Shelley E. Kohan (00:01.614)
Hi everybody, welcome to Retail Unwrapped. I am so excited to have Rachel Williamson with me. Hey Rachel.

Rachel Williamson (00:10.134)
Hi, Shelly. Hi, everybody out there watching and listening.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:14.254)
I love it. So Rachel, you are CEO and founder of Running Great Stores, which we’re going to get into kind of your passion there. And you just recently launched a new book. So congratulations on that.

Rachel Williamson (00:20.918)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (00:30.742)
Thank you so much. It’ll be out February 24th wherever books are sold. So exciting.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:34.22)
Yay! And of course the name of it is Running Great Stores.

Rachel Williamson (00:39.648)
That’s right, 30 Days to Running Great Stores. it is, you know, I think it’s a book that is gonna help frontline workers, whether you want to be a manager or you already are a manager. So I’m excited at how many retail organizations out there are, you know, gonna really benefit from giving this book to folks that work in the front lines. So I’m excited to get it out there.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:03.15)
love that. And what I love about your background is like me, you’ve served your whole career serving the industry, which is amazing. You’re a strategic retail leader. You do a lot of consulting work. You also have, you have a well-known area about you, which is you are excellent at turning around underperforming stores or divisions or teams.

which is fantastic. And I did get a sneak peek at your book and I love a lot of the content that’s in your book in terms of I wish I had it, know, okay, 30 years ago when I started in the business, it’s a little more than 30, but we won’t go there. But you also have a lot of experience because you actually worked in the industry, you worked for Coach, Asina and some other multi-billion dollar companies and all the consulting work that you do, which is great.

Rachel Williamson (01:42.006)
Yeah

Shelley E. Kohan (01:55.124)
And I love your motto, which is retail is hard, but leadership doesn’t have to be. And I think the book coming out this year is really a great timing because our leaders in our industry are, I believe, been very challenged over the past few years, really since COVID. So your book is really to help every leader who wants to build better teams. But before we… go ahead.

Rachel Williamson (02:19.234)
Absolutely. No, I say absolutely. completely agree. You know, when I wrote this book and I was…

showing it to publishers and I was like, you know, I just wish someone had given this to me when I started because it would have saved years of heartache. Fortunately, I’ve had wonderful bosses and mentors over the years that also helped me shape. you know, I mentioned some of them in this book, but it’s, the impact that we have on the people that we work with does live on. And so, you know, a big thank you to all of those leaders that I had working

in retail that helped me get to this point. And now this is just that opportunity to give back and do it in a way that is so digestible and so easy to read and implement.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:07.629)
I think it was, it’s a very easy read. I agree. And I don’t even laugh when I tell you the management book that I read when I was young, Getting into the Industry. And it’s an iconic book, but you know, yours is so much more elevated. I remember One Minute Manager. I mean, that was my go-to book.

Rachel Williamson (03:24.281)
yes! Yes! You know what’s funny is-

Shelley E. Kohan (03:27.743)
And it was awesome.

Rachel Williamson (03:29.436)
Shelly, when I was a new manager, I actually bought that book. I was at the Gap and it was my big leap from working for small, I’ll call mom and pop, retail brands to making that leap into the Gap. I talk about, there’s a story that I share in the book about how I made that leap. But I remember buying the One Minute Manager for all of my managers. And I asked them to read it and of course it was a quick read as you remember. And we huddled in like a little breakfast

Shelley E. Kohan (03:57.111)
Ha ha.

Rachel Williamson (03:59.492)
meeting and talked about what we learned, but more importantly, we talked about how we would apply what we learned into what we were doing and what our goals were. And I think that’s the key. It is so good to read books, but if we don’t apply what we learned, it doesn’t really do a whole lot of good, right? And so one of my reasons for making this book as digestible as it is was take one topic, read about it, and then go apply what you learned.

and then come back the next day and do another topic. Don’t speed read through the book. Just do a day at a time for 30 days. It’s short enough to hold our attention span, but long enough to build that muscle memory. So…

Shelley E. Kohan (04:29.517)
Exactly.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:43.091)
No, that’s great. And before we jump into the con some content that we’re going to talk about, I hope you’re going to share some of your stories as we talk today, because I love I love hearing your stories and your Rachel isms that you have. But before we jump in, I’m going to share a little fun fact with you. You and my husband started at the same job. My husband scooped ice cream at Basket Robin. He did.

Rachel Williamson (04:50.408)
I will, I will.

Yes.

Okay.

Rachel Williamson (05:06.817)
He did? Oh my goodness. And what city and state was he doing that in? Which Baskin-Robbins was he? In Philly, okay. Yeah, I was in Columbus, Ohio and I rode my bike two blocks up to the Hearts and Big Bear Plaza, as they used to call strip centers, know, plazas. And yeah, I was 14 and that…

Shelley E. Kohan (05:13.613)
Phili- Philly. Philadelphia. Yeah, Philly, yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:28.441)
yeah!

Rachel Williamson (05:31.554)
Yeah, I think there’s probably some jobs you can still get at 14, but it’s mainly like delivering papers or babysitting. But back then, you could work in food, surprisingly.

and it was just the best. It was just the best job. But I talk about, obviously, as you know, in the introduction, I talk about that experience, which is kind of funny. I shared a pre-read of the book with some of my colleagues, and one of them called me and said, you had me at hopping on the counter and sliding out the flavors and going and telling the owner at 14 years old, all the things that were opportunistic.

that customers were upset about what we could do different. so I think that’s really where my obsession with retail began.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:20.533)
It’s great. I mean, I love this story because that’s where a lot of us really started in the industry. So one of the big kind of key topics is you talk about empowering store leaders with practical tools and clear processes. And I don’t think there hasn’t been another time in our retail industry where that has not been one of the most important things that we can do today. Our retail environment is so complex right now. We have

the Gen Alpha kids that are coming into the workforce, these are the COVID kids. And they may be lacking some of these key leadership imperatives. And then we also have to learn how to manage the Gen Alpha, the Gen Zs, the millennials and the boomers because there’s like five generations in the workforce. So tell me a little bit about your idea about this having practical tools and clear processes.

Rachel Williamson (07:13.557)
Yeah, I mean, I really wrote this book not thinking about generations, but thinking about easy to apply proven, not theory, proven methodology on how to win at retail. And frankly, it will apply to any generation if, and here’s my first Rachelism in the book.

What I believe drives how I behave and how I behave drives my results. So as leaders in retail, it isn’t just about barking orders, about telling somebody what to do. Our mission.

is to understand what people believe to be true about what we’re there in that store to deliver. And once I understand what you believe to be true about retail and the customer experience and what we’re really here to do, I can then influence your thinking. And that’s really my job as your leader is to influence the way you’re thinking about what we’re there to do. If I just tell you, look, we have to have a good customer experience. You need to wait on everybody who walks in. What am I going to get? Okay.

But then what will that really look like? And so that’s really where I get into in the book, the different components. And it really starts with, you know, who you are just looking in the mirror. And we’ll get into that here in a little bit. But, you know, we really see…

all of the disruptions that retail has had over the past six years. In 2020, we had COVID, which was something we had never really seen or could have predicted the impact.

Rachel Williamson (08:55.635)
And then when we got a new president in office, the tariffs and retailers margins became a really big impact. you and I have been in retail long enough. We know one of the things that you can count on is that there are disruptions in retail. So I put together, this is not in the book.

but I do think it’s really interesting. So before we went from COVID to…

know, margin and tariff implications. Retailers were dealing with this post-COVID phenomenon called working from home. And while retailers, retail store leaders had to be in stores, there was a lot of bitterness around all my colleagues get to work from home and be in sweatpants and what have you. And it almost became, gosh, this is just our normal.

Shelley E. Kohan (09:35.558)
yes!

Rachel Williamson (09:49.665)
And so we’ve got some, you know, Jen Alpha to go back to your perspective that I was recently mentoring a young woman who said, well, my goal is to work from home. I’m like, OK, well, first, that’s not a goal and that’s not a thing. We get up, we dress up, we show up for work. Going to work in general is about getting up and going somewhere. And if that’s what you’re telling people who are interviewing you, why are you not getting the job? So, you know, and sometimes we just have to be super honest, right?

But before COVID, in 2016,

with Trump’s first presidency, tariffs reared their ugly head. I remember I was at Justice then and we were talking about price points and what was that impact going to look like for moms who were used to buying their daughter clothes at Justice and now the prices are so much higher. In 2015, if we just keep dialing back, do you remember how influencers came on the scene and now they’re so common? But

They were changing the way customers shopped. You could now shop a live sale on Instagram or on Facebook and now even on TikTok.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:56.983)
Absolutely.

Rachel Williamson (11:01.504)
In 2010, in that era, it was all about fast fashion. And if retailers couldn’t keep up with Zara and H &M and Forever 21 and get goods out, that was causing problems. I mean, in the early 2000s, Amazon was ramping up and they were changing the expectation around what customers could get and how you could get it on your front door so much faster. And even in the 90s, and this is as far back as all good,

Shelley E. Kohan (11:07.168)
and

Rachel Williamson (11:31.631)
because, you know, I’m going to really date myself here. But in the 90s, there was this whole, you know, these big chains. Walmart came on the scene in a bigger way. Target, Home Depot, Best Buy, they were dominating categories. And department stores couldn’t keep up. They couldn’t give the margin break. They couldn’t have the depth of assortment. And so my point in sharing this is, and we could go back further, clearly,

decade has had disruptions for retailers and here’s what I’ll say there are more coming we just don’t know what they’re gonna be but there are more coming and so one of the things that I that drove me I think to write this book is there are things we can control and there are things we can’t control

And we can control the way our stores operate. We can control the operational excellence. We can control the talent that we hire. We can control the experience that we deliver. Those are all things that retailers own and can control. there’s so many missed opportunities in how retailers are delivering that. And so, you know, when business gets tough, what happens? Training gets cut.

And so now you have store managers being hired and they’re going through a quick little training and retailers assume that’s all they need. And what happens from store to store? The experience varies from district to district, what have you. And so this book, buy the book, read a copy of the book, implement the book, and you’re going to be able to deliver more consistent experiences, find better talent, drive better customer experience because you’re not

Shelley E. Kohan (12:45.965)
now.

Rachel Williamson (13:15.83)
relying on someone else at your organization giving you information that maybe there’s no longer a training department, you now can grab that kind of the bull by the horns and own it and and deliver the.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:28.715)
Yeah.

Rachel Williamson (13:32.017)
expectations, the experiences that customers have. mean, customers have are so empowered. They can look on their smartphone and they can see what that item costs everywhere else. But you know, when the day is done, there are things that are also bigger than cost. That’s what we call value, right? Value isn’t just price. Value is the experience that I get when I go into that store.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:49.965)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (13:54.845)
And there are retail brands that I love. I go into the store and they know me by name and maybe that’s AI. Maybe they know me because some AI tool is helping, but it’s they still know me and they welcome me when I come in and they offer me a water and they know what I like and and each of those store managers that are delivering that experience.

They may be getting that from their company and they may be getting it from something else. And this book is one of those something else’s that retailers will be able to use, which I’m excited about.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:25.387)
Yeah, I love that. So two quick things. So one is, so as you kind of went back in history, and I won’t go back in history, but I just want you to think about this. The consumer, as in all those decades, also changed. And so that really is either us, and usually it’s retailers trying to chase the consumers and their behavioral changes versus the other way around. So I do believe that there is this super empowered consumer. And I think the other thing that you said that’s really important, very difficult to deliver,

Rachel Williamson (14:31.966)
haha

Rachel Williamson (14:37.888)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (14:46.762)
That’s right.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:54.941)
is this customer service that is, as you say, stellar, but it has to be consistent. One of the biggest challenges in physical retail is inconsistency by location by store. So talk to me a little bit about this super empowered shopper and how can you deliver this experience consistently day after day?

Rachel Williamson (15:01.792)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (15:07.732)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (15:18.132)
Yeah, I mean, think to be honest, many retailers still view customer service as the set of niceties.

and rather than core daily work that actually motivates people to buy and fosters that loyalty. Loyalty doesn’t come because you’ve implemented some great piece of technology that’s a CRM or what have you. Loyalty comes one customer at a time, one engagement at a time. The biggest missteps that I see retailers taking is an over-reliance on systems instead of that real human connection. And we assume when we hire someone who’s got retail experience,

experience and what have you that they’re going to already be great at it. They may not be. We delve into that in the book.

Stores are investing in technology and in automated signage and in incentives, but the customer experience is delivered, like I said, one interaction at a time. And if associates aren’t tuned in, the best promotion, the best sale on the planet, the best technology implemented in that store is not going to create a meaningful experience or drive customer loyalty or repeat customers. Number two, ignoring the store associates emotional and mental state.

I feel like customer service suffers when the staff feels unclear or uncared for or unsure of what success really looks like. You know, there’s a recent Gallup poll out

Shelley E. Kohan (16:40.555)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Williamson (16:47.525)
that it’s kind of a scary number. It says only about 46 % of employees know what’s expected of them and only 39 % feel like someone even cares about them as a person. And that gap directly undercuts how they’re treating customers on the sales floor. And then

Shelley E. Kohan (17:08.278)
Absolutely.

Rachel Williamson (17:09.139)
think the third misstep that I see is just thinking of service as a one-off instead of a habit. And too often, I mentioned this earlier, retailers train once and then they think we’re good to go. But it isn’t really that. It’s got to be this daily behavior of noticing, listening, responding, right to what they see associates doing. I was recently in a store and their district manager was visiting and I always love to watch that interaction between the district manager and the store.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:36.83)
Hahaha!

Rachel Williamson (17:39.026)
And the district manager started filling online orders.

There was no engagement around their sales, where they are, how much more they need to make their month. There was no conversation around the sales team, you know, do you have openings, who’s doing well, who needs some help? Not judging, maybe they did that at some other time. But I was in there for quite some time. I bought a few things from them and so I was in there and was able to, and just never heard or saw anything.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:55.81)
Hmm.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:10.839)
Hmm.

Rachel Williamson (18:12.197)
So I was in there a day later, I had to exchange a size on something and I asked the store manager and she said, she’s like just extra set of hands. She fills orders, she cleans the back room. Now, again, culturally that might be where this brand is. But what I would encourage district managers, regional managers to think about is how do we leverage our experience when we walk into stores and how do we help our store managers be that

much better at what they’re doing, be that much better at delivering the experience when we leave than they were before we got there. And this is just an opportunity. If I was talking to the CEO of this particular retail brand, I would encourage them there’s a better way to leverage district managers. You can bring in minimum wage employees to fill online orders. My guess is that district managers making quite a bit more per hour than should be filling an online order. But again, you know, she thinks she’s being

very helpful to the store team and helping the store managers that they can be engaging customers. So, you know, this is a big opportunity. Probably the other big opportunity around the customer is just KPIs. And how do we talk about the behaviors that are driving the results, not just the results. you know, you go into a store and you hear the store manager say to a salesperson, we need to get conversion up. Now, go do it. Okay.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:15.094)
Mm-hmm.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:25.549)
Hmm

Shelley E. Kohan (19:40.909)
Rachel Williamson (19:41.874)
Well, the salesperson is probably saying, okay, turns around, walks away and is like, what does that mean? What should I be doing? And so instead, we can be saying, we need to get conversion up and let’s talk about how we’re gonna do it. What are your guys’ ideas? And when they look at you with a blank stare, what do you now know? You now know that they don’t know what it really means. And so then it’s like, well, let me share a couple ideas.

I know I just gave you tasks to do, but when someone walks in, drop those tasks and welcome the customer in.

share with them something that new that you’re excited about. Maybe this new item that you’re putting out, this cashmere sweater that comes in four colors and the blue would be beautiful on her because of her blue eyes. Like, you know, just helping them understand behaviorally what is going to drive those KPIs. And no matter what KPI you drive, not everybody uses conversion and traffic counters, but there are behaviors that drive no matter what the KPI is. And so focusing on those behaviors is huge. And often,

a miss.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:45.601)
Yeah, I want to go back to something you said, because I have to bring back in this generational thing, because I do think it’s it’s kind of an issue if you’re not paying attention to it. So let’s go back to the district manager that goes and immediately starts taking care of orders. So that district manager and I’m not saying this is in her case, I’m just saying hypothetically, you know, when you look at the Gen Z’s and you look at the Gen Alphas.

Their comfort level is probably more attuned to knocking out operational tasks, that’s their comfort level, as opposed to actually being comfortable with the leading and leadership skills.

Rachel Williamson (21:29.235)
Yeah, mean, it depends. I wouldn’t necessarily label generationally. So I have a Gen Z daughter. So she definitely keeps me honest on how Gen Z thinks about things. And she scolds me if I am labeling for sure. But I will say that…

It comes down to, I think, who you’re hiring to work in your store. You know, often store managers, and I talk to store managers all the time, and they often say, I just want to hire people with retail experience. Just makes it easier. They know what to expect. They won’t be surprised. But oftentimes we surpass, we overlook talent that maybe doesn’t have retail experience. And I talk about this in the book. You hire for attitude, you teach skill.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:12.781)
Absolutely.

Rachel Williamson (22:19.457)
if I find someone that is bubbly and vivacious and outgoing, they’re in their sorority or their fraternity in college and they’ve got really great skills, I can teach them how to sell my product all day long and twice on Sunday. And so, I think it’s important to understand what the expectations are. And then when you’re engaging potential employees to be talking about that, like what do you love to do and what do you hate to do? And if they say,

Shelley E. Kohan (22:19.499)
Yep.

Rachel Williamson (22:49.597)
I hate like one-on-one making eye contact. It’s like all right. I need stock people I need people to help with floor set you might be a better fit But I’m never gonna put you on my sales floor as a greeter because you’re gonna be more comfortable looking at your phone And I you know I used to joke with my daughter if our relationship could just be about texting back and forth It would always be fabulous, but because I need to talk to you. I need to see the whites of your eyes Sometimes you just don’t want to

Shelley E. Kohan (22:57.953)
That’s right. Yeah.

Rachel Williamson (23:19.419)
And that is a real thing.

I think the other thing, my daughter was raised, I we weren’t, I wasn’t raised in this, but my daughter was raised in a, everyone gets a trophy environment. So yeah, it’s like, you know, she played on soccer teams and, know, always tried all different sports, ultimately did horseback riding and tennis, but you know, played all different sports and everybody had to get an award at the end. It’s like, you didn’t even win. What do you get in an award? I mean, for showing up. And so I do.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:31.86)
yeah, don’t even go there.

Rachel Williamson (23:52.523)
think that we’re dealing with some of those complexities where people get hired and they want to get promoted fast, like really fast. And so I think it’s just being aware of the generation that you’re hiring and being knowledgeable about what it is they need, what it is they want. I love just talking to people about it. It’s like, won’t, you I don’t want people to think I’m labeling them. So it’s like, you tell me, what are your expectations when you start working in my store? What is it?

Shelley E. Kohan (24:13.216)
Right, right.

Rachel Williamson (24:22.456)
that you expect. When do you think you’ll go from being a key holder to being an assistant manager? Like what’s going on in your mind? And it goes back to what I believe drives how I behave and how I behave drives my results. If I understand what you believe to be true, I’m going to be much more effective in working with you and setting clear expectations around reality and what’s really going to happen.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:47.597)
think Rachel, the other thing that’s really important that you kind of hinted to is you really try to understand where they’re coming from. And so you can’t motivate people unless you know where they’re coming from. And so that’s an important step. But let’s talk about culture for a second, because I’ve always said culture takes years to build and seconds to collapse. So how do you build a winning culture? How do you make it a winning culture? And I know you’ve done this

a hundred thousand times, but tell us about that.

Rachel Williamson (25:20.114)
You know, it’s such an interesting…

quote that you that you said where it’s years to build and seconds to collapse and maybe you made that up or I’ve heard it somewhere before but you are 200 % right and I think what happens oftentimes and I’ll stay with retail stores for a moment I think what often happens is retailer retail frontline workers believe that culture is their company and what their company is created so what their HR team works to create and they’re

Shelley E. Kohan (25:50.349)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (25:51.561)
wrong. There is a component of culture that is that. But I would argue that a district manager creates the culture of their district. What is important?

Shelley E. Kohan (26:02.317)
That’s correct.

Rachel Williamson (26:04.026)
what they value, what their priorities are. And likewise, a store manager creates a culture within the building that she or he are leading. And so I think that we can’t just say, well, the retailer has created the culture and the culture here is good or the culture here isn’t good because of that. I think…

Those of us that are running stores need to say, how am I creating a culture where I’m the leader others want to follow? Where we’re the store customers want to shop in?

where we’re the employer that customer that employees want to work for. And I think the store store manager, the district manager, the regional manager, they really own a huge component of creating that culture inside the four walls of their building.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:57.429)
totally agree with you. You’re part of the culture. You can drive it, move it, change it, and you’ve proven that. I read a lot of the stories from your book. So the other topic I want to try to get to is this idea of mastering operational excellence. And I’ve always believed that. I come from operations, so that’s kind of been my mantra as well. But I look at what’s happening today and the supply chain.

everything going on with that, the tariffs, the uncertainty. And you said, yeah, Shelley, that’s great. Every decade we have problems. But how can you master operational excellence when a big piece of that operational functionality or process is being challenged and taxed, especially over the last few years?

Rachel Williamson (27:45.469)
Yeah, it is. I mean, the bottom line is all the people that are working in the corporate office, retailers that are dealing with, struggling with, trying to fix all this, know, a lot of it falls on them and the stores have zero control over it. If the store, you know, if like, remember at COVID, couldn’t get, stores were empty. You couldn’t get product to save your life, right? But if a store is empty, if a store is broken in sizes, if a store doesn’t get the marketing on time, if it’s, you know, all these

Shelley E. Kohan (28:05.002)
yeah.

Rachel Williamson (28:15.512)
that come from outside of the building that are come from the corporate side. And I did corporate store operations for many years and I loved it. And I did it primarily because I had been on the receiving end as somebody who worked in stores of a store ops group that wasn’t giving me the things that I needed. I was like, I’m pretty sure we could do this better. Let’s get into this corporate side of it. But the truth of the matter is, that operational excellence, there’s a component of it that does reside inside the four.

walls of that building, of that store that you’re leading. And we delve into that in the book. I think it’s like, how are you managing every detailed component within the four walls? I remember when I was a store manager for Ann Taylor, this is way before Acina owned them. And I managed the city center location up on the third floor. And I talk about a story about that, a couple of stories in the book about

Shelley E. Kohan (28:51.607)
and

Rachel Williamson (29:15.312)
this location, but I remember getting there at eight in the morning. We opened at ten and back in the day we were allowed to come in two hours early like that. Now I highly discourage it because it’s not payroll that you can earn back with sales because your store’s not open. But I would literally walk the store from front to back. I’d stand out front. I’d look at the windows, the mannequins. I’d look for dust bunnies in the windows, signage crinkled, you know, is it hanging straight? And I’d walk through and I had a

just a legal pad and a pen and I would make a list of every single operational thing, a light bulb out, a bulb not aimed, dirty fitting rooms, pins from shirts stuck into the drywall, like every little detail. And when my team came in, we would divide and conquer and we would get all that cleaned up. And what I taught my team was these are the details that we have to master. Loss prevention, backroom organization.

And the woman who hired me for that Ann Taylor job was the regional manager, Jean St. Pierre. She’s retired now. I don’t know where she is, but she really had a big impact on me as a leader on my career. And her standards were very, very high. But one of the things that she used to always say to all of us was if your back room isn’t organized and humming like a well-oiled car, know, like the the sales floor is not going to run right either.

would talk about if your car is washed and waxed and looks beautiful, but you’ve not changed the oil at some point, the engine’s going to fly through the hood of that car and that car is going to be no good. Because if you don’t care for the things no one sees, no one sees that back room. But if you don’t keep it organized and running smoothly, the goods won’t get to the floor either. Customer sizes will be missed, et cetera. And so there are so many operations

pieces that still can help a store be successful and those are things that a store manager can own.

Shelley E. Kohan (31:25.835)
love that. So one last topic, I know we’re kind of out of time, but I really want to get to this last topic because I’m a big believer in it. Grow the leader within yourself by investing in yourself. And one of the things you really believe in, and I actually wrote a leadership course for Fashion Institute of Technology. And in that leadership course, we have a whole module on EQ because I believe emotional intelligence is one of the most important.

Rachel Williamson (31:44.824)
Shelley E. Kohan (31:50.968)
qualities and skill sets that leaders can have. And I know it’s a big passion of yours as well. So tell us a little bit about kind of your philosophy about growing the leader within yourself.

Rachel Williamson (32:01.979)
Yeah, you know, like we said at the very start of our conversation today.

You can read all the books you want, but if you don’t apply what you’ve learned, you’re not going to really see meaningful growth and meaningful movement. And even at the end of this book, your journey’s not done, right? It just continues. And so the idea of continuing to invest in yourself, continuing to talk to your supervisor about where you’re winning and where you’re not, and not being afraid of those hard conversations, but just seeing it as, I just want to keep growing as a person.

and I want to keep growing as a leader. And, you know, when you lead yourself with intention, results always follow. And so I think that’s probably a really big piece. Day seven in the book, EQ is your superpower, is an important component. And I do talk about, you know, some tips there on managing EQ. And that, every generation, you know, it’s something that people struggle with because you’re not necessarily born with it, right? And so

Shelley E. Kohan (33:06.783)
Right? yeah.

Rachel Williamson (33:08.132)
It’s like we’re not born with the skills you need to run a great store.

but you can learn them. We learn them from people around us. We learn them from great organizations. I I spent 10 years at limited brands. That’s really where I learned that operational excellence was going to be the deciding factor on if you were going to have a successful brand or less so. The gap was operations boot camp for me. I remember early on, but oftentimes because store operations isn’t all that sexy, is it? It’s the fundamentals. It’s like in football, it’s blocking.

and tackling. The football teams who win are the teams that do those fundamentals really well. Trick plays are super fun, but

They’re not what win football games. And I think that for retail, it’s very similar. The fundamentals of clean stores, well-trained employees, focused KPIs, caring about the customer. Those are the things that make retail stores successful. And those are well within the control of the store manager, assistant managers, even sales associates that don’t have a key to that store. They choose

If the experience is going to be a fabulous one and help customers continue to want to shop there or if it’s the opposite. And so I think this book will be for every level. You don’t have to have the keys to the store in order to really learn about how to be great at retail. And I want retail to stop being the revolving door, the job I have until I get the job I want. know, retail can be such a

Shelley E. Kohan (34:32.375)
love that.

Rachel Williamson (34:52.103)
fulfilling, well-paid career choice, but…

We can’t rely on, I have a great boss who’s going to train me? We have to take that ownership within ourselves and say, you know what, I’m going to own this and I am going to be the leader others want to follow and I’m going to develop people and I’m going to get a reputation for it. And then that’s how you leave that legacy. And I think that’s also part of that whole, where am I going from here? I finished this book, I apply what I learned, I’m running a great store. Who are you mentoring? You know, who are you helping with their

Shelley E. Kohan (35:25.995)
Love it.

Rachel Williamson (35:27.807)
career and all of those things just make it so meaningful and make this journey worth it.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:35.351)
Love it, Rachel, thank you. And leading with intent and purpose. So thank you. Thank you so much for being here. It’s great to have you here. I’m sure our audience learned a lot. And don’t forget to pick up your copy of 30 Days in Running Great Stores.

Rachel Williamson (35:38.747)
That’s right, results will always follow. Thank you, Shelly.

Rachel Williamson (35:52.733)
That’s right, available February 24th, 2026. Thank you so much.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:56.919)
Thank you.

I am so thrilled we’re here at the NRF show in January in New York City. I’m thrilled to be sitting with you in person, Matthew. Oh my gosh. I’m sure we do our virtual podcasting and stuff, but I have them in person. Well, thank you for having me and thank you for all the work that we did with the Crave Retail Radicals. It’s been super fun to acknowledge some of the best people in the space. So here we are again, another year at NRF. Another year at NRF. And you’re absolutely right. I love recognition. It’s the best thing about our industry is recognizing the top people.

work that people do. And now we’re in a big room of all the changemakers. I know, wow, there’s a lot going on out there. But what I’d like to focus on first of all, Matthew Sear, CEO, founder of Crave Retail. And I’d love to talk to you. So one of the things that a lot of retailers come to me and ask me is, so there’s all this, obviously, there’s so much technology here, AI, genetic AI, and all these things. But a lot of the retailers are asking, you know,

How can I then connect all this in that shopping journey? So they’re looking for this kind of connected experience with the store. Because the consumer doesn’t care how many things you’re doing behind the scenes. They just want that experience when they walk through the doors. And I know, Craig Retail, you are a pioneer in the space. You just launched H &M Dubai. congratulations Yeah, an amazing visit. Amazing brand, amazing visit.

It’s so cool to see so many different brands check out the experience and talk about, it actually works and it’s remarkable and the experience it drives. And they’re asking about, you do this insight and can you get this data point? And we get to show them and they’re like, this is what we’ve been waiting for for so long. So yeah, it’s been a really great few months, great several years. We’re seven years in business now.

And you work with some of the top brands, Victoria’s Secret, Unparma. Yeah, yeah. And we have a lot more that you guys are going to learn more about this year. I wish I could share more. But once you visit those stores, you’ll know it’s crazy. I love it. Yeah. So can you talk us through this connected store idea? Yeah. Well, I’ll I think I’ll take us back. Right. So where did where did my my my origin in retail start? A good friend of mine asked me if I could manage an Abercrombie and Fitch store.

And at the time I thought, I’m not sure if I really want to get into retail and manage an Abercrombie and Fitch store. just seemed like a lot as a 20 year old kid. I did it and I loved it. And I fell in love. I worked with Abercrombie and Fitch for a couple of years. I worked for Sketchers for seven years. I got the opportunity to move overseas and manage over 300 stores with Sketchers. And one of the things that always got to me was I would get a call during my quarterly

updates with our team to say, hey, here’s what performance was last quarter. We missed conversion rate or we did this or this happened. And it was always reactive, right? We’re sort of always saying, okay, what can we do moving forward? And then we would implement a strategy that couldn’t be measured in any way. And we would go on flights every single week to say, are you guys doing what we said? How’s it working? We would then see at the end of the month,

Here’s a conversion rate, here’s a basket size, here was a sell through, always reacting. And I thought, this doesn’t make sense, right? One, I shouldn’t be flying to go see stores that were obviously perfectly equipped to look as they should during my visit. But I thought as a store manager, as a district manager, my responsibility is every minute with every shopper. I should know exactly at any moment if we’re up

if we’re doing the right things with our customers, if we’re introducing the right products, if our performance is low, let’s just say fitting room traffic, or if we’re not engaging with enough customers, or if they’re not trying on enough products. If I have that insight daily, I would actually have the tools to impact the metric that I’m being held accountable to. And so for me, when a lot of different leaders say, what’s the connected store strategy? It’s actually…

developing a store, physical store, that’s got a pulse of everything that’s happening between your inventory, your shoppers, your store teams, what’s being bought, what’s not being bought. So you can respond to it in real time. And I feel like we’re, we’re finally entering into an era where brands are maturing a lot of this infrastructure, right? I know I’m kind of rambling on here, but I think this is like an awesome moment to be at NRF, to be in physical stores because

If you think about RFID, everyone’s chatting about RFID. So if you’re not here, that’s the theme, RFID and AI. It’s really getting blended right now. We didn’t even know the product in our store. So this idea of actually being proactive with inventory information, I couldn’t even do it then. But today, many brands have matured their RFID developments. They have the right infrastructure in place. They have foot traffic counting.

They have computer vision investments. They have task management that’s monitoring how store associates are performing. They got solutions like Crave. Everything’s now in a spot to be fully connected and we have to just work together to connect it all. I remember you told me this story and I forget the term he used, but when you have a customer coming into the store and they’re looking for something specific and if you don’t have that specific size 12 red

wide-legged gene or whatever, they leave. And you never know what. So you told me this story about a series of options and choices. Can you kind of walk through that example of what that looks like in today’s connected shopping journey? Yeah. Well, look, if you have RFID today, you’ve done the first step. I call RFID like a mirror. You finally know exactly who you are. You know what inventory you have in your store.

But the mirror doesn’t yet know if you’re wearing the wrong shirt with that pair of denim, right? It just says you’ve got a shirt on and you’ve got denim. You’ve you’ve done that part. But we have a few brands now that are really leaning into what we’re calling our out of stock demand. So this is you. Let’s just say you walk up to a denim wall, which RFID says, hey, we’ve got everything that we should have in stock and you’re looking for a certain size. They don’t have that size.

Now you’re either chasing a store team member, you’re out looking for the product somewhere else, maybe you’re trying to think about it, you’re on your phone seeing if it’s online, you walk out. You talked about not knowing information about shoppers. If you think about it, seven out of 10 shoppers are leaving your store every single day and you don’t know anything about them. And the three that do, the 70 to 30 % analysis, the 30 % that do already made a bunch of decisions.

So for Crave, what we’re thinking is, when Shelly’s in that moment looking for something, we should immediately be able to show her other products that are available in our size. We should be able to show her similar items, maybe nearby stores, in that very moment of recognizing that friction so we get you into that product. We should be saving the associate time from not having to do that manually, which computers can do that, tell you what’s in stock or not immediately.

but the brands can actually get this out of stock demand, which complements that RFID investment. One of the retailers we worked with learned that a portion of their stores were getting a lot of demand for double extra larges and extra larges. Now they’re planning, I’ve worked in planning and merchandising for a couple of years at Skechers. We would have just been celebrating a positive sell through and we just would have been replenishing as we normally would. Now we know you’re a

you might be selling through, but you missed out on selling an extra 40 units at this store because you didn’t have enough of the thing that people needed. There’s no way to capture that unless you’re directly connecting with your shoppers on the sales floor. think, you know, selfishly, Crave is a shopper engagement platform. I really believe that is the missing part to a fully connected store because we’re going to get you that insight into what shopper behavior is.

And then we’re going to help you learn did that influence to a purchase? Did that not? Did it change your buying strategy? Should you rethink about how your assortment is? Do you have to do better training? So much to learn from understanding what your shoppers are doing, whether they buy or not buy. love that. And I think it’s what I love about the Crate solution is the sophistication of if I go in and I want a, we’ll use purple, I want a purple turtleneck. You don’t know if I really want a turtleneck.

other color or if I really want purple. So by giving me the choice of here are other turtlenecks not in purple and here are other shirts in purple, now I can make a decision based on is it really the turtleneck I’m looking for or the color. And we don’t know that when a customer walks in unless they have a dialogue or they have something, right? Yeah, yeah, 100%. And it’s, stores, they’re not getting easier to shop right now.

because a lot of times they’re just not getting easier to staff. It’s a challenging market. You see a lot of stores, you know, trying to ask, do we, how do we give you that customer experience with less people? It’s really hard, right? And so I think we’re kind of at this point where you only can optimize the store teams so much. Put Shelly in control of that decision. Don’t make the assumption for her, put out on a hypothesis, figure out what she’s interested in, let her discover and curate.

right there in your stores in the most easy way possible and then get her trying it on. Because there’s nothing better than getting her into the clothes, trying it on and seeing what it’s like. And when you look at the Gen Z and Gen Alphas, and they’re coming into the shopping environment, they’re expecting to have a very easy, seamless, automated kind of answers to the solutions that they’re looking for when they walk in, right? Yeah. I think today we’re at a different point.

Everybody wants that. Right? mean, I’m sorry, but if you think that every shopper wants to have a highly engaged one-on-one experience, they don’t. Right? And those 30 % that do, great. I would bet most brands who understand that about their shopper base, they’ve got it served. But 70 % of your customers are coming in and they just want to explore and they want to learn about products. They want to understand your story. They want to make it very easy. We are all time starved today for whatever.

Reasons we’ve created we’re on a mission and if it doesn’t go perfectly we’re out right so we I think for every shopper today of all ages we have a really strong responsibility to say how do we help them control their own outcome how do we give them the tools in real time to just Help them have an experience they deserve and frankly you think about e-commerce Because they were tracking what shoppers were doing they continue to optimize that for you

The success of e-commerce has been because they know every step of your journey and they can help you make it easier. Maybe sometimes they want you to slow down to curate a whole outfit with the denim you’re trying on, but we can’t do that in physical retail. So how do we create a highly personalized, convenient experience if we’re not having any shopper touch points measured and understood as shoppers are going through it? You can have computer vision on your ceiling, but you still don’t know if Shelley needs

a red or a purple, right, a small or a large. You can know someone’s dwelling and waiting, but what do you do? You have to have touch points that shoppers can finally act on and we will be able to give you the ability to stitch those sessions together so you can finally have a digital layer of physical retail just like e-commerce does. And I think that’ll allow us to really evolve the in-store experience. I think the brands are ready, I think they’re definitely ready. I think the other complexity layer is that

the shopper isn’t consistent 100 % of the time. What I mean by that is sometimes when I go into a store, I want to get in and out, I’m on a time crunch, I have to do something with the family, and other times I want to chat with someone. So you can’t do this solution that always delivers the same for every customer because we change. We change our shopping behaviors based on the situation, our time. Yeah, yeah. That’s where I think

you know, this connected store finally gives you a pulse of that. You’re going to have, you’re going to know soon which shoppers are in here as loyal customers who are in here every other week and whether they should have a more high touch personalized experience. And you’re going to know the other one who just likes to come in your store because we’re getting close to a world where we’re going to know Shelly walked to the door and we’re going to know that she checked out and every time it’s 15 minutes, we know Shelly walks in and out.

Right? And Jenny, on the other hand, we know she likes to take an hour every single time. And she likes to talk to people because she’s one of those customers that is always requesting service, asking for help. We know what kind of service she wants. So this connected store that has a pulse of what’s happening gives us the tools, gives the store teams the front line, the tools to say, I feel equipped to do my tasks that I’m asked to.

support the right customers the right way and know that I’ve got supporting technology on the sales floor that can answer some of the basic questions so I can do my job well, which is be a human, have a human conversation with Jenny, understand her lifestyle, figure out what she really loves and wants while meanwhile, Shelly can go up to a denim wall, tap, tap, get it in her hands immediately, get out the door. We have a world now where we can create that flexibility.

That’s great. Well, first I want to say thank you, Matthew, for creating your company because you and I are very similar in that we just want to make retailers better at what they do. We want to kind of make the industry better. we care a lot. So we do. care a lot. I know we’re expecting a lot of great big announcements from Crave Retail over the next year. Anything else you want to share with us? You know, just keep testing.

You know to anybody watching keep testing and trying new things in your stores. Your customers want to see freshness. They want to see something new. They want convenience. They want help. Yes of course Crave can definitely help you with that but I’m just very excited that we have an opportunity to work with some of the best brands in the world. We’re going to continue to learn what we don’t know every day. We’re going to implement the things that just make sense. Be practical. Right. That’s why I tell my team every day. Retail is not that complicated.

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? go back to the basics of retail 101. Make it easy to find a lot of product. Make sure your shoppers are servicing them, and make sure you’re able to measure the outcome of those changes.

awesome well thank you Matthew so much. Crave Retail and thanks for the Crave Retail radicals this year. Thank you for having me here. Exciting. Thank you all. Awesome.

Hi, welcome to Reektail Unwrapped Live. I’m so excited that I actually get to see you in person. I know. It’s been what, a year since I saw you person, a year, yeah. And we’ve connected virtually, but it’s always good to be in person. That’s right. So this is Kimberly Miner. She is CEO of Wokra. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Shelly. It’s always good to talk to you. I love having you here and I love the fact you did lead like her.

and also even on my podcast. But today we’re at the NRAP show in, actually the weather’s not bad in New York right now in January. No, it’s not bad. I will tell you, I got here this morning around eight o’clock and I was really shocked. I walked out and when the doors opened to the hotel, it was like this burst of cold air. But then when I stepped out, I was like, it’s not bad. The sun is coming out. This is great.

This is, think this is the best weather I’ve ever seen in 30 years. Yeah. Well, the last three years have been painful. It’s been so cold that, you know, if your nose runs, it freezes before it hits the tip. Like it’s, it’s been bad. So it’s great. And you can tell because it is packed. is so busy this year. That’s right. Yeah. It’s really busy. I’d love to talk you a little bit. I know you’re very busy and your schedules packs a first. you. Of course. For spending time with me. Of course. But I want to talk about the work.

because I know you’re doing a lot of work there. So what is going on with today’s workforce? What are you seeing out there? You know, that is a hot, hot topic. It’s a hot topic for a few different reasons. So here are some of the things that happening in the workforce. So we know that at the beginning of the year with the administration change, there were lot of changes to policies and there were preemptive changes so that there weren’t issues with certain companies.

All of that affected the workforce. It affected the workforce in that even though we’re still at a relatively low 4 % unemployment, there are certain groups that have surged in unemployment. And so one of those groups is black women. Black women are currently at 7.5 % unemployment according to the US labor statistics. And that happened because they overpopulate in government jobs.

they overpopulate in frontline jobs. And so how does that affect, right? Well, we know how it affects in the government, but then frontline jobs, we keep hearing about AI, right? And when we think about retail and we think about AI and you go to the store, how many times are you in line? Because it’s self checkout. That’s right. Right. And so those are things that we think about. We think about that with WACRA because you have to create this pipeline.

So people are being removed from the pipeline, who’s benefiting? And what does that mean for the future? And so, that’s what we wanna talk about with Workforce. And then in addition to my work with WACRA, I’m also executive director at the Ohio State. The Ohio Glad you’re so exciting. And by the way, congratulations on that. That was last year, right? No, it was July. July, yeah, last year. that’s And so…

That’s also workforce development. And so we have these young people who are so talented and so fresh and excited and passionate about what’s next. And then we also have the economic situation that’s going to affect, again, workforce development. So how do we create, I think this is at the heart of all of it, how do we create pathways to jobs that aren’t traditional but exist?

and how do we prepare people to be flexible so that they are ready when those opportunities open? And what does that partnership look like with these companies who are going to have those jobs? Because I don’t care the most self-checkout retailer, you still need customer service. Definitely. Right. And so how do we prepare or how do we redirect

those who are out there who are in the workforce so that they’re ready for those new jobs. That’s what keeps me up at night. I think it’s so important. It’s kind of like the human side of technology working together. But one thing I want to go back to what you said, which I think is really important is you talked about making sure people were ready and flexible when things came about. So it’s not this, you know, very direct linear career path.

And you really do have to be open to opportunities as they arrive or come up, right? You do. so yesterday I was part of the executive mentoring with N.R.F. Of you were. I love it. You know, I’ve been in this industry for 30 years and I found it. It wasn’t a path I prepared for. It wasn’t a path that I went to school for.

but it was a path that I was flexible enough that I was able to move into it. And it has served me very well because I was ready. Nothing, you know, I didn’t have fear that, I didn’t study that in a book. I asked questions. I was curious. And so to prepare yourself for that path, this is something I talked to this young people about yesterday. What do you look for? You know, oh, Kimberly, what do you look for? Like what’s the most important skill? The most important skill to me is curiosity.

Absolutely. Curiosity. If you don’t know what you don’t know. Shelly, funny story, I was 10 years into my career. I was at Davis Bridal. I had just gotten to Davis Bridal. was vice president of design. And I had been at Express and Macy’s. And had I been in Foot Locker? I’ve been to Foot Locker. I moved very quickly because, you know, put it in front of me and I’m like,

this Pac-Man, like what can I learn, what can I do? And so I was in a meeting and I was relying on what I knew, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And the CEO of David’s Bridal said to me, I’m going to need you to be quiet. He didn’t say it like that. I’m saying it much nicer than he said it, but I’m going to need you to be quiet. Why? He said, because you don’t know what you don’t know. No one had ever said that to me before because

I came into a job and they were expecting you to hit the ground running. He was like, no, you need to learn and I want to know how curious you are so that you can be better when it’s time. And so when I talk to young people or anyone who’s like, what do I do? I’ve been putting in these resumes. I’m not getting the job. So what are you putting the resumes in for? Well, this is what I’ve done. But how do we apply that differently? What questions can you ask?

If you’re curious about what your future could look like, then you should be curious about what other opportunities are available. And if you open yourself up to curiosity, you become more flexible. And who knows what the possibilities are? And that’s great for the candidates, but it’s also a message for the companies. know, so many, because they use AI,

to go through resumes and check that it’s so rigid because it’s AI and AI is not thinking, AI is repetitive. And so companies, leaders, you need that same curiosity because especially with consumers, consumers are changing now. It’s such a dynamic. It’s so dynamic. People are thinking differently. Young people, Gen Z.

What was happening on Tuesday is not happening on Thursday. And you have to think differently. So these companies need to have people in those positions who have that flexibility and aren’t like, it’s just a cookie cutter of what they think the job should be. Right. I think the other thing I’d like to see more women do, especially young leaders, is going back to your flexibility conversation is that a lot of young women

feel like they have to nail every single component of a job description. And when you what you’re saying is a little bit different, which is, you know, be curious. Yeah, you might have three out of five skills, but go for it. Don’t think you have to have that tick box of every skill to apply or to go after jobs. Well, absolutely. I mean, if I use my own like at the beginning of my career. So my degree is in radio, television and film.

I didn’t know that. Yes, I wanted to be Oprah. I did. Oprah. Well, there is only one Oprah. And I discovered that very quickly. But that’s my so and I had a radio show. I did the whole thing. Like I love that part. Like I love it. I right now, you know. So when I was interviewed with Macy’s executive training program, I couldn’t rely on what I knew. So I didn’t have any of the checkboxes, right. But the recruiter

had had enough conversations with me, he was like, you’re kind of, you’re interesting. You know, you have a sense of fashion. You kind of know what’s going on in the marketplace. You should meet some people. And I was open to that. Sure. I’ll meet some people. At first I was like, wait, retail? I can’t work retail. Cause all I knew about retail was stores and I worked part time in stores and like, I might be kind of living out of that. But by being open, I was able to learn and, and

the aptitude, you know, the testing and the interviewing, I showed up as myself and was, I think, confident enough as a young person to say, I don’t know this, but I know that. And so that message is really important to young, especially young women to your point, because most don’t do that. They don’t. They don’t understand what it is to just show up as yourself.

and be okay with asking questions. I learned so much more because I wasn’t trying to be something else. And I think they saw that. And so I just went in as a consumer. And then, you know, if it was time to change the floor, I was like, you know, that’s not selling anymore. I think it’s time for me to do a floor move, right? Or a change. And I would sit with a visual or go to my group manager and say, I want to do a change. And I would, had like,

these models that I would play with because I didn’t know any different. Right. Right. Or I went to the local distributor because Spud McKenzie was the big thing. And I was like, hey, I see young men going to these other stores. What do you have? Spud girls. They like, yeah, like, can they come to Macy’s? Can they come to my young men’s floor? And it just like being curious. I love that. And I don’t. Were you at the keynote today? I was with it.

I mean, there’s so many things I learned from him and I loved his whole leadership and the dynamic. I the diamond. I got to teach the diamond. I wrote that down. But anyway, I’m in org chart. I’m definitely going to do a lecture on the diamond work chart. But one of the things that really kind of stood out to me is when he said, listen, if you have to be the smartest person in the room.

This is not the place for you. And that’s what we’re saying. You don’t have to know all the answers. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. It’s the most curious person in room. The one that doesn’t know everything, that really is successful at exporting goods, Right, and you take chances anywhere. One of my jobs was nine West. And at the time I was the SVP of merchandising stores and planning and allocation.

It was weird. But they brought in a gentleman who had been with Clarks. And Bob was wolf. And he intimidated some people. I thought he was the coolest guy ever. Like, I really did to this day. Because if you were in it, so was he. And he would come to my sales meetings.

He was kind of like a consultant because he had done this for so long and they wanted to make sure, you And so I said in one of my meetings, said, oh my God, I don’t want to be the smartest person in the world. Can somebody please, and after the meeting, he said to me, he was like,

you’re gonna go far because you get it. He said, I think you do need to make some changes to your team because they are depending on you to be the smartest person in the room. So you don’t really have any leaders. Yeah, that’s so interesting. Yeah. So I want to ask you, I want to move to a different topic. Yeah. Okay. Have to say this because I know it’s all over the N.R.F. show this year. A.I. A.I. A.I. So let’s talk about A.I. and maybe how that relates to the workforce. Well, I think

Obviously AI is coming and it’s coming quickly. But if you are a person or even a company who is saying, AI is coming, I’m going to save money and it’s going to replace my team and you’re in retail, I think you’re smoking something. Because you have forgotten what’s the core of this business. The core of the business is the consumer.

And while they’re obviously it’s AI. if you want, if you have a question, if you want data about that group, if you want anything, sure, ask AI. But if you only use AI to make your decisions, then you’re not going to be in business very long, right? Use it as a compliment to the talented people who are there to think, to be dynamic and to be curious, right? What can this information tell me that I don’t know about my

consumer that will complement what I know from being out in the stores or being on a customer service call. If you’re a D2C, you can be there so quickly, get on the phone. Have a call with your consumer and then look at the AI information. When I was, you know, in planning an allocation.

Sunday was terrible because I’d have to get the reports. Oh, I remember going down and getting all those. Yeah, you go down, you get the reports, you’re reading through, right? And you’re drawing conclusions. That time is gone because AI exists. So all of that, you don’t need those reports. Here’s my prompt, here’s the information. But what you do need is you need to be able to interpret and understand that information so that when you’re making decisions.

that is what you can do. Does that mean that your job goes away? It means your job changes and it does mean that some jobs go away, but your job doesn’t have to leave if you’re prepared for that change. And how do you become prepared? It’s a wa-wa-wa. Ohio State just introduced AI training as part of their curriculum, but they just did it.

There are lots of programs out there. I will tell you that you learn the best by doing it and don’t be afraid of it. You know, there’s so many different things. If you want to start with chat GPT, start with chat GPT. I always talk about someone introduced me to perplexity. yeah. Love perplexity. You can ask perplexity anything. And now perplexity even gives me updates. Right. So that keeps me informed. But there’s so many between Gemini and

co-pilot and Claude and you know, I don’t even, it just goes on and on and on and on. You can do graphics, know, Canva is met when it comes to the AI, but there are some other programs out there that are fantastic. You know, I needed a new headshot and I couldn’t get it with my photographer. Seriously? Your headshot’s AI? It’s my actual picture. I love it.

And then I had a picture of my new hair because in my old picture, my face is the same, but my hair is short and it’s not gray. And as you can see, I’m gray. And so I went in and I talked to a photographer and I said, well, how do I do this? Because I don’t have time and I don’t want people to walk past me and not recognize me. And they told me, you know, put both in and just tell them, keep, you know, prompted to this. This is what I want to maintain my face, my spuddle, and replace.

this with that. And so my picture, I mean, it looks like me. It’s just, have new hair, right? And I changed my suit. That’s great. So what excites me most about AI in the workforce is that the what if scenario. So like if you’re working in product development, you’re working in marketing, like if you gave me a marketing task, I would go and do it I would make me give you two or three different versions because that’s all the time allows. Right. But now if you have all this resources,

I can come back with 30 different versions and I can pick out the three best for one campaign, four best for another campaign. And it’s like, all of a sudden now, I can do genius work because I’m not limited by time. That’s exactly right. And if you know how, you can make AI your partner. Because in addition to all those options, you can say, OK, this is my desired outcome. Which do you recommend?

Exactly. And they will give you all those options. It doesn’t tell you which one to choose, but it says, here’s my recommendation out of five options. My recommendations are option three and option five. And here’s why. I love it. It’s the best. I if you’re afraid of it, it’s the worst. No, you got to play with it. I encourage everyone to play with it. Play with it and understand how to make it your friend and your secret sauce.

Right? Like what’s your super power, what’s your AI superpower? So then when you’re walking into interviews, you can say, yes. And in addition to this, here are examples of how I would prompt that or how I might use AI to enhance my role. Because people want someone who’s thinking ahead and is looking for that white space so that they can move their business forward. So use it as an advantage. Don’t be afraid of

I agree. Well, Kimberly, thank you so much. Thank you for having you. And I look forward to seeing you around the show. And of course, I’ll see you hopefully in Columbus soon. Sounds good. Thank you very much.

I am so excited to be here. Shelly Cohen, Retail Unwrapped, I have Marie Driscoll here, which is very exciting, live and in the flesh. Thanks, Shelly. Great to be here with you. I am so happy to have you here. So you don’t need an introduction because you’re so well known in the industry. But Marie Driscoll, founded Driscoll Advisors. But this is the second year we’re here at the NRF show. And this is the second year you’ve been…

a NRF retail voice. Yeah kind of amazing right? I talk too much. No that’s not what it is. It’s your are such a impactful voice for our industry so congratulations on Thank you. you. And of course you’re a retail expert by Rethink Retail and I could go on and on and on.

And selfishly, I am going to say one more thing. That is your professor and you’re helping to educate our next generation of students. So your professor at Fashion Institute of Technology as well as Parsons and… At the City University in New York too. The City of New York, okay, that’s fantastic. So thank you for helping to bring the next generation of leaders forward. Thank

You too, same thing, right? Right back at you. So today, I’d love to, so last night you did a LinkedIn post which was fantastic, talking about what you’re seeing at the show. Yeah, I am like…

I’m so excited coming into 2026, right? It’s like, feel like it’s the new next, right? The next new. Very excited, like we’re moving so rapidly. Last year was such a crazy year with tariffs, right? Like you could never get ahead of yourself. AI was talked about all the time. This year, I think we’re really going to see some AI really at…

and I think we’re finding some really practical ways to use it and it’s not just about the CEO going pushing it down to everyone it’s like he’s saying yes we’re buying in but now pick the right spots for it and is it it’s not necessarily right in each in each function of retail. No you have to pick and choose based on the company right? Right, right. But so like what I heard that I was so excited about was like

you know, at Dick’s Sporting Goods. It’s like, I wrote that they’re the next American department store in a good way, in the fact that so many people are walking through them. They are a reflection of the culture, what’s important to the culture, and the more they assort to that woman who’s buying for her children, the more their sales are gonna grow. And they’re opening more stores, they’re opening bigger stores. And I think that, you know, culturally with the focus on sports and the

focus on wellness, this is an amazing place. And I can see how this is becoming so exciting for shoppers around the country. And there’s a real focus there on team. The CEO said, you know, the higher you go in your corporate ladder, the more you should listen and not talk. I love that. Right. It’s a good one. Right. You want to hear what the consumer is saying and who’s hearing that? It’s not the CEO.

But that brings me to a point, I saw a panel that had Mango, Victoria’s Secrets and Coach on and at Coach they’re going back to basics, customer insight, which has been part of their DNA from, you know, from 19…

1980 when Lou Frankfurt went over but now it’s not in just the silo of customer insights. It’s the CEO and it’s the brand presidents going to customers homes, spending time with them, seeing how coach fits into their life, not how we’re gonna put this on your body, right? And it’s such a different, you know, so it’s a mindset change and that’s what I’m hearing.

And that’s what’s so exciting. That is exciting. have to I have to remember back. So remember Samsung when they were making refrigerators, right? They would actually go into the home of the consumer and sit there and watch them. And they would ask questions like, why do do this or why do do that? So when they designed the new refrigerator, it had to do with how you’re actually using it. So coach is now doing this, right? Which is very exciting, right? That’s where it all starts. Right, right. One thing and the woman from Victoria’s Secret, you know, we’re we’ve

watched Victoria’s Secret do a turnaround. The woman from Victoria’s Secret said, you want to, like, you

to focus on where you can have the momentous occasions, not the marginal occasions. that’s where… interesting. build to your strengths. It’s easier to make good better than it is to make bad good. Right. It’s like make good better and keep doing, and it’s iterative. And that’s what’s so exciting about retail, right? It’s like every day there’s something that you can learn from yesterday. And that’s what…

Shane Greenlee, who was from Mango, that’s what he said was the mantra at Mango, which has opened 50 stores in two years. They’re at like 63, they’re opening more. like, how do you do that? He’s so invested in his associates. And everybody is talking about being in the store more. And for me, with like…

say, you know, 75 to 80 % of sales occurring in the store, you do have to know what the consumer is doing in the store, what matters in the store, and can we capture some of the data that’s happening in the store? Absolutely. Right? So I kind of look to you as kind of like the guru of luxury, because you really cover a lot of luxury. So tell me what’s going on in the space of luxury. Right. So, you know, luxury really got ahead of its skis in the last few years in terms of pricing. mean, COVID

like brought a whole lot of new, new swath of buyers, partly because they had nothing else to do. Luxury created this ba-boom experience. And in the dearth of experiences that we had in 21 and 22, luxury was a place to go and get it. 23 and 24, they started to move away as they got back to traveling. They got back to eating out. They went to the theater. And then you all of a sudden had inflation.

at 23 % inflation for average customer goods. And for luxury, they were increasing prices like that. So if most people play in luxury via handbags, footwear, beauty and…

sunglasses, those kind of accessories and beauty. With prices up, sometimes double digit and more, it’s turned off your true luxury consumer and your aspirational customer who is saying these prices are too high, it’s not worth it. At the same time, the quality deteriorated. So it really became, so for a true luxury customer, it’s like…

So the handbag went from $6,000 $12,000 and it’s not as good as it was when, you So that customer, it’s opened the platform for people to consider new brands. And so if you go into Bergdorfs, if you go into Bloomingdale’s, there’s a whole swath of new brands that are, you know, in terms of apparel pricing.

under $3,000 in terms of handbags under three, the same thing. And this is like, number one, they’re new and fashion is about newness. Luxury can be about heritage, but it’s gotta be fashionable too. And I think it’s like another thing that happened to luxury, Like really this…

dovetailing of so many different events is you’ve got with sales stalling in 23 and 24 like really flatlining in 24 and 25 and when you think that there were price increases units were down profits were down so maybe this year they’ll stabilize and start up again but with

With that happening, you had the executives at these houses of luxury brands move around the designers. And so the designers are doing musical chairs.

And so as a consumer, you’re saying, well, do I follow them or do I stay with the brand? like, why not? It kind of is, there’s a certain amount of cognitive dissonance and well, let me look at some other brands. And there are other brands now.

And you see them online, you see them on the arms of celebrities, you see some influencers talking about them, and then you see them at Bloomingdale’s and at Bergdorf’s and at your luxury department stores. So let me ask you question. Is that aspirational shopper?

still there? What happened to them? It depends what strata they are of aspirational and really there were I remember coming to NRF two years ago and

the president of America’s from LVMH was on stage and he said, and he was contending with questions about, you know, the consumer is hard hit with inflation and all these other categories. Is there still room for luxury to grow? And he said, we like to think that luxury is sticky. And luxury is sticky because it’s the best quality unless it deteriorates, right? And it does have this emotional component.

and it can make you feel sated, right? It’s not like fast food, I want another, I want another, which is what fast fashion does, right? But there were a lot of people that entered the market that really, maybe they’ll buy one bag a year if they buy that. And maybe they won’t, you know, maybe they won’t go back to the bag they bought in 2022 and 2023. Maybe they’ll explore. But certainly…

You know, like, the econo… I just sat in on the economic outlook here at NRF, and we have a kind of K-shaped economy. People in the middle are squeezed, but they still have 401Ks, and the market has done so well that there is this wealth effect that’s hitting middle and upper income. And the spending is happening amongst upper income. And upper income is like anything from like 160,000 on up.

And they’re probably driving a lot of the business, but they’re also spending on travel. Like Americans were not your true luxury shoppers. They bought luxury sporadically until COVID, right? Our luxury was European.

China drove the luxury market. And I didn’t even talk about how China and Russia kind of got out of the market post-COVID. Right. And so there’s been a lot of impacts that have hurt luxury. And this year, while they all are not coming together, I think we’re sitting in a better place. No, that’s good to hear. So the other thing I want to ask you about is, so you have a very interesting perspective on brands versus retailers. So talk to us a little

bit about the difference between the two. Well so you know a lot of brands are direct to consumer which makes them a retailer. Right. But a retailer, what’s the expertise that a retailer has to have? They have to understand real estate, they have to understand hiring people, and they have to understand

They have to curate their store to their local environment, to their local customer. They have to understand merchandising, promotions, right? All that. It’s like a lot. Branding, you go and work for a brand and you have a singular point of view. You understand the dream. And Shelly, you probably know from years in retail that if you went to like a Ralph Lauren…

showroom, you had ambiance that you get at the flagship, right? all the, and I mean any brand would do that for you. Like if it’s a swimsuit brand, they have waves in the back, and they have surfboards, you know, My tie is on the corner. But when you put the brand in a store that sells many brands, it’s totally different. And retailers do that.

And retail, and one thing that brands don’t always do well is their own retail, because they understand how to make a dream that’s kind of static. They manufacture, they make beautiful product, they have great marketing, but now they’re in front of people, and how do they sell this to somebody else? That’s a real skill, right? Not everybody knows how to, it’s one thing to draw the wonderful pieces and engage people online.

And I’ve seen so many brands that are incredible legacy brands. And I don’t mean necessarily luxury, but that when they open stores, they don’t know how to talk to people. Yeah, it’s so interesting. Yeah. So you’ve been doing analysis of our business for a long time. Decades. Yes. So tell me, as you look into 2026, what were some of the key things that you are finding?

consumer perspective going into 2026? So from a consumer perspective, I think the consumer is sitting in the best seat, right? It’s like there’s so many choices, you have so much optionality, and I think that retailers are really creating services for their customers. I think, think about Nordstrom. If you spend a certain amount in Nordstrom, they have an icon lab.

You get to go there as often as you want. And I don’t mean that you have to spend a lot of money. You go there as often as you want. You can have a free drink.

in a room that has windows overlooking Broadway. And there’s TVs there. And you also can have a little snack and a little order. You can meet your friends there. You get a little reprieve and then you go back and shop again. And I really think that, like, oh my god, this is so hospitable. You also get, at that level, like $300 worth of tailoring.

my gosh, how convenient is that? Now at Loomingdale’s, they have incredible loyalty programs and you start getting involved with that as soon as you buy anything there. And at a certain level, you get free gift wrapping. So like I could go shopping with you and you buy something for your mother and I say, come on, I want you to wrap it for your mom, right? And all of a sudden you have this beautiful package. And I don’t think…

You know, I think it’s about value now, but value is not price. Value is a unique equation of quality, experience, service, and that, you know, that…

intangible. That’s right. You can’t put like a specific description on value because it changes by consumer. And by the day. I know and what I’m doing at that precise moment my value changes whether it’s convenience or whether it’s something else. Right, which is like why when people think that they you know you can use agentic AI to make decisions for you it’s like you know I’m more comfortable really personally.

putting something on auto replenishment because I know that I need the toilet paper, the cat food, the cat litter, and I never get it exactly right. I’m always over or under. too. But to put on agentic AI…

Like I once was unable to buy what I wanted on eBay and it’s like I set a price and it probably sold higher. Well, you know what? I would have been willing to pay higher. Should I have given that to AgentiK AI? I seem to have, but if I knew I only had to spend another $10, I would have. Another $100? I don’t want them bidding me up.

So for the consumer though, there’s so many, I think that there’s so many different choices, there’s so many different places where you can buy, there’s marketplaces for you. I think, and for retailers, how do they make money in this environment? And it can’t be through promotion. Like, we write for the Robin record.

Robin Lewis would always say you can’t cut your way to profitability. It’s a race to the bottom. That’s what he used to say to me all the time. It’s a race to the bottom. And it’s that’s… horrible. Right, right. And somebody, the woman at Victoria’s Secrets yesterday said we are speaking to her emotionally. That’s what David Lauren at Ralph Lauren says. We’re not talking to them about promotions.

talks about promotions. You just, like, once you go there, like, it’s hard to come back, right? And you can spend a year and a half trying to get your customer not to expect sales and, you know…

You’re comping the comp, it becomes harder and harder. People lose jobs because they did promotions and then they’re not comping them. But it’s been also so wonderful to see on stage a mango that is kind of new to America and a new brand, relatively here anyway. On stage with…

longer time American brands, and Victoria’s Secrets, both of which have maybe walked away from their consumer, like Coach was guilty of too much promotions at a time, but they’ve turned their business, which is like… It’s amazing. It’s a great story. But it shows you how retail is dynamic and organic and it’s not static. And with people, if you listen to your consumer, can…

Pull it together again, and and here’s the thing with brands. They’re loved they are much loved But but I will say that retail brands like Dick’s Sporting Goods like Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s and more they are loved brands

And they’re retailers, but they’re brands too. Absolutely. So I think to sum it up, value, very important going into 2026, community, creating a community and then that in-store experiential retail that kind of bonds the consumer to the brain. Right. And of course, like online is super important. Make it frictionless. it so easy to connect with what I’ve seen in the online, in the store, even though

We know online is an endless aisle and in the store there is space constraints, but connected. Yep, connected retail. Thank you, Marie. It’s been great having you here. My pleasure, thanks. Awesome, thank you. You’re great.

We’re back on tradition. Oh my God. I am so excited. We’re here at the N.R.F. show, Retail Unwrapped. And I’m thrilled to have, this is like tradition every year for what? years? Yeah, it’s been a few I’ve had you on. So this is Dominic Miserandino. never Miserandino. Miserandino. He is the founder and CEO of RTM. RTM. Retail Tech Media. Next. got it.

Tell me what the heck has been happening over the past year. What are you seeing? I’m dying to hear your insights. It has been a whirlwind of a year. I have gone to 15 conferences this calendar year. 15? Yeah. I’ve done Boston for the Day kind of thing. I’ve flown all over. is conference back to back.

In the industry I’ve seen a lot and our business RTM Nexus has gone crazy. I’ve done also a lot of facilitation with retailers helping the conversations on the C-suite. that’s really given me insight. What’s happened? I’m dying to hear your insights from that. Yeah, on the facilitation side, the job is just getting them out of their silos. And I think what happens, I’ve seen this for 30 years. There’s something new.

Could be anything, social media, new media, Google, our retail media networks in general, and AI. And they all get siloed in that. I know, right? It’s so true. And they almost forget, and you just have to get the conversation going. Why did you start this business? What is the thing the customer wants? And that’s why I always lean towards experiential, because at the end of the day, the customer wants to be happy.

When I saw you today, I was happy. You see things that makes you happy and that’s the purpose of this. Anyone go to Amazon or Tmoo and press a button and then put the joy. That’s the whole purpose. And that’s kind of what I’m doing the facilitation with these retailers. All I’m doing is encouraging the conversation saying, what do you see that makes the customer feel joy essentially? So tell me a little bit about what experiential retail means to you.

and how that translates into our industry over the next year? I think we have evolved into a non-experiential transactional, meaning DoorDash, press the button. Uber Eats, press the button. And the consumer is saying, yeah, that’s awesome. But sometimes I like a pop-up. Sometimes I want to know. I recently bought a tux. I was very fortunate and went to the Fashion Gala Institute’s big event in Rainbow Road.

yeah. So I had to get the tucks and everything. And the experience at the suit supply made the difference. you walk in, here’s the coffee and here’s, let’s help you measure you and here’s your measurements whenever you want to get anything. And in fact, the sales guy said something like, we need to get this and this, just use our measurements. So I thought it was brilliant because the non-sale use our measurements elsewhere, encourage the sale. But that’s been since the dawn of time.

in retail and sales and in business. Experiential is a human connection. And with that being the priority, sales work. Yeah, I have to say I was recently in Lululemon and there’s sometimes there’s like a small disconnect and I love Lululemon. I love the product. It’s great. It’s awesome. But I was in Wall Street having a day with my son. Yep. And so we went to Lululemon. I bought two things. They needed to be hemmed and I can sew. I can do my own sewing. So I was going to sew it.

And she’s like, we have them for free. I’m like, yeah, I know that’s great, but I have to come back here to pick it up. See, that’s a disconnect. Like it’s great that you’re offering that service, but I live, you know, 40 miles north of the city. I’m not gonna travel two hours to come pick up my, I’m gonna have them myself. So it’s disconnects like that, that retail, like I would rather pay $5 for them to ship it to me, hence, than give it to me free and have me come all the way down, would quite frankly cost me about $40.

It’s funny you say disconnect and connect because that’s been I think the secret to success with RTMnext is what we’re doing is the connection. I will send for our events. I will conservatively send a hundred texts. I’ll wake up, wake up at 6 a.m. schedule them for 9 a.m. so no one thinks I’m crazy but it will be personal. I reach out to you. It’s been a while. I miss you. How are you doing? And people want that. I think we’re in this world especially with AI. Dear

Shelly, how are things going at Robin Report? Good. And you can sense it. How often do you have kids who say, my daughter will do it all the time. that’s made by AI. We know it in our gut when it’s not authentic. And the reality is we crave connection as humans. We would not be alive. If there’s any differentiator, and I’ve lectured some students about this at Aon.

AI in general, the differentiator is the authenticity and the connection. It’s very good at non-authentic. It’s really good at press the button, door dash, have a nice day. So like when I’m putting on these events, the reason I think they’re working or when we do the webinar, the people attending, I’m reaching out. Shelly, this will be of interest to you because of this, because I remember the time we sat and talked and we had this moment.

You have to seek those emotional connections of humanity. So how can retailers on scale think about on scale, how can they humanize? Yeah, I think first of all, scale is the key. That’s the cause. And we, from a business perspective, with every reason, look at it from the perspective of scale with the non-humanness. To me, the trick is, when I was CMO of AdoramaPix, CMO of AdoramaPix, I literally said,

give me a list of our top 200 customers. Now I can’t reach everybody, but I called on the way from Long Island to Brooklyn customers. They thought I was nuts. Every day, every day, I got through that 200 and I wanted a call. And part of it was using their data to implement. What do you want? we want, I’d love to see a tour of the factory. We’ll make a tour. What do you want? I want a better coupon system. We’ll figure that out. I want to feel like when I call the office,

I’m getting an answer. We’ll change that system. Now, I couldn’t reach all. There was just no way to reach the tens of thousands of people. I could certainly reach a few hundred and use that data to start to infer. And then I think what happens, at one point we were also doing weekly Facebook lives talking to the customers. You can infer that. You could say, hey, you know, I reached out to everyone and this really means a lot to me.

I think that’s the trick. a lululemon or something. Maybe you’re talking to the customers and they’re saying, you know, I had to get the measurements and it really drove me nuts. And the solution to that is we’re going to train the whole team and we’re going to make an announcement. You need it. We’re going to guarantee we’ll get this measurement done in this time. And you’re addressing that human need, which I guarantee your human pain was felt by others. Oh, I’m sure. Yeah. So you identify the individual needs.

and magnify it on scale from the business where applicable. Now the challenge becomes when it’s difficult, but you can work towards that goal as much as you can. Say, what is the generalized human need that I’ve learned from talking to people? It’s sitting on a lobby. You know, the other thing I did, I’m sorry to give two answers to it, I feel passionate. You can give three Oh, well, try. I sat in the lobby at Aderon Pics. I took my laptop and I sat in the lobby where people were walking in.

worked like a normal day and I’d listen, watching. I studied Yiddish. And I did it to overhear the Orthodox community. I wanted to understand what are they saying. Then you start to hear the same words. You know, what is, hear, wait, that woman said this, this woman said this, this woman said this. What does that mean, that word? I don’t know it, but can you help me out here? And too often we’re in the ivory tower, 50,000 foot view in the air, but it…

That logic doesn’t make sense to me at times. You still have to take your product, throw it against the wall, walk in the store, buy your product. That’s a necessity. It’s a complete necessity to it all. So tell me, what is RTM RTM Nexus. And what are you doing? Yeah, retail, tech, media, Nexus. We’re connecting retail, tech, and media in general. I always felt the equation. I’ve been on the media side of the world at first, getting pitched by the retailers.

Can you cover my this or this or this? And then I noticed you almost, I feel like there was a line, the B to C and the B to B. There’s definitely a lineation for sure. And I noticed I was well aware. So the retailers were calling me for traffic, for how do I sell the product? How do I get more sales? And I’d go in and flip over e-commerce companies left, right and center saying, this is how you scale it up.

The B2B side of that delineation, I know it was not talking almost to the consumer. From the media side, I started seeing the voice of the consumer. So retail tech media, we’re connecting the retailers to the media. I’ve gotten retailers on TV and I’ve gotten the board jobs and I’ve helped retailers get their career further. On the tech side, we have tech companies calling us saying, how do I connect to these retailers? So with Nexus being the connection amongst them all. that, that’s awesome.

It’s been going really great. I’m really happy with the number of events and the number of webinars and our newsletters at a record level, our podcasts is on a record level. So it’s been good. That’s awesome. Any closing thoughts from you today? I think I’m thrilled being here at NREF with you because it’s reflective of what this industry needs. It’s people. It needs that moment that I texted you saying, come around, let’s talk. And you texted me.

Let’s get together. Let’s do it. And that energy. Imagine if more people in retail said, hey, you wanted that product this morning. I found it on the shelves and I’d love you to come in and I’m so sorry you wanted this or that. Oh, I miss you. It’s so good to see you. We need that connection. Definitely. I also see a lot more collaboration in our industry, which is great. Let’s collaborate. Awesome. Well, thanks for being here. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you, Dominic. Awesome.

Hi, Shelly Cohen here, Retail Unwrapped. I’m so excited. We’re here at the NRF live in person. have Gary Sankrey with me from Esri. Yep. And he manages the industry solutions. For the retail industry. For retail. So we’re excited to have you here. So let’s start by tell us a little bit about the company first. OK. And then I’ll ⁓ ask you for some insights.

We do mapping, geospatial analytics. We help retailers understand why things happen where they do and we help them.

it’s a good thing, it happens more often, and if it’s a bad thing, we try to mitigate the bad stuff. Excellent. So when you talk about this location services, is it inside stores, is it outside stores, is it across the board? All of the above. So everything from global all the way down to the neighborhood down to inside the store. we’re all about maps. The scale of the maps ⁓ is really irrelevant. It’s all about taking data and applying it into the map.

That’s great. So tell me what have you been seeing over the past year? ⁓ So really it’s all about localization, right? So if I take my role at Esri out of the picture, retailers have really come to understand that localization, personalization is critical, right? ⁓ I write that up because I know like, especially in the United States.

I come from Target, so I was at Target for like 30 years. in that role, I mean, we were opening 200 stores a year, and when you do that, you can cover up a lot of seed. We don’t do that anymore. Retailers in general aren’t doing that. But they still have the same growth expectations from their shareholders and from their management that they had before. So to be able to do that, you’ve got to do more with the locations that you have. And the way that you’re doing that is what…

Esri and with ArcGIS you’re able to bring in geographic data and look for discrete correlations to help you understand again why is this store performing this way? Why is that store performing that way? Why is that particular category? Who are my customers here? What do I think they’re going to like based on the demographics, based on the psychographics, all that kind of stuff. That’s amazing. So you’re looking at lots of data, you’re analyzing the data and then you allow

retailers to make real time decisions based on that? Exactly. So they can bring, so the retailers can bring the data in and they can.

reflected in a map and looking at different layers. So I came over from Target, I actually didn’t know what Esri was, I didn’t know what GIS was, but I retake really well. And what I learned to kind of settle in on, and what I’ve realized is secret sauce for what we do, is this ability to bring in all of this kind of disparity in it. So if you think about a store, all right, so I’m going back to, know, grocery chain ABC.

store that’s in a particular market. I’ve got a bunch of data that tells me about the lifestyle of the people around that store. I also have data that tells me where the people who shop in that area come from, so I can also apply that kind of information. I might have data about product performance. I might have data about my competitors, all different kinds of things. It’s all in a geographic layer, and I don’t have to normalize it in GIS. I can use location as that unstructured join and use that label.

in that data. That’s amazing. And so do you create like a dashboard of some sort that retailers can use? So we create dashboards. We also just create geospatial announce, so create a hotspot. I can throw that hotspot into a dashboard. I can also create a story map that tells a whole story to help them understand, like how they… One of the variables is the temporal changes that happen in a story.

So what are you most excited about for 2026? Well, all right. So I see this. There’s a little bit of a gentic AI down there. Just a wee bit. The entire two floors of the Javits. But I think what I’m what when I think about geo AI, because we’re right in the middle of that.

You know, I’m an old guy, so I’m slow adopter, but I really think what it’s doing, it’s not, I’m going to be an outlier here and say it’s not going to, there’s not innovate, what drives retail success is innovation and design, in my opinion. But what the AI is helping us do is really expand the scope of the things that we can look at. So in our case, I can bring even more data sets and find correlations that it might have taken, I may have never stumbled across. And I think, you know, when the AI,

GEOAI is really cooking with gas, which we’re there, is it’s going to be able to say, I ask it a question like, ⁓ want to know where’s the store I can sell really high-end lifestyle products, and I think it’s going to be a store that’s in a high-income neighborhood.

When it’s able to come back and say, know, yes or no, but here’s two other things you didn’t even think about, you might want to consider as well. That’s what I think is going to be revolution. That’s very helpful.

so what else would you like to add anything else that you would like to add in terms of what great work that you’re doing and how you can help retailers be better retailers? ⁓ Well I think the other thing that I’m really excited about is we’re really getting ⁓

into the world of loss prevention asset protection. So we talk a lot about margin growth and sustainable growth and now taking a look at, if you think about all the law enforcement agencies out there are all using GIS, they’re using it for dispatch and that sort of thing. I can now use that same discipline at a retailer. if I’m a retailer that has an asset protection loss prevention team, I can use our tool as a sensor platform so I can be able to see where my cameras are, I can be able to see where I’m getting hit and look for patterns.

types of activities to do the same sorts of analysis to say either to help with prevention. Right. Like I mean today I walk when I walk back to my hotel and I dive into a Duane Reed and it’s like I’m not buying anything here because I got to find something to unlock every one of these little things. do I need that in every single store? Well yeah you do. ⁓

you don’t need it by category and the GIS can help you figure out how you can still preserve a comfortable experience but at the same time try to manage some of those negative things that are happening in your store. Yeah that’s very frustrating especially when you’re trying to shop and you go to stores and you can’t get to the product the customers just walk out or they don’t just get it online absolutely and have it delivered to their door so they don’t have to go through that frustration. That’s right and then you miss out on all of the up sales.

The market basket goes away, which is a bad thing. That’s right. Oh my gosh, so it’s been great. Anything else you want to add? No, I’m just delighted. This is, know, this is I’ve been here. Trying to keep lost town because I came here as a target guy and now I’ve been coming for 10 years. The Esri guy. This show is always kind of a highlight of it. They could move it two more weeks into January if you want to, but it’s really it’s it’s just always I’m always coming.

find something to get excited about to work on for the year. I think I’ve been coming for like 30 years. Yeah, I think I’m at 20. Do you remember back in the day it used to be shelving units and POSs? cash boxes. Yeah all operational stuff and maybe a solution provider too in the back corner. Absolutely. Yeah. What’d you do at Target? I was in the merchandisers organization so I did I went through the buying ranks. That’s awesome. Yeah and I did the I went in a merchandise.

I ran a plan a grant team and store planning. I’ve won that. That’s great for what you’re doing now. Yeah, I understand the back of house piece of it. It’s been fun and you know. My daughter just got her first job out of college at Ann Taylor and I told her congratulations. You’re now the fourth generation. Sankrey in the retail bits. What school did she graduate from? University of Delaware.

Congratulations. Like many most retailers not in retail, but not in business. She was an art conservation major. Here she is. She’s excited. Well, thank you so much for being here. nice to meet you. meeting