Digital Front Door

Ep. 3 – Your Store Is the Strategy

• Scott Benedict • Season 1 • Episode 3

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The biggest threat to retail growth isn’t a new competitor or a shiny app. It’s the hidden friction inside stores that quietly drains baskets, shortens dwell time, and erodes loyalty without ever showing up on a dashboard. We sit down with retail strategist DeAnn Campbell to unpack “store blindness", the subtle wayfinding glitches, aisle flow breaks, and poor cues that cost millions, and map a practical path to turn physical locations into omnichannel profit engines.

DeAnn shares punchy case studies that reveal how small changes create big wins, like simplifying sweater folds for a 36% lift at Marks and Spencer and adding simple seating to help grandparents and pregnant shoppers stay longer and return less. From there, we dig into the hard truth: inventory accuracy is the foundation for everything modern, from AI-powered recommendations to agentic search and retail media. With real-time stock data, the store becomes the hub and e-commerce the force multiplier, especially when BOPIS zones connect directly to loyalty for higher margin add-ons.

We explore how AI supercharges both customer journeys and associate performance. Think live translation, cultural guidance, and product coaching that turns employees into trusted advisors on the floor. We also get tactical about underused design surfaces, shoppable windows tied to live inventory, geofenced app nudges, in-queue education, and meaningful, dynamic thank-yous at the exit, that deepen engagement and data capture. Finally, we outline the cultural shift leaders need: fresh-eyes audits, a one–three–five-year AI roadmap, modular stores that move like websites, fluid checkout everywhere, and a new metric, total contribution value, that reflects how stores influence revenue beyond the POS.

If you care about unifying channels, lifting margins, and building a store that actually earns its place at the center of your ecosystem, this conversation will give you concrete steps to start today and a vision to aim for tomorrow. Enjoy the episode, share it with your team, and subscribe for more deep dives on the digital-physical retail edge.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Digital Front Door. I'm Scott Benedict. You know, uh, we've been really looking a lot at how innovation impacts digital retailing, but we haven't really talked as much in recent episodes about how technology and the integration of stores and digital retail work together. I'm excited to introduce someone who's deeply immersed in this concept of the intersection of stores, store design, customer experience, and what's next with as it relates to how physical retail and digital retail work together to create an engaging experience with consumers. Our guest today is Deanne Campbell. She's a seasoned retail strategist with over 20 years of experience. She's worked with some of the world's most interesting brands, taking on roles that blend store design, customer experience, and operational strategy. I think what makes Deanne's work especially compelling today is her focus on helping retailers overcome what she calls store blindness, the hidden friction, invisible inefficiencies, and missed opportunities that don't show up anywhere on dashboards, but erode the customer experience and profit in physical retail. She leads the charge from her firm storewise and through her Substack newsletter, Store Blindness, Fresh Eyes, Hidden Wins, and where she brings a really fresh perspective on how stores can be reimagined, not just in as traditional points of sale, but as very agile, channel agnostic profit centers that are really defined by omnichannel demand and artificial intelligence. And Deanne and I are also fellow members of the Rethink Advisory Group, and we have that in common. And so I'm excited to welcome uh Deanne to the Digital Front Door. Deanne, welcome and thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, thank you. Scott, I'm so excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

In indeed, we're glad to have you. Why don't we start uh today with kind of defining this concept of store blindness that you talk about? Uh, can you explain what you mean uh when you say that and why so many retailers in your mind struggle to see profit drains happening inside the four walls of their physical locations?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, physical stores suffer from systemic blind spots because most retailers don't have the perspective to see them. You know, leaders up in HQ, they don't walk their stores often enough to see real day-to-day issues. And of course, as we all know, when they do visit, stores are often on their best behavior and all spiffed up. And inside the stores, frontline employees have become overexposed to routines and spaces that they see day after day after day. And that's retailers who've gone what I call store blind. And these are not obvious overt things. They're subtle, they're like confusing wayfinding, disruptive aisle flows, or not taking out uh discontinued piece of equipment. Small, but all of these are friction points that chip away at the customer experience. And they have an outsized impact on things like basket size and brand loyalty. And the interesting thing is that shoppers are not going to complain about things like this. They wouldn't even be able to name them if you asked them directly if there was a problem. They would just feel like something is off and they wouldn't know what it is. But they will show you how they feel through shorter dwell times, smaller baskets, and you know, these little in-store behaviors that are going to add up to you losing millions of dollars each year. And really what's really scary is that data dashboards are not going to surface these types of issues at all. They're very difficult to uncover. And your employees are very likely not going to see them either. It really does take a fresh pair of eyes trained on what to look for to find these kinds of hidden problems.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's interesting. I'm worried or wondering, perhaps, can you share maybe some practical examples of some store-level blind spots that that you've uncovered with one of your retail clients and how the the effort to address it maybe improved the customer experience and we would hope the bottom line?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh gosh, there's so many. Um couple that I'm my favorites, we did a flow study for Marks and Spencer. This was a while ago, and they wanted to understand why sales in their men's department were low. Um and we went in expecting to find something complicated, like product mix was wrong, display layout was wrong. But what we really found, silly, sweaters and shirts that were displayed on tables were folded in a very complicated way. And customers didn't want to unfold them because they didn't feel like they could refold them quite so nicely. And so because they didn't want to unfold them, they wouldn't open them up and look at them. And so they didn't buy them. So when the products were simply folded and had off, sales went up 36%. Crazy. Dashboard data would not have shown this. It would have looked shown up as lack of dwell time. And of course, then the client would have looked at product mix or display layout. So for zero cost, the sales were boosted significantly just by finding that silly little hidden friction point.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's funny. Uh as you're as you're sharing that story, I'm thinking back to going shopping with my parents as a little boy and being told, now, don't touch that or don't mess up that display or whatever. And so I can visualize how consumers, particularly when a display of merchandise like like like sweaters is so nicely neatly done that you wouldn't want to touch it, wouldn't want to mess it up. Uh, and obviously you want consumers to always feel comfortable uh looking at the merchandise, particularly in apparel and and maybe holding up and and visualizing uh owning it. And if uh and it it shocks me, but it doesn't, the fact that just that one little example drove uh sales up, right? It's so silly.

SPEAKER_01:

Another good one is uh big box children's store. Babies are us. You know, it's easy to forget. 25% of sales in children's goods come from grandparents who might get tired walking a big box store. Add in some inexpensive seating to the store, and families can shop longer, and sales are going to go up. Even more importantly, pregnant women are going to be able to spend more time choosing items for your baby registry. And all of this boosted revenue. And not only that, it reduced returns. And especially with the pregnant women, because now they could sit and pick out their baby baby registry items and be comfortable in person instead of seeing them online only, which had a much higher return rate. And this one kind of bugs me a little because if you look at the baby department today in Target, Walmart, Carter, none of them have seatings, uh, seating areas. And I still hear complaints from pregnant women that they can't stay in the store very long because there is no place to sit. And again, dashboards are not going to reveal this kind of stuff, and staff are not going to think about it, probably.

SPEAKER_00:

It's interesting. You know, uh as retailers uh, we both see this push to harmonize their offer and their experience between digital and physical channels. I'm curious where you see maybe some of the biggest disconnects between those uh those channels. And are there any steps in your view that retailers can take to make the physical store environment uh kind of engage or or maybe reflect off of their digital experiences uh as well?

SPEAKER_01:

You know, the number one is probably not going to be a surprise to anybody, but it's inventory accuracy. Um, inventory truth is still a long way from being real-time and accurate. Um, you know, store systems, e-commerce, uh distribution centers, they still disagree on inventory count. Um, agents and apps are still showing items that are, you know, not on store shelves. Very frustrating for customers and for stores. And until this gets solved, we're really not going to be able to achieve any of the benefits of what I call AI singularity in retail. Um, and so that's really the biggest disconnect between stores and AI. And it's really just a disconnect in general in AI, but it connects to everything. But the other big disconnect is that retailers still view online and offline as separate entities, especially from an accounting and investment perspective. You know, and what really they should be looking at physical stores as the hub of their ecosystem and e-commerce as the force multiplier. And really, in truth, they look at stores and e-commerce in exactly the opposite way today. And you know, I I guess I I get it because there's still that bias of looking at a physical store as sales per square foot and measuring it. And you know, the store's got to deliver a certain level of sales per square foot to earn its keep. And they're also looking at frontline labor as uh you know a loss leader on a burden on the books, and that's usually the first place they cut if they need cost savings. But in an AI ecosystem, this kind of thinking really um it's kind of the equivalent of communicating by fax machine in a cloud computing world. So I think the first step for me would be to start, of course, working towards anything you can do to make inventory data real-time and reliable across stores and distribution centers. So that's number one essential, critical. But my second step would be to move inside the stores and start designing pickup zones and shopping areas as true omnichannel zones. Um, I personally would start with a bopus area in the store, buy online pickup in stores. And I would create that area and tie it directly into a loyalty app or loyalty system, because that is really going to drive the biggest revenue and margin lift. And it's going to plant the seeds of cultural change as well and connect, start connecting your channels through AI. And I know everybody has already dipped their toe in the bogus water, but AI has is really going to level that up and smooth out all the rough edges. And it's going to start positioning your store as a strong business hub that supports your ecosystem. And more importantly, and this is one a lot of retailers have not started thinking about yet, it's going to position your business to start showing up in agentic browsing searches. And it's also going to start positioning your store to use future Libras like retail media revenue, you know, and and because if you don't have access to first-party data and zero party data, you are not attractive to a reading retail media network.

SPEAKER_00:

Interesting. Yeah, you know, it's funny that uh we can't have uh a retail-related conversation, whether it's a podcast or uh a print article where AI doesn't enter in the conversation. And you started to go there. So let me let me go there a little bit further. They can't be avoided. You've uh I I've heard you describe uh future stores as AI ready engines of growth. I think you started to touch on it there, but I'm curious, what does that look like more in practice? Are we talking about uh analytics, automation, predictive design, or is it something broader or or or bigger than that?

SPEAKER_01:

You know, um I think stores are really the hub of a retailer's business and the foundation supporting every other channel. And it's a new way of thinking about stores for most retailers. Um they they view it as kind of off over there channel unto itself. The more you encourage shoppers to pass through your hub, the more successful you can be. Um I know that e-commerce profit margins have steadily improved over the past decade, and they can even be higher than physical stores in some verticals and categories. But in terms of net profitability, stores still generate um, it still are still higher overall. They offer lower returns, um, richer first party data, the conversion rates are higher, baskets are bigger, you know, brand recognition, loyalty, all of that is is much, much better coming from a physical store than online. And I think it always will be because if you can touch it and feel it and see it with your eyes, that that can't be replicated, even even if you're in um uh a virtual reality world. And now, of course, um I mentioned stores getting positioned for agentic browsing and retail media network, um, which are going to become even more important, I think. And of course, 80% of sales still happen in stores today. So why not go where the shoppers want to be? You know, why not why do you want to be a fish swimming upstream? So AI is really uh a a godsend, I think, for retailers. Uh yes, it's change. It's it's it's it's a seminal change, it's huge change, but it is really uh going to help plus up that speed and accuracy for the communication and data that that retailers have been missing to sync their inventory systems, to sync their media systems and their CMS, and in many cases, sync all three of those things together as well. So connecting AI to your stores is like attaching a hyperdrive system to your entire business. Um I think if you put AI and BOPUS together and you get shoppers buying online, but coming into your stores to pick up their their products, you know, more than 65% of those shoppers are gonna buy more items when they come in to pick up their product. And so in addition to that, AI will help you, you know, with inventory accuracy. Um, you're not gonna have those misses. Ad sharing, AI is gonna help you with ad sharing when you come in to pick up that product, loyalty benefits and all these other things that you couldn't do in the past. When you think about AI and CMS, you know, allow shoppers to not just put something in their cart and come into the store, but allow the shopper when they log in, if they're a loyal loyalty member, allow them to browse around and and and just take a look. And then when they come into the store, they can pick right up where they left off rather than having to start over. So this is going to shorten their time to purchase and be much less frustrating. They don't have to recreate everything and what was I looking at again? And and so I can't believe we're not there already. It's just taken us so long. My goodness.

SPEAKER_00:

Um it seems like it sometimes, and and it's interesting because with all the discussion on AI and technology broadly, occasionally human beings, store associates, get lost in that conversation. And I would argue, and I I bet you would agree, that retailing has always been about people, whether it's the your store associates or your customers. And I'm I'm starting to hear, and you've probably seen it too, that AI is complementing what store associates can do standing face to face with a customer, uh, that there's there's now uh a kind of a melding of technology with the human interaction rather than replacing it. And my question is is uh as you think about this this concept of store blindness and and working with retailers to help resolve it, it feels like that that blending of uh of a tech-enabled human standing there helping a consumer uh on a sales floor at a point of sale is a trend that really has some legs uh going forward. Plus, I think you probably get some data out of that, that to your point is helpful in loyalty programs and may have benefits down the road in driving the next purchase. Are we thinking about that the right way?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. You know, uh most major retailers are already giving employees handheld devices, but they're not yet leveraging the power of AI to plus that up to its full power and allow that employee to engage with the customer at a at a level that's really going to add a quality customer experience. Um, think about um cultural behaviors or special customs and helping the employee engage or or not offend a customer who has a special custom um that that is specific to their their country or their allow language translation in the store, you know, in instantaneously. We we can do that now, but it's not really made available to employees and it's not um it's it's it's just not used. Local events and talking points, you know, allow uh allow an employee to get a conversation going, information about hobbies, you know. If I'm filling in for somebody pinch hitting in the fishing department, I don't know anything about fishing. I'm not going to be able to give them advice on which fishing pole to use, but I can certainly pull up information on fishing holes in the Georgia area. And I can ask have you fished in any of them? I can get them talking. You know, shopping is about stories. If I can't tell us my fishing story, I can certainly get them talking about their fishing story, and that's just as good. So um that these are the kinds of things that AI excels at. And so I think uh in addition to that, prompting employees on not just product information, but upsells to go with. And as this is especially important for complex project uh products like televisions, you know, uh I don't know anything about TVs, refresh rates, pixels, connectors, but helping helping a person understand what sound system goes with the TV. I mean, these kinds of things are very complicated. And AI can really help with that because you often, yes, you can pull it up yourself, but pulling it up with an employee to help you interpret and walk through, and sometimes even just hold your hand as you're making a very expensive decision, is incredibly helpful. And um, something else that I think is overlooked as far as human experience in stores with AI is employees, um, the employee side. And I know management is already using AI to help schedule scheduling in stores and optimizing employee hours. What about helping employees? You know, I've got a vacation in six months. You know, help me maximize my hours and get a few more hours so I can earn extra money between now and six months. And that that kind of thing is something AI could do to help you find those little pockets of need for earning extra money. And so it's it's really a two-way street. And I think that that's where AI could really be of benefit in retention and quality of life for employees as well as for customers.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you know, you raise an interesting point because we we hopefully think about it in the context of the customer. We we we should, but to the degree that that technology is an enabler of a better uh employee experience is, to your point, a component of of uh uh retention and hopefully uh reducing turnover that I don't think anybody's talking about or or thinking about. So I'm so glad that you brought it up. And hopefully that that light bulb moment will start to occur for a lot of retailers as the competition for talent is just as robust as it is the competition for for customers and and for sales. So uh it's interesting that you bring that up. Uh I'm I'm curious about the role of store design, since that's part of your background uh in Omnichannel, particularly your background in architecture design. What elements do you think uh of a physical store design are the most underutilized today in driving digital engagement and maybe cross-channel uh success? I I've heard, and you've probably heard a lot of retailers say that a customer that engages them in both physical and digital channels on any metric you care to mention is more valuable a consumer than any single-channel customer. And so it feels like this is this concepts are important, but I'm curious, you you touched on it a little bit earlier, can you dive maybe a little level deeper on how that how those elements of design maybe can be bolstered or improved at a lot of retailers.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, there's there's so many underutilized area in the store. Um really from from a retail perspective, uh front windows, uh they're really mostly used for static display and branding. Why not shoppable windows? And I know a few retailers are are testing that, but uh with AI it it can become much more affordable, much more relevant, and much more manageable. And now tied to your newly accurate and real-time inventory system, uh, you can make sure that that it ties directly to products that you have in stock. Order it on uh from the window, and it can you can um have it delivered to your home or pick it up when the store opens in the morning. Um another thing, and uh I hope I don't get you in trouble because I know you're recording in Bentonville. But uh when you walk in the store, um there rarely is anything like a geofenced app to trigger loyalty app users to engage with that app. And this is a pet peeve of mine when I walk into my local Walmart, because I do have the Walmart Plus app, and there are benefits to using that app in store. There is absolutely no signage in the store to remind me to open that app when I get there. And there is no signage anywhere, even at checkout. And all of my friends have the same complaint. We forget to use the app. We get home and we go, ah, I should have used the app. And something to trigger even just a ping would remind me to use that, uh, to use my app when I'm in store. And it would be a benefit for Walmart as well as for the customer. So there is a an underutilized area where AI could really help uh ping ping the person to open the app and give them a benefit, reward them for opening it. Here's a here's a coupon for uh free ice ice cream or something.

SPEAKER_00:

I I think you raise raise a good point. It and and one or two people from Walmart have been known to listen to this podcast. So we'll we'll see if they pick up on that. I I've noticed, and you probably noticed this too, that that the best example of what you just described is the Starbucks app. That anytime I get within the geofense of a Starbucks location, my phone highlights the fact that I'm near Starbucks where I like to place an order. And and so it it's not some theoretical construct. It's happening out there in the coffee retailing space, the coffee shop space, but it it's only a matter of time, it feels like, before it comes to other other parts of retail. So the the point is is certainly well made, and and hopefully somebody will hear that. Uh and the fact that you brought it up, I didn't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it it does. And there's there's other areas like checkout cues. You know, they're usually treated as pure play transaction uh or impulse buying, but that's the last brand touch with your customer before they leave your store. So where is the call to action for loyalty enrollment for bopus conversion for your next big singles event? And and my big pet peeve peeve is where is the big fat thank you? You know, you usually it's a little teeny tiny printout on your receipt. Thank you for being a uh whatever. Um, but why not have some kind of digital signage driven by AI that delivers a meaningful thank you that changes frequently as you leave the store. And it can be engaging and it can be connected to uh day part and events around the community. And so, and it can be fun and um humorous or or delightful and and customers look forward to they feel actually thanked for shopping in that store. And that is a nice touch that costs very little, that I and it's subliminal, but it's it's meaningful. And the other is I don't know, shopping at Sephora or Ulta. I'm standing in line usually for quite some time, and there's nothing while I'm standing in line to teach me about the benefits of becoming a member. And only when I'm up at the counter checking out and paying do I find out about it when the the clerk tells me, but by then I just want to get out of the store. So there's another area where it's highly underutilized. Um, and don't even get me started on fitting ropes.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, it's I I've heard many people say throughout micro retailing that one of the best things you can do with a customer when you engage them in a physical location is to call them by name and by and thank them. The technology exists now, to your point, uh, that you you will you can see that come up on a point of sale display or or or something that's perhaps even automated that says, hey Scott, thank you for coming in today. Thank you for shopping at X, wherever whatever store that is in. And even just that little thing of acknowledging someone's name and thanking them for shopping is now becoming increasingly enabled by technology, but not everybody to your point is taking advantage of that that opportunity, and perhaps if you should, right?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, you just bought a roast, uh, you know, a four-pound roast from us. Thank you so much. But if you need help on knowing how to cook it, you know, our look at our loyalty app can has a recipe section or something. I I don't know.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. No, it feels like there's a lot of opportunity out there. And and we've come a long way, but then we still have a long, long ways to go in in fully fully fully leveraging the capabilities that technology, I think, gives us both in-store and online. And I'm kind of curious, that leads me to the next question. Implementing the kind of the transformations that that you're you're talking about, we've talked about, is more than just fixtures or technology or signage. It also requires a little bit of cultural changes in retail organizations. And I'm curious, based on the work that you've Done throughout your career. What advice do you give to leaders in retail organizations who want to shift their organizations, kind of set them up to be successful in the future, leveraging technology like AI, but also being some degree of channel agnostic that we're we're thankful that you shopped with us no matter how the transaction ultimately came about. What do you think leaders maybe are missing, or is there some advice that you would give uh leaders at retail as to how to think about this and the future of their business a little bit differently?

SPEAKER_01:

That's a great question. You're gonna make me think. So that's my perspective. But I would tell them to begin to look at their stores differently. And the starting point that I find easiest is to find a fresh pair of eyes to ferret out all those hidden drains and missed opportunities in their stores that are costing revenue or margin and really max start maximizing every possible dollar from their stores. And every penny counts in today's economy, but that's not the only reason why. The reason why is because that is going to be a great starting point to get everyone in your business to start thinking differently about your business without having to spend a lot of capital. It's it's a great Kickstarter for cultural change that touches every employee in your organization and starts the thinking process that is important to get them to embrace the AI culture. And the second thing I would do is to get busy building a roadmap, one, three, and five years, no more than five years, because Lord knows what we're going to be doing in five years.

SPEAKER_00:

Indeed.

SPEAKER_01:

I think we'll all be uploaded to uh Skynet by them. Um, but you know, a roadmap towards transitioning your organization to that AI singularity and start with the fundamentals, you know, the unified inventory accuracy, which is of course, it has to be number one. Then continuing to work on your culture and become fluid, and then start executing that roadmap one step at a time, using your stores as a grounding platform and a living lab. And I think that's really a great way to approach it because it's it's accessible and it's doable and you're not biting off more than you're you can chew. And it's something that you're gonna have turnover in your organization. You're going to have uh people who don't understand, you're gonna have uh legacy people who will struggle with AI. So doing it that way is something everybody can get on board with and in their own way without slowing down the process of change.

SPEAKER_00:

Neat. And that's probably the perfect uh segue to the to the last question I I wanted to pose to you. And and you kind of uh previewed this in your comments there, but let's look three to five years down the road. I as hard as I know that will be. But let me try and keep it in the context of this this idea of the store of the future and and where store design and store experiences go. What do you think are some of the things that retailers uh today need to be ready for and be thinking about as they look down the road in terms of how the stores serve as what you call kind of the center of their ecosystem and their engagement, uh, but that intersects with a lot of other aspects of their business. What should they be thinking about?

SPEAKER_01:

I love this question. I was talking about it the other day, so it's top of mind. So buckle up. Yeah, stores really haven't evolved much in decades. And all we've essentially done is tack technology on, but not make any other real change. So going forward, we're really gonna have to think about stores like a physical version of a website, fluid, flexible, and continuously evolving. That means the base building itself is going to need a lot of infrastructure to become flexible in itself, grid systems to allow lights, sensors, and cameras to move about because your everything in your store, your mod, your store fixtures and displays, everything's gonna have to be modular. So you can move that around as well. And so as you move, when every time you reconfigure your store, you're going to want your lights and your sensors and cameras and all that to move with it. Um, building automation systems, you're going to need those to allow AI to adjust lighting, temperature, music, smell, even scent, I guess I should call it, not smell. The sounds better. So that you can personalize your store to the community. And even by day part, um, you know, it's game day. I'm going to make the store smell like popcorn and play um big band music or whatever to get people riled up. And and and I'm going to show signage that congratulates the or wishes good luck to the local football, uh high school football team or whatever. And that's going to make the community feel affinity for me and love me and feel loyalty and remember me. Um the digital layer of the store that is going to be fully interconnected. Everything that is digital in the store will be connected and talk to each other. So retail media networks, um, digital signage, um, uh shelf signage, RFID, sensors, cameras, everything will communicate with each other, but they'll also be connected to local businesses, artists, events, you know, media ads, inventory. And so it's all going to be real time and connected back to stock that is in the store and topics that are relevant. And um so it's going to make sure that you have no um you know waste product wastage and and so the thing that I um have been thinking about, and I I can't quite visualize what it'll look like, but checkouts are going to be fully fluid. You can check out any way you like. If you want to have an assisted checkout, you can you can grab an employee anywhere in the store and immediately get their assistants to check out, or you can have a self-checkout from anywhere in the store. You can be, I I call it trusted checkout, where if you're cleared by the, you know, as you're as a loyalty member, you can use your app to shop and check out and just walk out. Excuse me. And then the big thing is measurement. Um, stores are gonna be measured by total contribution value, not sales per square foot. You may never sell a thing in your store, but the value that store brings to your bottom line will be huge without without uh having a sale, uh, without having sales in it. And frontline employees will be the same. They're gonna be measured by things like um revenue influence and data and AI enablement and repeat business impact, not by commissions. And it it's it's going to change how you view stores and and merge channels into one. And it's really going to be uh uh a different retail world all around.

SPEAKER_00:

That is so exciting, and it and I I think one of the things uh that I have always told anybody who would listen about why I chose to go into retailing is that it's never dull, it's always changing, and there's something always kind of exciting going on, and and everything you just shared and that vision kind of proves that. So uh uh for our however much excitement we've enjoyed so far in our respective careers, there's there are really exciting things, I think, ahead, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Right, right. I think it's all good news because AI really forces retailers to get back to good fundamentals. You can't you can't fudge it or fake it with technology. You have to have good customer service, good customer experience, good products, whether they're white label or brand. And uh your stores have to be clean and neat and the product, this the shelves well stocked. Your your delivery has to be on time and trackable. And so it's really getting back to basics in a good way. And so I think ultimately it's good news for good retailers.

SPEAKER_00:

Indeed. Well, I gotta tell you, Deanne, this has been uh a fascinating conversation. And I think you've shown us that the future of retail isn't just about adding new tech or new channels, but about having the clarity to see what's happening inside stores today, identifying where some of those drains are in the experience uh and as a result in sales, and maybe redesigning physical spaces to become a little bit more agile and a little bit more adaptive uh to the customer. And so thank you so much uh uh for joining us. And I think one of the things I want to tell our listeners, that the takeaway in my mind is clear that overcoming what Dean calls a store blindness is not an optional construct. It's really an essential element for creating trust with customers, improving conversion, and making the store a uh a true uh engine of growth in an increasingly omni-channel uh world. So, Deanne, thank you so much for your insights and for helping us think a little bit differently about how physical retail can evolve going forward.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you so much, Scott. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00:

Good deal. If you'd like to learn more about Deanne's work, uh you can visit her website at storewise.com, sign up for her uh Substack newsletter, uh, or you can learn more about our team uh at Rethink Advisory by visiting topretailexperts.com. Thank you, everyone, for listening for the digital front door. I'm Scott Benedict.