area where they can sit and read (and be read to), and plenty of adult seating to settle in with a new book.

The company has “evolved the Amazon out of our bookstores,” as Daunt puts it and has firmly prioritized the human experience, including collaborations with, for example, children’s favorite Moomin to promote and create special areas within stores. B&N is reclaiming the role of a community hub, returning on experience.

Site Selection Based on Local Lore

Daunt’s highly unconventional approach to B&N’s expansion reflects his own history as a bookseller rather than as a retailer. “We’re not that traditional big-box retailer where it’s all driven by the real estate dynamic,” he said. “Of course, you need the landlord with properties who wishes to lease them to you. But we’re in places where we think we will do well and where people want to buy books.”

These changes have paid off. The combined Barnes & Noble and Waterstones business now generates more than $3 billion in sales and over $400 million in profits. Perhaps the boldest sign of confidence is the advanced talks over a public offering. The IPO isn’t just a financial event; it is a validation of a belief that brick-and-mortar bookselling can thrive in a world dominated by ecommerce.

The strategy of deferring to local taste over stock-wide uniformity and treating stores as community hubs rather than depots of inventory stands in stark contrast to Amazon’s homogenized and algorithmically curated marketplace. And while Amazon’s sophisticated recommendation engines and global logistics continue to dominate online book sales, they cannot replicate the serendipity of browsing a thoughtfully merchandised bookstore. It’s that gap that gives Barnes & Noble a competitive edge.

Postcards From the Edge

Daunt’s intuitive leadership and the company’s resurgence come at a time when broader consumer trends have shown renewed interest in physical books and demand for in-person experiences. Viral social media movements around reading, such as the #BookTok phenomenon, have highlighted how discovery can flourish in community settings far beyond algorithms.

That said, bookstore sales in the U.S. declined 8 percent over the five-year period from $8.6 billion in 2019 to $7.9 billion in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s Annual Retail Trade Survey. Barnes & Noble is bucking the trends, appealing to core book buyers and providing meaningful experiences. The brand’s comeback under James Daunt is not just about surviving Amazon’s endless domination; it’s about reminding the market that respect for people’s desire for discovery, curation, and local engagement matter more than ever.

Southdale Center Turns 70; Then What?

Sanford Stein — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:01:00 +0000

America’s first indoor mall, Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota, is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. This birthday could be a litmus test of the viability of the traditional shopping mall. To ensure its relevance, owner Simon Properties just completed a $400 million renovation and new luxury wing, bringing together Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Moncler, Watches of Switzerland/Rolex, MaxMara, and David Yurman. Southdale now has the highest concentration of luxury retail in the upper Midwest and elevates the “luxe listings” above its mega-competitor Mall of America, just a few miles away. But the question remains: Will this capital infusion guarantee Southdale’s future as a 20^th-century architectural aberration in a digital/agentic age? And will chasing the top 10 percent of spenders buy Southdale and Simon time? It is by no means a guarantee of its longevity.

Can the 70-year-old Southdale Center live up to consumers’ expectations? And the answer is: Adding a new luxury wing is not a panacea for cultural relevance; today’s malls need to deliver experience and brands that are meaningful to consumers.

In the Beginning

Southdale’s origin story is a retail case study. Funded by the Dayton Development Company, it’s widely considered to be the nation’s first fully enclosed, climate-controlled shopping mall. Austrian-born architect Victor Gruen had a different vision from Dayton’s. Gruen planned for the center to be surrounded by housing, apartment buildings, schools, and medical facilities, as well as natural amenities including a lake and a park, modeled after the commerce centers of many European cities. In 1956, he was ahead of his time; the mall became…a mall.

Gruen’s original vision, now known as mixed-use development, has become the formula for the reinvention and salvation of malls like Southdale. Repositioning malls from single-purpose points of transaction into dynamic community forums promoting human interaction is the sustainable reinvention of irrelevant malls. But, given the ginormous price tag involved, there are only a finite number of malls destined for such rejuvenation. The vast majority will perish.

Class Distinctions

Between 1970 and 2002, over 800 shopping malls were built in America. Money was cheap, second-string suburbs were flourishing, and young consumers—baby boomers—were entering their prime earning years. By the mid-1990s, mall numbers peaked at over 1,500 enclosed malls. Then the tide changed. Today, approximately 700 fully enclosed malls still exist, and projections suggest that another 25 percent of these remaining centers will shutter within the next five years. Analysts predict as few as 200 survivors by the mid-2030’s.

What’s the formula for mall survival? Malls are bluntly, real estate assets. And for real estate, the age-old adage “location, location, location” is the playbook. In terms of sustainability, a mall’s age, tenant mix, occupancy rates, and institutional ownership play decisive roles in defining the ABCs of property class ranking.

The highest performing A-class malls boast premium tenants, affluent customers, and high occupancy rates (mid-high 90 percent range). Their tenants are made up of stable, national luxury and premium brands. These properties are newer or heavily renovated, located in affluent markets, typically home to Apple stores, and many are mixed-use village spaces like The Grove.
B-class malls are moderate performers, plagued by failing mid-market specialty chains. With occupancy rates of 80-90 percent, they are often found in secondary suburbs and cater to value-oriented families. They are generally older centers devoid of improvements, and many are still anchored by JCPenney.
C-class malls are the most endangered species, with 500-600 already shuttered since the mid-1990s. Occupancies are often at or below 70 percent and are considered distressed properties. They cater to highly price-sensitive shoppers with local retailers, discounters, and non-retail services.

Gruen’s Gospel

I believe the Gruen gospel of “placemaking” will ultimately determine the fate of Southdale and the rest of the remaining A-class malls. Their ownership is concentrated among a small number of deep-pocketed development and management companies, including Simon Property Group, Brookfield Properties, Macerich, (and to a lesser extent) SITE Centers, Taubman, and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield.

It’s Simon Property Group and Brookfield Properties, who together own and control nearly half of A-class malls in the U.S. and they must concentrate on bringing their aging mall properties into the 21st century through additions, renovations, and tenant upgrades.

Southdale was completed in 1956, and the mall was just over 800,000 square feet. Today it is 60 percent larger at 1.3 million square feet. The mall’s haphazard expansion in 1963 and 1971, along with multiple renovations through the 2000s and 2010s, has resulted in a rather schizophrenic visitor experience. The current luxury wing is at odds with the rest of the mall. While the new single-level wing is upscale and polished, it feels like an island (or peninsula) unto itself. Visitors arriving through any of the mall’s other primary entrances will, no doubt, be wowed by the newly renovated center court. However, finding the new luxury wing presents a quandary, accessible exclusively via a second-level corridor.

Futureproofing an Aging Mall

All the money in the world can’t save an irrelevant mall. Some centers are destined to fail in the brutal survival of the fittest. There are core fundamentals that are prerequisites in the reimagining and futureproofing of aging malls. Will Southdale measure up?

Anchor Replacement: A mall’s once dominant department stores literally served as anchors and traffic generators, as well as magnets to attract desirable specialty stores. With their departure, similarly compelling anchor-like players must fill that role. A plethora of unlikely candidates are filling the bill today. They include high-end grocery stores, fitness and co-working centers, hotels, medical centers, “high experience” retailers, and even private clubs. Dick’s House of Sport, which has effectively replaced former Sears stores in several top-tier malls is an excellent example.

To Southdale’s credit, it has flexed its “anchor’s away” muscle. In 2019, on the site of a JCPenney store, a massive $43 million, 204,000-square-foot Life Time Fitness flagship dropped anchor. Billed as a three-story athletic resort, it included a rooftop beach club, pool, and even pickleball courts. Immediately adjacent is a 75,000 square foot Life Time luxury coworking development and indoor soccer field. Both are knockout examples of anchor replacement.

In 2024, on the site of a former Herberger’s department store, Southdale introduced a 25,000 square foot, two-level Puttshack, that bills itself as an “upscale, tech-infused” mini-golf experience. Immediately adjacent is Kowalski’s Market, a premier specialty grocer which should also generate repeat traffic. Southdale’s score: 9 out of 10.

Retail Theater and Experience Engines: The success of the reimagined mall becomes a shared proposition between landlord and tenants. In the face of unified commerce, the continued growth of online retail, augmented reality, and generative AI, brands are being forced to up their game to get folks off the couch. Becoming fully immersed in a brand’s storytelling has become the new norm. Brands like Lego, Crayola, Build-A-Bear, and Camp have become the new “play stations,” undergoing constant reinvention aimed at lengthening the customer’s visit and creating memorable moments.

With the massive popularity of the collectables market that grew by 32 percent in 2025, select specialty retailers are cashing in. Among them, CardVault, Pokémon Center, Kura Sushi gashapon, and Pop Mart. They sit at the intersection of collecting, surprise, and social sharing. They are selling sets, series, rarities, even blind boxes that foster “the chase.”

And beyond the store purchase, often viral “unboxing” follows, driving social media sharing. These brands, and others like, them populate the halls of the Mall of America, while Southdale hasn’t hopped on that brand wagon yet. Southdale’s score: 2 out of 10.

Social Interaction and Brand Activation: More than ever, brands depend on popular performers and sports figures to co-promote product drops. To that end, top malls have beefed-up marketing and event teams to facilitate high-energy, revolving events to drive traffic. Southdale currently has a considerable amount of underutilized space which could be captured for such events that bring “like-minded” groups together around a shared passion. Southdale’s score: 5 out of 10.
Food-Forward Destinations: National restaurant chains like Applebee’s will no longer cut it with new generations, proud of their food-fixated tastes. The winning ticket includes chef-driven restaurants, multicultural food halls, and experiential dining. Chef-staged, fixed-price dinners are selling out months in advance. Even ghost kitchens are being created to facilitate the preparation of Michelin Chef-quality meals for takeout or near-instant delivery to area foodies.

Southdale’s Dining Pavilion is the ghost of its former massive food court; there are plenty of tables and chairs, but light on eats. Southdale is lacking in the fine dining experience that will lure in customers. Southdale’s score: 7 out of 10.

Social Infrastructure and Walkability: Too many major malls resemble fortresses, surrounded by seas of asphalt, as vehicular access and parking overrode pedestrian friendliness during the planning process. The new mall’s viability focuses on socialization, visit duration, relaxation, and immersion. Reimagined, multi-use developments are selling off excess parking to accommodate multi-family housing. Other pedestrian-centric amenities include green spaces, walking paths, water features, community gardens, and well-equipped play areas, for folks to gather, linger, meet, and work. Southdale hasn’t begun turning parking lots into parks. With an influx of multi-family residential properties and luxury services, “greening” initiatives are a must. Southdale’s score: 5 out of 10.

Prescription

While Southdale doesn’t publish its annual visits, The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported an 11 percent increase in foot traffic following the opening of the new luxury wing, which isn’t too surprising. Applying my “mall-metamorphosis metrics,” Southdale is an overachiever with its recent retail and lifestyle additions; however, it is clearly an underachiever in the rest of the crucial placemaking attributes. New retail is moving much faster than center owners, including Southdale, can anticipate and act on. Its relevance will depend on staying ahead of what customers want, not catching up to them.

Kohls: The Robin Report Retail Miss of the Week, 2.21.26

Warren Shoulberg — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 05:01:00 +0000

The idea of full price retailers setting aside a dedicated promotional area in their stores goes back at least to the famous “O” tables (opportunities) merchandised by up-and-coming junior buyers at A&S including Allen Questrom and Mike Gould. And then there were the Blue Light Specials at Kmart in its heyday. The best manifestations more recently were the Target Bullseye Dollar Spots, which have since lost much their luster and focus like so much else in the store. So, Kohls’ introduction of a similar merchandising concept called the Deal Bar doesn’t get any kudos from us. In fact, what worries us is Kohl’s chronically poor execution at the store level. Why can’t they get this right; it’s not rocket science. This could easily turn into a pile of leftovers, markdowns and irrelevance. We hope not but Kohl’s track record on such programs continues to be pretty dismal.

Is Netflix House the Next Big Retail Thing?

Warren Shoulberg — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:01:00 +0000

I have seen the future of the Great American Shopping Mall…maybe. And I survived. As department stores crash and burn, specialty chains fold up like cheap lawn chairs, and food courts become Ozempic victims, a new potential victor has arrived on the retail scene. And it’s not coming from a traditional retailing company, startup from techdom or a visitor from another planet. It’s from a streaming entertainment behemoth.

Is Netflix House a new retail paradigm? And the answer is: More likely it’s the latest shiny, new retail toy. But it does have a few superpowers: capturing the attention, imagination and wallets of its loyal fans. Is it sustainable with repeat visits? We’ll see.

Streaming Retail

Netflix House is the latest riff in retailing, with its first two stores having opened late last year, and at least one more on the way in 2027 in Las Vegas. It represents a potential new format that could rescue shopping malls from the ongoing deterioration in American retailing. Then again, it could be the latest colossal failure in a long line of retail concepts that promised big things and ended up with padlocked doors and large going-out-of-business signs in their windows. Or worse, dream malls that became food courts and carnivals.

I just got back from Dallas, where Netflix House has set up shop; its other location is in King of Prussia, PA. And I’m here to tell you it’s exciting, innovative and was packed on a busy Saturday afternoon. Whether it will succeed is, of course, an entirely different matter. We’ll see how it fares in a whimsical customer-driven retail marketplace.

What’s in the House?

The Dallas Netflix store, opened in December in what had once been a Belk store in the still popular upscale Galleria, including Nordstrom, Macy’s, Louis Vuitton, an ice-skating rink and architecture inspired by Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele shopping space. Netflix measures out at 100,000 square feet on two floors with direct access from both the interior and exterior of the mall (with a big red square emblazoned on the store’s wall that Netflix hailed as an homage to its mail-in DVD envelope origins). The King of Prussia store is similar in design.

While it’s free to enter, once inside, the meter starts running the minute you actually want to do anything. The star attractions are two interactive experiences (c’mon, what else can you call them?) based on wildly popular Netflix series: Stranger Things Escape the Dark and Squid Games Survive the Trials. Tickets for these immersive experiences run about $40, depending on the timed entry and other factors. What do you get for that? Good question. As we were clearly not the right target demographic for either room (in fact our mere appearance at the place brought up the average age of the crowd by a factor of two), all we can tell you is that they are part game room, part escape room and part nightmare. The Stranger Things room carries a “parental supervision required for guests under 14 due to graphic content” warning.

Long lines to enter both spaces called “Studios” on a busy Saturday afternoon seemed to indicate they had winners on their hands, though you have to wonder how many repeat visitors these kinds of things will get. We also thought it odd that both these experiences were located on the lower level of the place (we can’t quite call it a store) rather than more visibly on the larger main floor. For such a hot ticket, it seems shortsighted to have only one kiosk on-site to purchase tickets. But just like movie theaters, the popular online ticketing service guarantees timed reservations.

Level Up

The main floor showcased the Netflix Bites restaurant, which, in addition to the usual teenage wasteland burgers, pizza and fries assortment, features a few Netflix property-themed offerings such as Red Bite Green Bite fried chicken and Perfect Pickle Pie. If you have to ask, you probably are sticking with the burger. There’s a bar with more Netflix tie-ins like Streaming Optimism and Passion on Demand. There’s also plenty of giant servings of iced tea; this is the South, after all. It should be noted that Netflix road-tested the Bites concept last year with pop-ups in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, both of which are now closed as the company has moved to the House concept.

Then there’s the game room, called RePlay, featuring a wide assortment of arcade games, many of which are naturally themed to Netflix properties and offer multi-player competitive contests. Again, Netflix’s targets of loyal fans (and next gens) totally get how to play these games

The Merch

Of course, there’s the prerequisite, high-margin gift shop. It’s huge, maybe 10,000 square feet and full of anything and everything you’d ever want in Netflix products. Given the creativity shown in the rest of the House, we were a bit disappointed to see a fairly standard assortment of apparel, water bottles and fashion accessories with only the occasional inspired item. How could they not sell squid?

No matter, the lines were long here, snaking through a checkout lane that offered last-minute pick-up items in the best tradition of a Bed Bath & Beyond and Sephora. And they weren’t giving anything away either, mind you.

Is a House a Store?

As well done as Netflix House is on most levels, let’s remember it’s not exactly a new concept. Disney tried—and failed—with urban shopping area themed attractions two decades ago. In the 1990s, Radio Shack rolled out a giant retail concept called Incredible Universe which, while it didn’t include interactive areas, was a theme park kind of experience. It too failed. And American Dream in the swamps of Jersey is nothing if not an amusement park masquerading as a shopping center with rides, a water park, ice skating and enough interactive storefronts to keep a family of four occupied (and broke) for days at a time. It remains to be seen if it will be the success its developers keep saying it will become. All said, the Harry Potter immersive stores seem to be holding up.

If you’re in the retail business, you really need to see a Netflix House. It is onto the most compelling reasons for retail to succeed: customer engagement, surprise and delight. It captures the imagination and attention, plus the dollars of its fans. See for yourself and decide if this is truly the next big thing. Retailing has always been a game. It’s Netflix’s (potentially) winning move right now.

Think You’re in Control Shopping for Groceries? Wrong!

Phil Lempert — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 05:01:00 +0000

You think you’re in control of what you choose in a supermarket? Well, sorry to report, but you’ve been played. You don’t decide what you buy at the grocery store. An algorithm does. Welcome to the brave new world of the Agentic AI shopping experience. Your grocery trip is an experiment—and you’re the test subject. You’re not in control and here’s why.

Pricing and promotions are manipulated just for you. You think the electronic shelf price is the same for everyone? The offers hitting your phone, your inbox, and your app are tuned into you—your income bracket, your brand loyalties, your preferences and soft spots. And you gave it all permission. That’s the promise of AI, as long as it doesn’t terrify you.

Think about it. You signed up for loyalty programs. But they aren’t just about rewarding you—it’s a brilliant way to deliver exactly what you want based on what the data has recorded. It’s a win-win if you think about it. You provide access to your personal data, and your local store becomes your personal shopper.

Every scan of your card, every clipped coupon, every “substitute” you accept when something’s out of stock is recorded. You’re not just earning points; you’re teaching the system how to give you what exactly you want.

This is not a bad thing if you want a seamless, stress-free shopping experience. The more you let AI know, the more your local shopping experience can make your life easier. We’re just entering this new world on steroids where AI data accelerates the information you give it to deliver an experience that makes you the most important priority.

Is this creeping you out? Don’t panic. You can limit what AI can access and control the world curated just for you. If it does creep you out, be aware, be informed. But when you think about it, we’re entering a social contract with Agentic AI that can make our lives easier. That’s not so bad.

Intelligent Retail: Mastering Agentic AI

Sarah Holbrook — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 05:01:00 +0000

Agentic AI is an amorphous catchall that is tricky to define but managed to eclipse any other discourse at the recent 2026 NRF Big Show. Brands including LVMH, Home Depot, Warby Parker, Target, and others discussed their understanding of an Agentic AI future. They were joined by executives from Microsoft and OpenAI. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai and new CEO John Furner discussed AI integration with Walmart. Additionally, Pichai announced Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (a set of global standards to facilitate Agentic AI retail activity worldwide).

There was an abundance of chatter, but retailers and brands seemed unable to deliver a concise, consistent definition of Agentic AI and how to use it. Admittedly, Agentic will change the AI conversation dramatically, and as with any introduction of the next best AI tool, its applications and implications are generally misunderstood.

Will Agentic AI dramatically change the course of retail? And the answer is: If retailers learn what Agentic is and how it really works, it’s a direct path to efficiencies and customer delight.

Chasing Agentic Windmills

With retailers seduced by the lustrous orb of Agentic AI, we thought it would be useful to clear the air with a broad definition of the concept and describe how brands apply (or are building applications for) the technologies. At best, Agentic AI is a system’s ultimate thinking tool and takes on the aptitudes of LLM-powered AI in retail.

Customer behavior
Inventory flows
Supply chain rhythms
Pricing strategy
Store operations
Security oversight
Digital interactions
Loyalty patterns
Customer support
Weather activity impacts

Agentic AI Accelerates Retail Operations

Agentic AI upgrades its AI ancestors as it performs tasks autonomously within the retail funnel. New models blend with CRM and POS systems from discovery and checkout to post-purchase support. Agentic AI is still evolving and always improving as it operates at a higher level tackling these complicated tasks.

Influencing discovery
Optimizing inventory
Mitigating supply chain disruptions
Applying dynamic pricing
Facilitating customer purchase activity capture, checkout, and attribution
Leveraging chatbots built from large language models to interpret user input and generate adaptive responses
Coordinating staff scheduling
Identifying and mitigating dark pattern activity and crime
Identifying points of failure
Customizing loyalty incentives
Resolving support issues
Generating catalog, marketing, and advertising content
Adapting based on outcomes
Mitigating weather disruption costs

Omnichannel Evolution

The omnichannel customer experience stitched together stores, ecommerce, mobile, social, marketplaces, and call centers, but the customer moved among these channels as discrete silos. With Agentic AI, the promise is that the channels will dissolve. This near-future experience is emerging as a novel retail ecosystem that will treat every touchpoint as part of a unified system.

The customer journey is continuous and customized
Context follows the customer everywhere
The brand behaves like a single, coordinated organism, not a set of channels (your call is never transferred to another representative)
Data, identity, inventory, and personalization function across devices, whether online, in-store, or both simultaneously
A website can be a living store with the thrill of discovery, and a store can be a living website that directs you to what you are searching for
The experience adapts to the customer, not the other way around

Metachannel retail (no connection to the Big 7 tech company) is an apt reengineering of omnichannel. Metachannel reflects a quasi-scientific interpretation of systemic metapsychology, which applies concepts of self-examination (of a company, not a personality), interdependence (within the organization and between trusted partners), systems-level behavior, and self-repair or mitigation. It is a retail channel that learns from itself, tests and evaluates alternatives, executes decisions, and automatically improves.

Operations and Aspirations

While the pace and intensity of adoption may vary, an AI transformation is underway across the retail industry. Granted, Agentic AI is the latest hot topic, and there is evidence of early stages of early adoption. Plans and aspirations outweigh practical applications in retail. However, there are a few pioneers.

LVMH executives Gonzague de Pirey and Soumia Hadjali have announced an initiative called AI for All, which spans the company’s portfolio of Maisons. The aim of the program is to elevate the user experience across all touchpoints in the system, associates, management, clients, artisans, and operations, through AI. De Pirey emphasizes the importance of an AI that is aligned with the brand’s culture as the company implements what it calls “quiet AI.” He stresses, “The technology should be everywhere, and invisible.” Each Maison at LVMH develops unique AI activations, but the company shares best practices and technology to scale the implementation across the organization. An AI activation at Dior will look very different than one at Sephora, but many of the systems interconnect.
At Louis Vuitton, Soumia Hadjali, Global Vice President, Client Development & Digital, applies AI to leverage LV’s many cultural initiatives. “Our digital concierge is both deeply personal and context aware. It will know how our clients shop; not just what they buy, but who they are, and where they live.” She continues, “Louis Vuitton has cafés, restaurants, and exhibitions. We can organize a private table at our restaurant when it is hard to get a table. We can book tickets for an exhibition. We can become part of our client’s life.”
Target is on an accelerated trajectory. CIO Prat Vemana describes the retailer’s partnership with OpenAI. He is clear about the retailer’s AI ambitions: “Target has moved from using AI to running on AI.” The new OpenAI integration includes many Agentic AI functions aimed at efficiency both online and in-store. Customer service centers and associates have gained two Agentic AI superpowers via the Agent Assist and Store Companion devices developed with OpenAI. The devices allow price matching and can start returns on the spot in-store. Vemana adds, “Target is not a marketplace; it is a curated retailer. The process of vetting vendors used to take thousands of hours; now we get it done in minutes.”
Albertsons’ Agentic AI shopping assistant (which doesn’t seem to have a very catchy name) is jockeying for relevance as grocery options multiply. In a field test AI was challenged with a complicated prompt that required analysis from diverse streams of data and information. It delivered a menu designed to satisfy a group comprising a vegan, lactose-intolerant, peanut-sensitive, and gluten-free group of guests. The bot produced a list of recipes from which to choose and eventually filled the virtual shopping cart with the necessary ingredients, including a few private-label items.
Ralph Lauren’s Ask Ralph chatbot is a more primitive version of Agentic AI that shares sophisticated fashion advice from a virtual facsimile of the fashion icon himself. Chief Branding and Innovation Officer, David Lauren, was an early adopter of OpenAI’s ChatGPT through the brand’s tech integration with Microsoft Azure. Understandably, Lauren is an advocate of the shoppable, conversational version of his Dad steering potential clients toward a sale.

Eyes Wide Shut

AI’s stealth infusion into everything has been stunning. User adoption, exploration, and exploitation are fully turbocharged. Both business and society (including consumers) have had little time to consider the implications of these emerging technological shifts as the world races to retool and keep up with the pace of change. The shiny object that is AI, and the even shinier possibilities promised by Agentic, are alluring, but there are vexing implications that can’t be ignored.

Agentic AI reflects engineering advancements that continue to encroach on unique human capabilities. In a capitalist economy, public corporations beholden to shareholders will choose efficiency over the workforce. These will not be layoffs; It is unlikely that jobs lost to AI will ever return. The economic impact of job losses writ large will impact society, culture, governance, and naturally slam into the retail industry.

The computing power needed to support the massive data centers that power AI currently, compounded by the exponentially increasing energy demands of the more complex Agentic AI, will strain aging energy grids in the U.S. and elsewhere. High power demands drive up electricity costs, particularly in the U.S., as renewables stall. Obviously, higher electricity costs reduce discretionary spending for consumers across many income segments.

Agentic AI requires deep, personal data sharing with service providers. For a consumer-facing Agentic agent to be effective, trust is critical. Consumers will be required to share personal and financial information, including personal characteristics (age, weight and size), location data, biometric information for identity verification, routines, habits, pricing sensitivity and logic, and more. In other words, Agentic AI needs to understand who you are, what you want, how you behave, your constraints, and which actions you are comfortable authorizing the agent to perform. It goes without saying that undisclosed data sharing, selling, leaks, and security breaches will shatter the trust between the customer and the brand.

AI Axiom

As retail’s AI transformation marches forward, it should be approached thoughtfully. Brands and retailers need to anchor every AI decision in their culture, identity, and strategic intent. Ask Ralph, LVMH’s AI for All, and other luxury AI applications should deepen the bespoke, high-touch relationship between client and brand; anything that feels like a generic chatbot breaks the spell. For Target, where speed, scale, and efficiency fulfill the brand’s AI intent, intelligent automation that delivers faster, more personalized service is exactly on‑brand. And when operational AI unlocks cost savings, passing those savings on to shoppers reinforces Target’s value-driven identity. The rule is simple: Innovation only works when it authentically amplifies the brand and delivers meaningful benefit to the one stakeholder who matters most, the customer.

How AI Propels FedEx Customer UX

Retail Unwrapped — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 05:01:00 +0000

Customers have high expectations in their transaction experiences that do not end with the purchase. Today’s empowered and convenience-focused consumers want easy returns, and FedEx is on a mission to make that a reality using AI as a tool to improve the experience. Join Shelley and Jason Brenner, Senior Vice President Digital Portfolio at FedEx as they delve into the fascinating world of returns logistics and how the process has evolved. Jason says consumer familiarity with ‘no box, no label’ returns jumped from 37 percent to 48 percent in just one year. He attributes the increase to consumers’ perceived value around the experience. “Nearly half of U.S. customers say they’re now familiar with ‘no box, no label’ returns and the usage continues to increase year over year; the reason is that once shoppers try it, they understand how convenient and how low stress it can be,” he adds. Their conversation deconstructs shipping logistics and reveals why confidence comes from predictability and visibility that is grounded in a simple UX supported by reliable communications with thoughtful updates throughout the post-purchase journey. As with any customer service, trust, reducing stress and anxiety and managing expectations are crucial. Listen and learn how this iconic logistics organization continues to push the envelope to deliver better customer experiences.

Special Guests

Jason Brenner, Senior Vice President Digital Portfolio, FedEx

Transcript

NRF Trade Talks: Five More Unique Perspectives

Retail Unwrapped — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 05:01:00 +0000

Last week, Shelley caught up with five more innovators at NRF 2026 to get their takes on the retail industry and an outlook for this year. Their conversations ranged from the connected store and talent development to geolocation analytics and the need for personalization. Listen and learn from the experts.

Matthew Cry transformed his retail leadership experience by leveraging a better way to engage with customers and product with daily insights. He believes it is an exciting time for the physical store and advocates having the tools to measure metrics that matter and hold management accountable through a connected store strategy with a shopper engagement platform. “People want to come into your store, they want product to be there, and they want to take that product home. Make that path to purchase super easy for them. But if you don’t know what they’re doing in your store, how can you ever make it easy for them?” He adds, “The physical store is the pulse on everything that’s happening, connecting your inventory, shoppers, store teams, what’s being bought, and what’s not being bought. So, we’re thinking when a customer is in that moment looking for something, we should be able to show her other products that are available in her size, and we should be saving the sales associate time from not having to do that manually.”

Kimberly Minor’s work focuses on the workforce. She explains there is no longer a direct linear career path: “People are being removed from the pipeline; so, who’s benefitting, and what does that mean for the future? We have young people who are so talented, fresh, excited and passionate about what’s next. But we also have an economic situation that’s going to affect workforce development. How do we create pathways to new jobs, and how do we prepare people to be flexible so that they are ready when new opportunities open?” She adds that the most important leadership skill is curiosity. She says that companies and leaders need curiosity to keep up with consumers who are thinking differently. “If you’re curious about what your future could look like, then you should be curious about what other opportunities are available. And that’s great for the candidates, but it’s also a message for the companies because so many depend on AI as an HR tool.”

As a professor at FIT and Parsons School of Design, Marie Driscoll distills the underlying trend in retail to the range of AI tools that are aiding the retail practice. Using Dick’s Sporting Goods as a case study, she says it is a model for the next American department store. She explains, “It is a reflection of the culture and what’s important to the customer. The more they appeal to women who are buying for their children, the more their sales are going to grow. With a focus on sports, more broadly, the focus is on wellness.” She says they are well-positioned to become even more exciting for shoppers around the country, strengthened by their real focus on their team. She quotes CEO Ed Stack, “The higher you go in your corporate ladder, the more you should listen and not talk.” Her NRF observations range from Mango and LVMH to the K-shaped economy and the challenges of real estate and the luxury market. From a consumer perspective, going into 2026, she says, “I think the consumer is sitting in the best seat. She has so many choices, and the retailers that are creating valuable services for their customers will win. Otherwise, as Robin Lewis would always say, ‘You can’t cut your way to profitability. It’s a race to the bottom.’ And it’s that’s horrible.” She adds, “So, to sum it up, value is very important going into 2026. Creating a community is critical. In-store experiential retail bonds the consumer to the brand. And of course, online is super important; make it frictionless so it’s easy to connect what is online with what’s in store.”

Dominic Miserandino explores what makes the customer experience joy; he says experiential is a human connection. As a connector, he adds, “I think we have evolved into a non-experiential, transactional retail culture, meaning DoorDash, press the button; Uber Eats, press the button. And the consumer is saying, yeah, that’s awesome.” As an antidote, he adds, “You have to seek the emotional connections of humanity. So, retailers need to think about how they can humanize at scale.” He adds, “From the retail media side, we’re connecting retailers to the media and helping further their careers. On the tech side, we connect tech companies to these retailers, so Nexus is the connection among them all.”

Gary Sankary’s work on mapping and geo-spatial analytics helps retailers understand why things happen where they do inside and outside stores—everything from the global all the way down to the neighborhood. He says, “We’re all about maps; the scale is irrelevant. It’s all about taking data and applying it to the map to provide retailers with critical insights on localization and personalization.” He explains the depth of data reveals information on the lifestyle of the people around that store, where the people who shop in that area come from, product performance, loss prevention, and data about competitors. As a contrarian, he says, “I’m going to be an outlier here and say Agentic AI is not going to innovate; what drives retail success is innovation and design. What AI is helping us do is expand the scope of the things that we can look at. So, I can bring even more data sets and find correlations that I might not have stumbled across.”

Special Guests

Matthew Cyr, CEO, Founder, Crave Retail
Kimberly Minor, CEO Co-Founder, WOC Retail Alliance (WOCRA)
Marie Driscoll, TRR Contributor, Professor, FIT, Parsons School of Design
Dominic Miserandino, Founder and CEO, RTM Nexus
Gary Sankary, Retail Industry Lead, Esri

Transcript

NRF Trade Talks: Four Unique Perspectives

Retail Unwrapped — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 05:01:00 +0000

Shelley caught up with four innovators at NRF 2026 to get their takes on the retail industry and an outlook for this year. Their conversations ranged from managing returns and geo-location insights to advanced tools for managing inventory. Listen and learn from the experts.

Tim Robinson, Vice President of Commerce, Blue Yonder, has interesting insights on a significant challenge for retailers, especially, post-holiday: returns. There’s a temptation to tolerate returns to drive up sales numbers, but there are consequences to managing the unwanted merchandise. Data and analytics are key tools to anticipating returns and transforming them into assets. Tim says, “There’s a lot of opportunity to do things better. I’d say there’s been a real shift in the last couple of years from returns being a customer service challenge to a customer experience. And now returns now are being seen as valuable inventory you can sell at full price; not wasted items that you can’t resell and dispose of.”

Ethan Chernofsky, Chief Marketing Officer at Placer.ai provides critical analytics to retailers on the implications of traffic patterns in physical stores. He says, “There are a few things that have really caught our attention as being foundational into what retail is going to need to do to drive success in the coming years. It starts with the consumer. If we think immediately post-pandemic, we saw this mission driven shopping trend where people were spending lots of time in retail locations. The thought is that if you win the visit, you win the basket. Now we’ve seen that visit durations are down but the number of visits for every category per customer is going up. People are going to more locations and spending less time there. So, value, product, experience, and brand affinity have a lot more significance than we sometimes give them credit for. Value is really important; it doesn’t mean cheap or low price. Value means the worthiness in the eyes of the consumer.”

Jay Hakami, CEO and Founder of Skypad has innovated a novel tech platform that is predictive and helps retailers manage inventories. He says, “Initially, we started as a data collection company, collecting data from the retailer, aligning it with the brand style information, and then providing insights. Today, with Agentic AI, we’re getting into the predictive side going into dynamic planning and allocation. We are aligning data with the information we get from the brand and putting it together so the brand can actually make a decision what’s selling, what’s not selling by geographies, but by product attributes and time dimension. With agentic AI, we’re essentially setting up buyers and planners for absolute success.”

George Shaw, Senior Vice President of Standard AI is a veteran of geo-location analytics. His innovation is to amplify computer vision insights by leveraging existing cameras and monitors chronicling and making sense of a customer’s entire shopping journey. George is also an expert on measuring consumer behavior, as he says, “We see a lot more engagement. People are coming into stores and wanting to interact more with staff which speaks a lot to why people shop in physical stores in the first place. We want to see people and touch the products. We see retailers caring more about that and we see it in the metrics that we collect.” He adds, “We have to simplify the whole process of deploying this technology to make it faster and make the data more useful. Retailers don’t want a bunch of dots moving around maps. They want the metrics that they actually care about. We give them a very simple, clean, clear dashboard that they can use operationally at scale.”

Special Guests

Tim Robinson, Senior Vice President of Commerce, Blue Yonder
Ethan Chernofsky, Chief Marketing Officer, Placer.ai
Jay Hakami, CEO and Founder, Skypad
George Shaw, Senior Vice President, Standard AI

Transcript

Here’s What Happens When Your Customers Design Your Clothes

Retail Unwrapped — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 05:01:00 +0000

Here’s an interesting fact: 1.6 million tradespeople trust their friends over impersonal brands. And here’s why: Most workwear brands claim they understand their customers, but they’re designing products by committee in the boardroom and based on their P/L. Join Shelley and Eric Girouard who discuss how he built his BRUNT Workwear brand with the people who actually wear the work gear. They reveal how BRUNT was launched with the encouragement of childhood friends who were brought up in a blue-collar manufacturing town. Unlike Eric and his colleagues, the workwear industry has forgotten who it serves and would be better served by paying attention to what happens when customers help design their own products. BRUNT eliminated PFAS from water-resistant fabrics before regulations required it, positioning the brand ahead of market demands while legacy competitors are still scrambling to reformulate. BRUNT stays close to its customers, outfitting the New England Patriots field crew this season, partnering with unique talent like Diesel Dave who tricks out trucks and professional motocross athlete Travis Pastrana. It’s also a mainstay in rally racing, NASCAR, and automotive stunt performance. BRUNT’s Bucket Talk is “a monthly podcast that takes listeners across America to meet the “most badass tradespeople, industry leaders and personalities.” Growing from an initial 110 stores to 858 doors nationwide while maintaining its brand integrity proves that authentic products are relevant and can scale when you understand your local communities and customers.

Special Guests

Eric Girouard, Founder + CEO at BRUNT Workwear

Transcript