The evolution of frictionless shopping in self-checkout continues to meet customer expectations and enhance the in-store experience. What’s behind the technology?   Join Robin and Shelley to reveal the expanding role of RFID across retail industries and its broader use cases in supply chain, customer engagement areas, and combating theft and counterfeiting.  This is a critical conversation you won’t want to miss.  Special Guests:  Bill Toney, Vice President Global, Food Solutions, Avery...

Weather analytics and retail are connected. The most basic connection is seasonal changes prompt seasonal sales. But there’s more to it.  Special guest Evan Gold, EVP of Global Partnerships & Alliances at Planalytics joins Robin and Shelley to talk weather’s impact on retail. Learn how climate change has added complexities into understanding and managing one of retail’s biggest disruptive forces… the weather.  Using analytics to better manage how today’s volatile weather patterns impact...

The state of AI in retail today can be as confusing as it is exciting. But it is a board mandate for retail, without question. The opportunity to drive higher productivity and profitability is massive, yet it’s still a technology that needs to be driven by a purpose. The first and most critical question:  What are you trying to solve for?  Join Purva Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO of Lily, with Robin and Shelley as they deconstruct the common pitfalls of “tech vendor math” and reveal a new path...

Recent failures of Matches, FarFetch, and Net-a-Porter has left Mythersea as the last luxe multi-brand standing. High spenders prefer to buy directly from brand companies like LVMH, Christian Dior, Gucci, and Hermès. And these luxe majors would rather sell directly to consumers than wholesale to a multi-branded ecommerce website.  Join Robin and Shelley as they roll back the curtain on what’s going on with luxury ecomm.  What’s more, live streaming will be another nail in the coffin for...

Consumers are speaking out. A class action lawsuit has been filed by two Hermès shoppers in Northern California who are fed up with sales tactics used by this luxury powerhouse.  They allege that the French luxury brand violates federal and California antitrust laws when selling its iconic status-symbol Birkin and Kelly handbags. They claim Hermès has illegally forced customers to spend thousands of dollars on other products to gain access to buying a Birkin bag.  Join Robin and Shelley...

Don’t dismiss the power play of the growing community of content creators, recognized as the cultural leaders of the 21st century.  Proof? The creator economy market is expected to double to $480 billion by 2027.  Join Julian Greene, Head of Creator Partnerships at Flagship along with Robin and Shelley in a candid conversation about how social media has unlocked a flood of content creators and the monetization of creator commerce. They also dispel common myths surrounding the burgeoning...

Here is a tale of four female CEOs with contrasting and compelling leadership styles.  Take Mary Dillon, who led 288% revenue growth at Ulta but is now grappling with the past two years of slower growth at Footlocker. Contrast that with Fran Horowitz, CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch, who has overseen 16% growth in 2023 and a remarkable 10% CAGR since 2019 since 2017.   Join Robin and Shelley as they delve into two leadership styles and strategic approaches to reveal how these two leaders...

Fashion ecomm has evolved from customers finding and visiting websites to seek out what they want, to search-enabled discovery, to today’s modern model of bringing fashion directly to you and replicating the excitement of impulse purchasing …online.  The art and science of the shopping experience have also been perfected with the help of influencers who are real and authentic.   Join special guest Tarek Müller, star entrepreneurial founder of ABOUTYOU along with Robin and Shelley in a lively...

Tony Spring is creating a bold new chapter at Macy’s and he will inevitably face off with activist vultures. His strength as a strategic marketer should pave the way to a reimagined Macy’s.  Join Robin and Shelley as they dive into Spring’s strategic shift to close underperforming stores and open local, smaller format stores. They deconstruct how Macy’s will grow with a strategic emphasis on technology, data transparency, and AI-driven marketing to support a consumer-focused...

There’s a store across the street and thousands more just a key tap away. Consumers are addicted to the explosion of websites, marketplaces, and direct-to-consumer brands flooding cyberspace. The upside for consumers is lower prices and anything they want; the downside for brands is the impact on the environment and a race to the bottom.  Join Robin and Shelley as they pull the curtain back on the U.S. retail marketplace. Quick preview: U.S. marketplace retail sales grew by an estimated 10.2%...

One of the hottest tickets this year is the much-anticipated annual edition of Shoptalk in Las Vegas.  This year’s key topics will not disappoint, with a focus on how AI can transform your business, create unified retail experiences, harness brand power, and build loyalty via seamless customer journeys.  Join Robin, Shelley, and special guest Krystina Gustafson, SVP of Content for Shoptalk, as they share a sneak peek into one of the most talked about events of the year.     For more...

Here’s a provocative thought: The sum of retail is greater than its parts. Historically, retailers benchmark individual store profit for physical retail as a mainstay of performance measurement. But in a digital marketplace, brick-and-mortar profitability goes beyond the scope of the four walls. Join Robin, Shelley, and special guest Steve Morris, founder of ASG and a well-known real estate strategist, as they redefine profitability in an omnichannel world. Listen to this insightful...

Returns have become a huge headache for retailers and a hassle for customers --  and the growth of online sales has exacerbated the problem. The cost of returns continues to skyrocket, impacting the bottom line, and at the same time, the negative environmental impact of returned goods is growing.  Join Robin, Shelley, and special guest David Sobie, Co-founder and CEO of Happy Returns, a software and reverse logistics company that enables frictionless, no-box, no-label returns for merchants...

The retail environment is moving at lightning speed, making C-suite succession planning more difficult. Case in point? Gap has had a revolving door of CEOs ever since trying to replace Mickey Drexler.  Leading the retail industry in a digital marketplace and finding the right talent has become an exercise in art and science. Join Robin, Shelley, and Kevin Finnegan from Global Recruiters of Lowcountry as they discuss why understanding frontline workers and moving fast on the tech side are...

With the sheer number of retail startups at NRF, you’d think you were at the Big AI Show at the Javits Center in New York last week.  Clearly, retail tech offers the partnerships, innovations, and solutions required to operate in a digital marketplace. And AI, in its many forms, dominated the conversations at the expo, in the hallways, and on stage.  Join Robin and Shelley as they debrief on the big ideas and themes that will re-engineer retail. Startups, including JumpMind, Nexite,...

Gen Z and the Alphas right behind them are deeply influencing brands and workplace cultures.  Diversity, equity, and inclusion are table stakes for the next gens who have a new set of values and are hyper-socially aware. Retailers and brands that don’t see the importance of today’s cultural movement will be left whistling in the wind.  Join Robin and Shelley as they face the issues head-on. A&F and Lululemon have recovered from former leadership tone-deaf statements about customers and...

The Robin Report Retail Radicals celebrate the icons and iconoclasts that are reinventing legacy retail. Each of these remarkable brands has a deep brand ethos, appeals to a multigenerational customer, and stays true to their brand strategy. They survive and thrive in disruptive marketplaces with enlightened leadership. Join Robin and Shelley as they share the back stories of what makes the 2023 Radicals so great with details on impressive innovations and unique customer experiences while...

Preemptive distribution is pushing retailers to go local with assortments, services, and indigenous products. Advances in retail technologies will enable localization with precise customer preferences and more relevant product assortments, while marketplaces and strategic partnerships will continue to grow. Marketing becomes hyper-personalized through robust AI analytics, and retail media network and ad spending will soar. As a top priority, retailers will need to up their efforts in...

Retail accounting provides a snapshot of real-time profit margins, but it may lead to an overstatement of profits since the practice is based on retail pricing.  With fluctuations in selling prices, is cost-based accounting really a better measure of performance for the retail industry?  Join Robin, Shelley and Paula Rosenblum, co-founder and managing partner of RSR Research, as they discuss why many companies are looking toward moving to cost-based accounting away from a practice that is...

What’s the story behind organized retail crime?  It has commanded national headlines and resulted in many stores being transformed into locked vaults. Join Robin and Shelley as they deconstruct the situation, discussing that the narrative about organized retail crime has been exaggerated.  The backstory is the advocacy to build greater support for national law enforcement and more coordinated efforts across agencies alongside more stringent legislation. Companies may be using ORC as a cover...

What it means to be a brand today goes beyond the single dimension of yesterday’s mono-brand definition. Now, savvy brands use past successes and morph them into an evolved, multifaceted branding experience. Join trends expert Leslie J. Ghize, EVP of DONEGER TOBE, with Robin and Shelley in a riveting conversation about the new branding imperative and what is top of mind for consumers heading into 2024. Stay tuned as Leslie shares her insights about the lingering emotional and...

How is Holiday 2023 going to end up? Even when customers are facing turbulent,  unpredictable market trends and world events, they continue to spend.  It could be just “Doom Spending” to cope with stress about the economy and external global factors.  The bigger question is: Will consumer spending keep growing into 2024?   Join special guest Nick Mangiapane, Chief Marketing Officer at Commerce Signals, Robin, and Shelley as they discuss retail consumer spending patterns and predictions for...

Black Friday Creep has moved over $5 billion out of November and December into October.  Join Robin and Shelley with guest Angela Thompson, Principal of Thompson Marketing Consulting, as they look at the broader impact of Pre-Black Friday sales. Pressure on retailers to perform and comp year-over-year sales have a flip side.  While daily deals might be exciting for some passionate shoppers, they may be overwhelming for others -- especially if it becomes a race to the bottom. Angela will...

The U.S. has one of the highest per capita consumption of plastics in the world, driven principally by packaging. Enter a Swedish inventor Åke Rosén with Biodolomer, an alternative that looks and acts like plastic, but is renewable, biodegradable, compostable, convertible to renewable energy, gives off virtually no CO2 emissions, and does not generate microplastics.  Too good to be true?  Join Robin and Shelley with brand strategist Kristoffer Reiter, Principal of Cohesive Whole and Nils...