AI, Agents, And The New Retail Playbook With RetailWire's Chase Binnie

Shoppers are about to outsource the hunt. That’s the spark for a candid conversation with Chase Binnie, CEO of RetailWire, on how AI agents, retail media, and marketplaces are rewriting the rules of discovery and growth across the retail ecosystem.

We dig into what happens when search turns into advice and agents make choices for us. Chase lays out why AI adoption is already table stakes, but the real edge comes from what you do with the time and money saved. Auto‑generated creative and product pages will soon be everywhere, which shifts advantage to purpose, positioning, and message clarity. We talk practical steps for becoming “agent‑discoverable,” from enriching product detail pages with usage occasions and outcomes to structuring data so LLMs can match intent to inventory without friction. If you’ve wondered how to win when feeds are flooded by synthetic content, this is your playbook.

Retail media’s high margins take center stage as retailers morph into platforms and push beyond transactions into daily rituals, apps, and connected experiences. We unpack incrementality, cannibalization, and how suppliers can use marketplaces as a low‑risk proving ground before scaling into stores. Chase also challenges the hype cycle with a grounded reminder: stores still command the majority of sales, and rising digital costs are sending brands back to brick‑and‑mortar for better unit economics. Personalization has a limit, and human leadership; clear expectations, culture across generations, and trust at the shelf, remains the differentiator.

You’ll leave with a sharper lens on agentic commerce, LLM‑era SEO, PDP enrichment, retail media strategy, and a pragmatic test‑and‑learn path that de‑risks scale. If discovery is shifting to AI, empathy is now a core strategy. Subscribe, share this episode with a teammate who owns PDPs or retail media, and leave a review with the one change you’ll make this quarter.

Transcript

What Retail Wire Does

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hello and welcome back to the Retail Journey Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Charles Greathouse. And I'm James Harris. And today we're talking with Chase Benny. And Chase is the CEO of Retail Wire and heads up that operation from right here in Bentonville, Arkansas. Welcome to the Retail Journey, Chase. Glad to be here. I've seen a few of your episodes. I know read a lot of your articles. A lot of your wires. Yeah. Yeah. So for those that haven't, you know, seen the retail wire or might not know, tell us about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

So retail wire is where retail discussions happen. Uh we host panel discussions every day that are based on recent news articles. So in a way, it's like reading up on what's happening in retail. There's a briefing of you know top five to ten stories. So if you're kind of just on the go, you just pull up that email and see like what's what's the top you know stories of the day for retail. And then you can dive into those discussion topics, which we have a brain trust panel of of different retail leaders, retail experts, technology folks that chime in and comment on that.

Chase’s Path Through Media And Marketing

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Awesome. That's great. Feels like something we're gonna link below after this podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Feels like that should happen. And you've done uh you've done a lot of things in this space before retail wire. You want to give a little little personal story? What got you into this space? What are some things you're you've done that you want to share?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah. So my background really is a is really a lot about marketing and probably media before I realized it was media. Um you know, uh, I was uh when I was you know in college, I do a lot of traveling as I've done some travel journalism, documenting different, you know, places before it was kind of like the influencer thing to do. I, you know, I've owned a few different small businesses, everything from you know, uh the hair salons to marketing agencies to a cleaning cop cleaning service. Uh so as far as like everything that I do is framed in through the angle of really marketing, messaging, like connecting with people. And so it was really a few years ago, uh, when I was looking for the next thing to jump into, I was kind of looking for some opportunities. And I saw Retail Wire uh had been around for 21 years. The founders had started in 2002 as as the first retail discussion forum. Awesome. And, you know, I saw what they had built, and more than just like views on a website or number of subscribers, I saw a community of people really passionate about you know sharing their thoughts and having thought leadership kind of hit you know multiple angles. Yeah, and pretty organically. Yeah. Yeah, because I think every year there are every I mean every month almost, there's different challenges that hit the industry. And just reading headlines doesn't get you, you know, what do people actually think about this? What do the operators think? And what do the consultants think? And so just seeing like different different thought leaders in the space sometimes duke it out, you know. Yeah, yeah. Tech versus analog, you know, you got the in retail, you have the traditionalists who are like, it's about people, it's all about people, and then there you've got like the whole data world with it's about data, you know. And so I love seeing just uh different points of view.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Yeah. I like to say data represents people. People create data.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

That those people are they are a number, but you know, what do you do with that? Yeah.

Why Community Beats Headlines

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Yeah. We're obviously fans uh of data, but also fans of people, yeah. Um, but no, it's fun. I love that sort of origin story of seeing something that's well developed. When when you think of uh like what's on your mind as the the new not new but CEO of Retail Wire, what's the future of of this kind of forum or the discussion look like? Yeah.

Operators, Data, And Culture Tensions

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Yeah, there's a theme actually we've been seeing, which is you know, there's a lot of different solutions out there. There's a lot of tech companies. In fact, like a lot of tech companies moving into the retail space, like have their other verticals and that they're seeing like a lot happening in retail as retailers become more like platforms. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Um and so what does that bring? It brings a lot of you know technical knowledge, it brings a different point of view than traditional retail, and I think it brings another challenge of a lot of a lot of noise. Yeah. So those who are operating, you know, legacy brands or legacy retail organizations, it's like, what do we like what do we believe? Like, do we need to do this? Do we need to add AI to everything and how fast? And who's the best, you know, team to bring that bring that in?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Yeah, how to cut through and the noise. Yeah. Yeah. So it's sort of the guide across the the changing landscape of retail.

Cutting Through Tech Noise

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Yeah, it feels like a definitely a push-hole between the operators in the space. They have different problems too. They had people they have like just leadership challenges, you know, generational things. Like we had a you go, you go, you go. Yeah, yeah. We had uh we had a a a round table, a private round table for brands and retail leaders today. And you know, there's the challenges they're facing are anything from trying to keep up with the tech and AI all the way to hey, we have different expectations between the management and our new like Gen Z employees. Gen Z will check out at 5 p.m. And like there's an expectation that like you work till you get it done. And so even just like different people and culture things and within an organization, I think those are things that tech can't really solve you.

AI Adoption And What Comes Next

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you still need leadership and management and accountability and setting those expectations. If if they don't know the expectation is to work till it's done, then yeah, blame it. Yeah, great. Yeah, yeah. And less fun to talk about than uh AI and all the the things that seem like new and novel, but are are probably just you know different from from the challenges of the past. Having uh having read um The Wire really uh maybe not quite since 2002, probably oh four, oh five is when I first kind of discovered it. Um and it's on the weekly cycle, you know, with all the stuff that's out there, but y'all really you've been able to stay relevant through a lot of changes in the last you know 20-some years. Um, but you're you're not just you know a certain retailer or you're not just brick and mortar, you're not even like a trade magazine, you're really at the intersection of a lot of different things that it incorporates all that, incorporates media, incorporates social, corporates you know, changing dynamics on uh if tariffs and things of that nature come up into sure. But you're right in kind of the thick of what are the things that you're seeing, and talk about whatever you want. If you want to talk about current events, but also what are you seeing that you think is going to be like the future that's gonna drive the growth for the next few years that companies need to be paying attention to?

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Uh, really big theme is AI, obviously. And I think that it's pretty well consensus that like companies need to adopt AI, that you need to use it. Um there's ways to adopt in a mature way, in a way that's like feasible, and there's sometimes the top-down leadership. It's kind of one of the technologies that's you know across the board, like top-down saying we need to do this, and then sometimes they push a little too quick and just throw it in and uh the company's not ready for it. But the that's gonna be the table stakes for retail and brands who are trying to stay ahead, is it's not really what you do with AI. Um the next thing is what are you gonna do with that money saved? Right? If you find new efficiencies and you can get a lot more done, or uh you can get those things done um with with agentic you know tools, what are you going to do with that spare time?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Yeah, what's the what's the fill then? Yeah. It's not that there's less to do. Most likely, it's like, well, now someone else is gonna be moving faster. Yeah. How are you going to catch up? How do you see AI really playing a role here in the near future around advertising specifically in media?

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Um yeah, tricky question. Um, I think I talked with someone today who who just got back from uh Amazon Accelerate, and they're showing these features of like you you give it a picture and the AI will just make your whole product page. It will make like different models wearing it and stuff. And while that's you know, as far as cre creative and you know, getting product all the these product images up to up to a certain standard, which a lot of pages don't have at, it will become table stakes again. Right. And so it's it's kind of like it's a handicut through that noise. Yeah. Like if you're the first to use it, cool, like you got a lot more done, you got a lot more ads out there, or you know, social media content. Um but now everyone's gonna have it. Right. So uh in in the mix of all this, uh legacy brands are seeing they're being challenged because younger, you know, emerging brands can get production done easier and quicker, and it's starting to be almost like okay, we'll all have the capabilities, but only a few brands will actually dial into a purpose and a mission and really had a cohesive brand. So that I think was gonna be the challenging piece.

Purpose As The New Moat

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Because I mean we've already seen like what bots and some early you know parts of AI do to discussion boards, to Twitter, to X, whatever, to the where where it just becomes noise. And you're like, is this a person? Is this a thing? The dead internet, and how and how do you stay, how do you stay out of that noise, but still get your message across? Like that's I think that's the million-dollar question.

Agentic Commerce Explained

SPEAKER_01 11:06

The other piece with agentic commerce, and we've got all these different terms floating around, but that's kind of they're define it for in case they listen to here. It this will be hard to define, but as of now, agentic commerce seems to be the word for any commerce that uses either as a shopper, I send my AI agent to go find me something and buy it for me, all the way to the other side where a retailer would have an AI agent and like interfacing, just like an associate would, whether that's online or a call center or uh maybe something in person. Yeah. Right. But uh where we're at right now is like we're starting to get to that point where uh ChatGBT is there's some like little leaks or rumors that there's like a spot where you can keep your orders, like if you make orders through Chat GBT, um Proplexity has made uh partnerships with different uh e-commerce platforms, and there's sort of this uh looming event and rollout that's going on to happen where we're going to some people through some product categories um will start to just hey, find me, you know, find me this product.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

You know all these things about me because I've trained you on who I am. Yeah. Uh and I I did hear maybe about a year or so ago, the former CEO of Shopify now works at Chat GPT. Oh, really? Yeah, I mean that's so there's there's there's more to come, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Well yeah, and so retail's job then becomes efficient fulfillment. And that's kind of what they the job to be done. If the search, uh discovery, and selection all happened through an agent, then that's a different job to be done. Availability for retail sort.

Who Owns Discovery And Customer Data

SPEAKER_01 13:00

And and then who owns that journey, right? So Chat GPT knows a lot about you as the shopper, and then that order comes through, and will the retailer have any idea have any idea who they're serving.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Yeah, yeah. Shows up as one customer, in which case, wow, they bought a lot of weird combinations of things. They didn't go to any of those pages, they just bought this really obscure product. Yeah. Or imagine the credit card's probably part of it, but sure. You know, nowadays there's there's ways for at least credit card companies to show a proxy for your card number, not your actual card number.

SEO For LLMs And Enriched PDPs

SPEAKER_01 13:35

And so that creates the other really uh this piece is really important is retailers being discovered by ChatGPT. Right, right. And so this idea of basically SEO, but in the new era. Yep. And in order to actually be found there, your product pages and all that product data has to be matching with whatever that prompt was talking about. Yeah. And so there's kind of a scramble now to at retailers and any D2C brands, and all the way to supplier because they're feeding uh this this product information is you know, are we gonna have are we are we gonna be okay with just the fields we use now? Or will there be even more fields that customers are wanting to know?

Consumer Adoption And The Prompting Shift

SPEAKER_00 14:24

I think it's a lot more. Because you're you get you you still you have your your portions that are defining your product. I think the part we have to start using is defining the purchase occasion, the reason, the need state. Um that I think that the more intuitive that AI becomes, I think it's gonna look more to that than dimensions link. It's about the problem you're solving, yeah. The solution you're trying to create, the usage occasions that you know a particular product is well fit for, because that's the thing that the customers actually like what's behind the shopping list, you know? Yeah. Is it just weekly replenishment to keep my family alive, or is it like Taco Tuesday? Yeah. Um, and if I'm gonna throw a Taco Tuesday, then great, do I need to have Taco Tuesday somewhere on my PDP? Like, what's then is required? So chat knows uh that this is how I'm gonna go find it. Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, this this this tablecloth is great for Taco Tuesday night. You're gonna you're gonna be glad you have it. Yeah, clean up. It's an interesting kind of conversation because at least where we're at right now, tech is driving this, right? AI, if AI didn't exist, we wouldn't be having this particular conversation. But at the same time, brands, retailers, they're chasing the consumer, right? So the consumer's starting to adapt. There's more tech that's going to come in that will be adapted. Like we're in a very, very evolving time frame right now for retail. Um are you have you seen anything around consumers of where they're really starting to adopt this, or are we very early stage?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

There are definitely some numbers out about consumers using ChatGBT. I'm saying that, but it could be perplexity icon. Yes, yeah. Um, and speaking of Gemini, if you've searched in Google lately, like most of the things I search have a whole section of info at the top. Yeah. Like with Layout. Yeah. And it's like I didn't ask for that, but that's what's happening. Yeah.

Traffic Shifts Toward AI Answers

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Like across the I didn't ask, but how'd you know it's what I wanted? But it's also a lot more intuitive than just the search results. Yeah. So yeah, you got to trust those blue links and go to the site. Yeah. And it's like you're it is as a consumer a total brain flip. Yep. In you know, prompting versus querying. Yes. There's a there's a journey there, and that's that's necessary as you mentioned, you know, large CPGs or retailers trying to adopt AI. There's this whole shift in okay, how do I prompt well? This is a whole different skill set. I'm sure college students today, there's going to be a course like truly about prompting. Yeah. Uh what's what's that look like? How do you do it well? But then um, so it's it's on both sides, both the the retailers and brands and the consumer trying to figure out where this is. Who who's doing it really well from your point of view? Oh, uh effective utilization of AI. Who's prompting really well? I would say that's fair. I don't have to let me adjust my prompt. Um forgive me. Um on the the brand or retailer side, like who is best positioned from your worldview to take advantage of this complete shift in traffic?

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Well, it tends to be right now that they're going the trustworthy websites. So it's the the the initial rollout has been like who's getting cited in in AI. And it's overwhelmingly like the top top news publishers, yeah, largest traffic, largest traffic, like they're really going after just who's essentially the top SEO result and the best coming authority. Um, and I do talk with a lot of like smaller brands that aren't Walmart or aren't you know have that established, uh, which they're saying. Who did what did you see a LinkedIn post about that? I did about referral traffic in Walmart.

E‑Commerce Is Big, Stores Are Bigger

SPEAKER_00 18:33

I think it was like there's more traffic coming through Chat GPT um than there is on Walmart.com. Wow. For a particular category. It's like, yeah, no, it's the shift is happening. Yeah. And it's not doesn't mean it's where they're converting or how they're converting, because half the time there isn't a link within, you know, you're not actually using uh your agent to make the purchase, but it's to make the decision, then perhaps separating, but that's friction.

unknown 19:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

And technology's great at removing friction. And something I just have to think is like you know, 2.0 or you know, 1.2 is paying to be seen, like paying the the AI engines to be the result, right? Like that's got to become a yeah.

Retail Media Defined And Why Margins Matter

SPEAKER_01 19:21

I think that's a pretty revenue line, right? Pretty big uh question now of just the bias that might be baked in. And you just addressed one of the biases, which was if you don't know, guess. And that was how they programmed uh JatGBT, just like multiple choice. If you're like, I don't know, A, B, C, or D, I'm just gonna at least have a chance. Uh, they program it that way, I think so there'd be some answers there for you. But that's a hallucination. Yeah, you all know that.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

So whereas when Siri says I don't know, it's like come on, Siri. Try harder. Someone else. Chat was gonna give you an answer, but they might not know yet.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, it might not be right. Uh yeah, I think there's a lot, uh, a lot out there as far as like future predictions of how many people will start to use it and you know what what it means for shopping. Um, but coming back to some of the truth isms that Mono, like e commerce has kind of capped out in that 20-something percent of all you know, shopping, whereas 80, you know, around 80% is still in store. So I find that all lot of this stuff about online AI, it's like it's still playing in that smaller piece of the pie.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah. Yeah, that's why I think we're still we're very early on into this, into this evolution. And yeah, I mean, who knows the future, right? We could hallucinate and speculate about that all day. You mentioned something earlier. You said you were in media before it was media. You know, we we we're in a world now where retail media is becoming much more table stakes. Uh, maybe before we get into like your your learnings, your findings, yeah, how would you define, describe retail media?

Retailers As Platforms And Daily Rituals

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Uh the simplest way, because we're a retail media publisher. Right. So I have to actually not say retail media in sequence. Yeah, I have to say we're retail history publication. Yeah. Um, because retail media in this industry is it's it's the ads on the retail website or in store. It's it's the paid, the paid placement of you know, boosting your product at the top, even all the way to end caps and it'll display screens in the store. There's a lot more, I guess, deals uh between brands and retail than I think a lot of consumers realize when there's like a huge like Super Bowl display or whatever. Like it I growing up, I thought, oh, they just try to sell more Pepsi, you know? Yeah. But you know. peeling back the veil, there's there's a lot of opportunity for brands to like take it, you know, get their get their product placed in ways that they want. Um so in a nutshell I I kind of simplify it to like my family and friends who aren't in the space. Just oh it's it's ads. Yeah. Right? It's paying for paying for your product to be to be boosted or placed or whatnot. Yeah. Uh do you is is that a common topic on the wire? Huge huge and what we've seen of course this is great prompts.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Nice.

Agnostic Commerce And Shopping Everywhere

SPEAKER_00 22:39

I mean this stuff that we we talk about uh weekly or sometimes you know daily it seems like uh this year has been very tough for margins friends and retailers uh wherever you're at in the supply chain um between you know tariffs and inflation you're seeing just razor thin margins or negative yeah we just have to you know sell anyway and so like if a retailer sells another hundred products of at that rate like it may not be much game but I I think that retail media there's a big push for it right now because it is a a high margin product you could say and you know it it gives retailers another rep revenue stream that could be really beneficial for the brands um especially you know you know we've talked about just the valuation of a of the company itself you know having having another dollar in to the retail media uh you know that's pretty much bottom line yeah that alternative income uh line item has grown yeah with every major retail platform yeah and that's there's still use alternative alternative income yeah generally speaking it depends on how it's how it's done but that's uh when you when you look at the earnings reports you look at the final releases like that's the the actual PL line to note and you both mentioned platform now um and knowing that you know Amazon has prime Walmart acquired Visio last year so retail media is going to continue to evolve let's kind of go into that that retailer is a platform you know how is that how's that benefit one versus another how are consumers engaging with that how's it impacting shopping behavior yeah I think that you're seeing this world of media entertainment who used to sell ads to brands and retailers and now retail is like well like you're spending a lot of money to like you know get on TV and why don't we just buy the TPD like no um put out our own kind of entertainment and media or create partnerships.

Channel Fragmentation And Supplier Overwhelm

SPEAKER_01 25:06

And um I think there's a lot about even just creating ritual around using let's say for the the Walmart app for example I had it on my phone and yeah if I fill up gas even if it's not like a Walmart station I like hey I can get a discount so I pull up my app I might actually scroll a little bit on the app and see what else is there while I'm filling up the gas. Yeah and so there's I think there's a mindset for retailers to be you know more I guess more involved in our lives and provide more value beyond just the transactional. Yeah a little more ubiquitous uh just interact with it you know it's not just store it's not just going to the website anymore it's yeah much more involved there's just more opportunities to connect um there was uh a a a post by uh founder of Ridge Wallet and he uh he said uh of course it was a hook to get you to read the post but he said e-commerce dead and he all the agnostic commerce yeah the omni channel is kind of this we're we use that term but customers don't really think of channels and especially like younger consumers they're just they don't really differentiate between online and in in store it's the same entity it's the same brand so agnostic commerce I don't know if that term will stick uh if she was just for that post kind of by a sense this idea that I mean customers they'll they'll shop wherever they are whether it's you know online in store on a TikTok maybe they're watching uh you know watching their favorite movie and or you know there's an ad and a little Q bar code right um so there are so many places that you could buy now and I think that that's something that a lot of retailers are thinking about now.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Yeah there's and there's there's in-game buy is something I've seen recently where they have a collection of games it's one kind of platform you earn points throughout the game and then there's an in in-game shop where you don't even have to leave the game to buy the thing that you're seeing there's something that you know might be interested to you cool. Yeah like physical products yeah oh yeah yeah not just the outfit for jersey one that you can yeah you can then take home something that exists yeah yeah yeah no that's interesting with in the the brands and suppliers manufacturers that you you talk to in this sort of retail space where's their mindset in in uh treating e treating retail as a platform as opposed to stuck in store really only concerned about growing store e-commerce is the other thing like how's how are you seeing that evolve?

Marketplace As Proving Ground For Stores

SPEAKER_01 28:12

There's definitely a pressure to if you're a supplier brand I think D to C is another component yeah you know when you're selling through the main retail channels there's a pressure to use some you know buy some more retail media to build that relationship and and get in there. And I think there's a little bit of overwhelm happening with like channel management. You know, between emerging brands they might start with just Walmart marketplace and Amazon marketplace and that's all they can really manage. But there are so many other places it's so it's it's fragmented. Yeah if you're really going to spend some ads you you really want to spin up another 10 retailers and and and and carry that management cost of keeping those relationships and making sure you know all the dirt things going right on top of that you know some form of a dashboard of everything that's happening and which which channels are are helping and which ones might be cannibalizing other ones. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

And what consumer segment is really leaning on one versus another and getting that uh that better understanding of consumer. Uh have you seen certain things work really well for suppliers that have decided to to move e-com penetration in their business from you know single digit into closer to that 20 or above 20 to outperform? Single digit e-commerce penetration versus store. I mean obviously we play a lot in the Walmart and Sam's world and that's where we are so that's kind of where I'm picturing people coming in and getting into Walmart stores massive massive win getting Walmart.com it there's a wide array of opinions on like oh this is amazing I can't believe it to like yeah yeah I've got a way bigger business on Amazon. It's like well yeah and what it takes to succeed there is different than what it takes to see succeed with Walmart and most don't quite understand that yet so I'm just curious of those that maybe in your journey or what you've seen that have successfully gone from like hey we were really under penetrated and now we're actually overpenetrated online and and how that journey unfolded.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

I don't know if I have a direct uh you know direct your case for that um but in general it's it's it seems like the the term incrementality comes into play a lot and because you know you you're gonna put effort into adding another channel and you wanted to do something. Do right uh and uh I think since Walmart has opened up Marketplace it's kind of given I think a little bit of a gray area for like a lot of people where it's like okay you're on Walmart but you're you know if you're in the marketplace it's kind of a step toward potentially you know showing that we can make sales here and when you finally get to like pitching to buyers at to actually get in stores then you have this track record. Yeah data in their yeah their house so to speak.

Test, Iterate, Then Scale In Store

SPEAKER_00 31:33

So whether it's their most profitable channel or whether they're selling at the margins they want to, I think that's what I've heard recently with brands looking to really get into it is still let's at least get your foot in the door and just start getting you know getting even just getting used to the way of operating we'd advise our clients on that if they're you know they're not in anything and we're we're talking about approach and talking about strategy and what the right assortment is, we'll say okay we we can have a meeting in three months let's go ahead and get started on the marketplace because that's going to come up like yeah are you on our marketplace we could say yes versus uh no I'll I'll look into that yeah and those that are a little bit you know further ahead that it's a it's a very smart pre-sale tactic yeah of like yeah grow that business grow it effectively and truly iterate learn understand your customer because you're now talking to Walmart's customer not just your D2C and that analogy is easier to bridge uh for a Walmart merchant of okay if you did this in marketplace you'll do this in store uh there are some merchants that are looking at it as like okay you know if we're selling mugs uh I carry these mugs in store these are only online but those online are outperforming my in-store items online it's equal playing field if I flip that and bring the online only that's outperforming Apple to apple will it outperform in store as well you know there's a there's quite a bit of pressure on if you know Apple to Apple online this thing is winning it's what should be in store not just whatever happened already be there. It's also a great way to avoid costly mistakes. For a company to launch into a national retailer and it not work but it could have worked had we done this color, this gems, this whatever you could learn this that's what you know that's uh whether it's first party feedback or reviews uh that's a that's a relatively inexpensive way to learn what you need to change about your product before you go big.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Do you find brands trying and going too big and going too you know too many stories all at once.

What’s Exciting Now: Stores And Personalization Limits

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Oh sure I mean when you're ready it happens sometimes it happens yeah it it probably happens a little bit less uh at least within our client basically to done this for a long time and we've seen you know that how how it can go sideways and sometimes it's just the littlest thing or it didn't quite have the right amount of people handling the orders for execution implementation. Or your packaging didn't really articulate yeah the value prop of your item and you didn't you didn't have to face that when you're a D2C because you've got all this additional real estate to talk about it. But that you know four seconds at shelf in a fluorescent lit you know very competitive space is really hard to to simulate but online you can test iterate a B test try and see what changes to that package are actually going to show up in store I think there's a reason ASOP wrote the tortoise in the hair right like sometimes it pays off to go a little slower right early on before you really put a foot on the gas. So as we uh we sort of move on I think the retail wire going to be a really helpful tool for those that are wanting to know where conversations are in retail to give us like the most interesting thing that you're seeing right now that is exciting the most exciting conversation you're having right now in the topic of retail what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Covered some of them with the AI and adjunctive commerce that's a really buzzworthy topic for sure um there's a lot of excitement around in-store retail yeah it's just it's you know maybe it's boring right compared to all the what the the the entire you know world of tech is is pushing it still is the main blitz. Yeah and still the gorilla you know this I think the for me and a really interesting topic is about how far will personalization go before people say stop personalizing so much right and just show me what you have um in general it just seems like yeah there's so much push from the tech side to implement all of these things um and the nuts and bolts of like what works in retail is so human. Yeah it's so it's unintrical to our psychology our biology who we are yeah and I don't I think there will come a time where some will will realize like that amount of data like we have to decide what is the useful data that we want to use.

The Enduring Power Of In‑Store Economics

SPEAKER_00 36:36

But so what actually should have stopped a few data points ago. Yeah. Because we're good.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Yeah yeah and and a lot still already is really a great equalizer yeah for sure that's where people they're in their full they're not just like one little screen scrolling and uh making impulse purchases or you know kind of separate from like their full sense senses. Um I think in store in fact on our roundtable this morning um one of the fashion brands he was saying that just the the cost of actually making online work as just a straight e-commerce brand in fashion he's like a lot of us are moving to in store like it actually just it works better as far as cost you'd think it's you'd think it'd be like cheaper you know and more effective just run lean on an e-commerce store but he's saying it's just it's hard to cut through it's getting really costly um and and in-store is something that's just a time tested proven yep method.

Lightning Round And Human Connection

SPEAKER_00 37:40

I think that's a great and there's an experience to picking your things up yeah I do like that we're we're we'll we'll kind of wrap on that that you know we we really start out with the agentec the the all the new uh but there's still a lot of stores and a lot of people shopping in them and at the end of the day you know whether it's omni whether it's agnostic it's all those things and we just got to follow the consumer at where they want to go. Love it you want to take us through the lightning yeah we got a lightning round we like to do a little a little something fast.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

The first one's real easy what's your greatest failure in business oh my gosh that's a really easy you're welcome or just one of the things what is yeah trying to think of like a straight failure but I think the theme of failure for me is just probably taking on taking on things that were just too big or too I bumped into something. Yeah triggered out later and that's it's worked for a lot of my life yeah there are times where it's like later kidding an opportunity just because it's there oh yeah and it it doesn't mean you're you will it will work out. Love that times no just say yes um last 12 months um biggest thing you've learned yeah as a as a CEO as a business person I've been a lot of my focus has been on on just understanding the retail industry what's happening um I would say it's gonna be kind of cliche but human connection right like in any industry whether you think that it's just back to that thing about data it's just yeah there's a bunch of data here's a bunch of people and if I wanted to connect with you know a thousand people with that certain job title great but ultimately it does come down to a human connection with yeah that yeah and that unscalable part it while everybody's talking about you know sending all your AI agents to talk to everybody and do all your networking for you it's like there's an unscalable part that just I don't think will ever go away. Totally yeah all right this one's a little bit of a trap but like where what are you reading kind of content are you into I am I've got a couple books I'm reading one is about the like the history backstory of open AI so that's called the Empire of AI.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Yeah very interesting yeah I'm like yeah it's back when Elon Musk was part of it.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Is it deepening your trust or um yeah I don't know uh let me know when you get to okay get to the end I get uh juicy and I think probably a good good segue for the rap is like okay where do people find you how do I sign up yeah so I'm I'm pretty active on LinkedIn so people can find me there just connect um and we host live stream uh for public live streams with different tech leaders and different retail leaders um and then we're also hosting those those private roundtables for brands that just want to talk in kind of a space where it's like you're free to say what yeah non competitive we're all needed at times so yeah yeah it's awesome um but retailwire.com is where people can find our publication sign up for the newsletter and get kind of updates of when the next events are fantastic that's great thank you so much for joining us and thank you for uh tuning in uh you can find all of our podcasts wherever you get your podcasts are on YouTube or on our website at highimpactanalytics dot com.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Thank you