S6E7 The Lead Recap – 8 Retail Trends for 2026

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[00:00:00] Teaser

[00:00:01] Casey Golden: Half of your customers are already shopping with AI. Half. And most retailers have no idea what to do about it.

[00:00:09] Ricardo Belmar: We spent two days last week at the Lead Summit in New York with the people actually running retail right now, and what we heard was wild. Every AI experiment built to replace humans, a failure. Every one built to extend humans, winner!

[00:00:22] Casey Golden: There's a wave of gray swans coming. GLP-1, aging America, supply chains, that most brands are flat out ignoring. And one CEO said it best, "A business built around a single geography isn't lean, it's exposed."

[00:00:39] Ricardo Belmar: We're breaking down our top eight themes from the LEAD Summit that every retail leader needs to hear for 2026

[00:00:47] Casey Golden: Hit subscribe. Let's go

[00:00:49]

[00:01:01] Show Intro

[00:01:01] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back to the Retail Razor Show for this special bonus episode.

[00:01:05] I'm Ricardo Belmar.

[00:01:06] Casey Golden: And I'm Casey Golden. Today's episode is one we've been excited to record since we got to spend some time in person together in New York City last week for the LEAD Summit.

[00:01:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right. Fortunately, we finally were able to be both in one place last week for a change at the LEAD Summit. Two days of good session content, room full of operators, founders, analysts, everybody actually running retail right now, from Anthropologie to Talbots, Brooks Brothers, Primark, to Hey Dude, Olaplex, brands like Naturium, Loop, and Coterie, plus some big thinking sessions on AI maturity, scenario planning, and where the consumer is headed in 2026.

[00:01:44] Casey Golden: And rather than do a session by session recap, we pulled out the eight cross-cutting themes that kept showing up no matter whose stage we were on. Some are exactly what you'd expect. AI is everywhere. [00:02:00] But the way leaders are actually deploying it might surprise you, and some, like the Gray Swans conversation, were a wake-up call that we didn't even see coming.

[00:02:12] Ricardo Belmar: So in this episode, we're gonna walk through those themes together, what we agreed on, what we pushed back on, and let's call it the Monday morning takeaways that every retail and brand leader should be thinking about right now.

[00:02:24] Casey Golden: But before we jump in, we do have a special little favor to ask of our fans listening and watching today. If you're enjoying the season, and we hope you are, I kind of feel like if you came back for this episode, that means you're enjoying it, we're doing something right. So why not give us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Good pods?

[00:02:47] And if you're watching us on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button.

[00:02:52] Ricardo Belmar: We'd also love it if you check out the other shows in the Retail Razor Podcast Network if you haven't already subscribed. That's Retail [00:03:00] Transformers, Blade to Greatness, and Data Blades.

[00:03:03] Casey Golden: With that out of the way, hit pause, go grab a coffee or whatever beverage of choice, I'm into spritzers right now, and let's get into it.

[00:03:18] The BIG Recap - Our 8 Themes form The Lead Summit

[00:03:18] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, you and I both walked out of the LEAD Summit with, probably the same look on our faces. It's the one you get when there's been a vibe shift, in the industry. Before we dive into those eight themes that we pulled out of all the sessions, what do you think the energy was like in the room?

[00:03:32] Do you feel like this was an AI conference dressed up as a retail conference, or was it something else?

[00:03:37] Casey Golden: You know, I kind of feel like it was something else. Unlike other conferences, The Lead just has a way of pulling everybody in New York out of the office.

[00:03:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:03:51] Casey Golden: The energy was really good, and I just felt like it was just, it was the water cooler for two days.

[00:03:58] Ricardo Belmar: that's a good way to put it. [00:04:00] Yeah. Yeah. One, one, one conversation after another, every time you turn around, you'd meet somebody else, and it was a, a whole new conversation. And I, I kinda feel like most of them started with, "Have you heard enough about AI?"

[00:04:14] Casey Golden: Right?

[00:04:15] Ricardo Belmar: And y- whether you were going into a session or out of one and hearing from other retail execs, it was, "Okay, so what, what did they talk about that was a- not AI related in that one?"

[00:04:24] And I think I can only remember there being one that wasn't explicitly about AI, out of the whole thing, but, but we'll see when we get to the, the themes. I think even with that, it still felt more like, the casual conversations you have when you just wanna talk about what's going on and what, what you're gonna do next.

[00:04:41] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, if you had to pick one quote that defined the whole summit for you, what was it?

[00:04:47] Ricardo Belmar: Well, well, I g- I definitely think like maybe the, the, I don't know, the most entertaining, the funniest AI-related quote I heard, and, and I'm gonna struggle to remember who it was. I'll, I'll have to look it up later for the show notes. But there was one of the retailers [00:05:00] on stage say, "You know, here's my problem with, with, quote, 'working with AI,' you know, AI won't sit down and have a cigarette with me.

[00:05:06] You know, it's... That's why you need people." And I think that was based in, in one session where, where they were talking about, In fact, it's one of the themes we'll get into about how when you're using AI to replace people, it, it never seems to work out right. But that one I thought was, was just classic. Um, you know, on the... Some of the more serious quotes that I think are the ones that stick in my head only because there's a version of that that I've probably used for years too.

[00:05:33] One of the retailers said, "You know, listening is a capability, but hearing is a skill." And I think that makes a lot of sense when you're talking to a room full of retailers in a stage session type panel discussion environment. It makes a lot of sense.

[00:05:48] Casey Golden: So

[00:05:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:05:49] Theme 1 - The Augmentation Imperative

[00:05:49] Ricardo Belmar: So let's start where every panel seemed to start.

[00:05:51] Of course, it was AI. I mean, you know, what else was every gonna, everybody gonna stock of, ta- end up talking about? But the real message though was where [00:06:00] n- you keep hearing in news reports and articles that get written about retail, about, all these headcount reduction stories because AI, because AI, because AI, they didn't need all this staff, they're letting people go a- and so on.

[00:06:13] But what struck me is all the sessions on stage where somebody talked about that, it was a failure story. It wasn't about how wonderful the efficiencies were or all these great new things they were able to do with AI without people. In fact, the only stories that were winning stories were when people said, "Well, we had the a- the AI augment what the team was already doing."

[00:06:36] So it didn't mean that we had less people working. It meant that the existing people that were there got more done, and it came out better because they knew how to use AI the right way

[00:06:47] Casey Golden: Right? Like Rainbow Shop's customer service, I mean, they had a vendor case, 40% ticket deflection and customer service collapsed under real management. Customers just called back.

[00:06:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:07:00] Right.

[00:07:00] Yeah.

[00:07:01] Casey Golden: you know, the lesson

[00:07:02] Ricardo Belmar: But it made the metric look like all those tickets are being closed, right? Because, because customers would just hang up.

[00:07:08] Casey Golden: Right

[00:07:09] Ricardo Belmar: then call back to get a human

[00:07:14] Casey Golden: And I think there was, and there's like success stories when it comes to like Musely went from 30 engineers writing 95% of code to 30 engineers plus 300 agents writing the code 10X speed at a marginal cost. I see that every day. I see it on this, agentic software development and, as soon as I clock out of work, I'm wanting to throw my laptop out the window because I want a real person when I'm trying to book stuff or talk to customer service because it's all AI and I'm frustrated as a consumer.

[00:07:48] So, we're kind of in this catch-22 at the moment

[00:07:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and you, you mentioned the Rainbow Shop's customer service case, but there was something else that they they mentioned which I thought was a great analogy, where they [00:08:00] compared what's happening now in companies with AI as to what happened when spreadsheets first came out, right?

[00:08:06] So before then, everybody had all these paper processes,

[00:08:08] Casey Golden: me, Ricardo,

[00:08:09] Ricardo Belmar: and

[00:08:10] Casey Golden: me about the life before Excel.

[00:08:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, yeah, the life before Excel. That was a great one when it came up in the room because, people turned around and said, "There was a life before spreadsheets? What did

[00:08:19] Casey Golden: I know, right?

[00:08:21] Ricardo Belmar: What?" But yeah, so you you had someone on stage say, "Okay, I remember life before spreadsheets, and, you'll hear people talk about it," and everybody had a list of things.

[00:08:30] And when spreadsheets came out, there was a handful of people that learned how to use them, and then suddenly everything was on a spreadsheet. Everything in retail was being run by spreadsheets, and the handful of people that could use the spreadsheet, guess what? They were golden, right? They were the ones who everybody wanted to hire, everybody wanted to have on the team because they made the best use of the technology.

[00:08:51] So the Rainbow Shop's example in this case was AI's the same thing. The people on the team who are actually learning how to use the AI tools, they're getting more [00:09:00] done, they're helping the team get more done, and they're the ones everybody wants on the team because they're not replacing anyone, they're just doing better.

[00:09:08] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, HelloFresh is doubling down on that with mandating every executive become a flow forward expert. And I feel that that's very common. I think there's a lot of retail built around train the trainer methodology, and I think that it can really be translated in let the team start using the tools, find out who your early adopters are,

[00:09:34] Ricardo Belmar: Right

[00:09:35] Casey Golden: and let them lead and inspire their teams around them

[00:09:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:09:42] Casey Golden: and, and really fuel that adoption versus, forcing everybody to go into an hour course every morning.

[00:09:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:49] Theme 2 - People are the New Luxury

[00:09:49] Ricardo Belmar: Now, you mentioned something else too a minute ago about how you get to the end of the day and you feel like you wanna throw your laptop out the window and you've had enough AI for the day. You just want a human somewhere. So there was a good [00:10:00] counterpoint take on that from Anthropologie where, you know, they, they of course talk about their stores, and if you shop at an Anthropologie, right, you know, everybody ha- will talk about a great experience, the great merchandising.

[00:10:10] And, and so Anthropologie, you know, on stage, they called their stores the heartbeat of the brand. And, and I think similarly in a, a discussion from Stitch Fix said, some brands are so AI forward there's not even a word for it which maybe gets a little scary. But their point was that customers are pushing back, and that customer service example being another good one, where customers are hanging up on what they thought was the automated AI to call back to get, to get a human.

[00:10:37] So is... is this human connection in retail suddenly becoming the new luxury ?

[00:10:42] Casey Golden: People are the new luxury and I've called this, like, a decade ago, I swear to God. People and talent... There's a level of people and talent that will always be a luxury,

[00:10:52] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:52] Casey Golden: Because there's never enough to go around, especially to be solving in, in real time. But [00:11:00] every touchpoint doesn't need to be human,

[00:11:03] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:03] Casey Golden: a human touchpoint, and I think that's where we are right now is rethinking Efficiency versus soul or, fuels that heartbeat of the brand.

[00:11:17] Where do you need high touch? Where can, where do you need the optimization?

[00:11:23] Ricardo Belmar: Right

[00:11:24] Casey Golden: I really like the Primark's line I think this is something every single brand should ask. I mean, I think we just had this in the headlines with the recent acquire acquisition in the industry without saying names I think everybody knows. "If we went away today, would anyone care?"

[00:11:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:11:44] Casey Golden: I think that's a brand health KPI most retailers can't even pretend to answer at the moment.

[00:11:50] I mean, Ricardo, like what would the answer be for the average mall retailer right now?

[00:11:54] Ricardo Belmar: I, I honestly, I would, I instinctively wanna say half the stores in the [00:12:00] mall, if you a- if they went away, nobody would care, right? There's only a handful of ones that people would actually notice.

[00:12:06] Casey Golden: Many good, there's so many people are running good numbers, running decent growth, I mean, God, right now in 2026, running flat's a blessing.

[00:12:18] Ricardo Belmar: Well, there's that too. There's that. So I'll, I'll, I'll steal the I'll steal a phrase here from, from Steve Dennis always talks about the unremarkable middle, right? And it's-- this is a case where that's totally true. You, you kind of can re- rewrite the line by, by what Primark said. And and I bet if we, if we looked back...

[00:12:35] I'll have to go back and look at... we had Renee on the show f- on the Retail Transformer show a few months back, and I think she may have said the same thing in our, in our podcast episode too. You know, if the brand went away, would anybody care? And obviously that's, that's their North Star, right?

[00:12:48] Make sure that, you're so important to your customer that if you weren't there, they would-- not only would they notice, they would really care, and they'd want to find you and seek you out. But that's the problem with a lot of these brands that are in [00:13:00] that middle, where they're not either providing low price and value, or they're not on the luxury side.

[00:13:06] They don't have anything that's really sticky other than they just happen to be there.

[00:13:10] Casey Golden: Yeah. Boll & Branch and Wolverine they mentioned during their, their sessions that they are requiring every team member including digital and corporate, to work peak volume customer experience on the phones

[00:13:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah,

[00:13:26] Casey Golden: and actual shifts in retail stores. And I think that I've always believed it's so important for the business and technology to be friends and to have some type of shared experience.

[00:13:40] And I think right now the most important shared experience for them to have is the customer

[00:13:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:13:45] Casey Golden: to really understand what does it take to work in the store, to serve the customer, to answer the questions, 'cause that's where you're gonna find, that's where you're gonna find out what needs to remain human [00:14:00] and what need, what can actually be taken away and optimized, streamlined, leverage AI for and, and have the lowest negative impact on your customer base. We don't want customers hanging up because they're upset

[00:14:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:14:17] Theme 3 - The Rewired Store

[00:14:17] Ricardo Belmar: Well, speaking of customer experience, that takes us to our next trend sticking with, with stores here. So here's, here's a stat that I heard. I think this was from Talbots in one of the sessions, that only 35 of every 100 transactions are what they label traditional sales, meaning that the other 65, they're, they're calling them omni-channel fulfillment.

[00:14:38] Which I think is an interesting take on that. So for example, you know, think about how they're measuring their KPIs, right? So they're not just ... That tells me that, how they're attributing sales is not your, your usual methodology. So what do you think? Do you think the era of simply measuring store performance by sales per square foot i- is finally done, and we can move on [00:15:00] to other KPIs?

[00:15:01] Casey Golden: It should have been done ages

[00:15:02] Ricardo Belmar: Ages ago. Because, you know, by that metric, every retailer is awful except for Apple and Tiffany's. So why would you want to make that your comparison?

[00:15:15] Casey Golden: Yeah, it's just all I see are those terrible pictures of products on what's his face's LinkedIn. If you wanna measure by square foot just super packed, right? Or the goal is to be super sparse. Like, I, I don't feel like, that's really the measurement here. Yeah, I mean, I think it's the cost to serve and productivity as a whole core.

[00:15:39] Somebody needs to redo the math. How is the, how is everybody bonusing?

[00:15:45] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:46] Casey Golden: How are you managing staff? What is that magic number? Well, I, I, I truly believe we used to know it,

[00:15:54] Ricardo Belmar: Right

[00:15:55] Casey Golden: um, but after the pandemic, it's just been so difficult to [00:16:00] get those traffic numbers consistent, predictable. It, it's this way, it's that way.

[00:16:07] I mean, the world is shifting every

[00:16:11] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:16:11] Casey Golden: There's something that in some way impacts the consumer, the shopping psychology, commerce, budgets,

[00:16:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:16:21] Casey Golden: forecasting, whether or not it's getting the right product in the right location or even in the United States, period.

[00:16:29] Ricardo Belmar: And, and I think that, you know, when Talbott's admitting that 65 of those, percent of those transactions are omni-channel fulfillment, that tells me that they've... Are, are formally recognizing, right, just how natural it is for their customers to be cross-channel. A- and, you know, not worry about is it a store sale, is it an e-commerce sale?

[00:16:45] It's, it's a sale, right? Somebody bought something, which is the main, the main thing. And, and just recognizing that they've done so- in some ways that means they've done something right

[00:16:55] Casey Golden: Yeah, Talbot's AI, I have a hard time saying these two words next to each other. [00:17:00] Um

[00:17:01] Ricardo Belmar: For, for obvious reasons. Breathe, Casey, breathe.

[00:17:06] Casey Golden: Great. Telit's AI client, Helim Pilot their concierge they went from contacting 300,000 of 750,000 eligible customers to contacting all of them while keeping phone calls human. Maybe this is the model. AI does the volume,

[00:17:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:17:32] Casey Golden: people do the moments

[00:17:33] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. And again, like, like that maybe ties back into our first theme, right? About how AI is not replacing your human contact, it's augmenting it. And in this case, right, it's proof that it's making it possible for you to increase the human contact with your store teams in ways that you couldn't scale before.

[00:17:53] So there's that

[00:17:55] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, Hey Dude found that, like, [00:18:00] female TikToker, TikTok creators are now their primary path to their male customer base.

[00:18:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right

[00:18:08] Casey Golden: But like, why is this news?

[00:18:09] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I know, right? This,

[00:18:11] Casey Golden: We do 85% of all purchasing. Like, the first thing any woman does is get rid of all those shoes, unless they started with taste, which is very rare. But like, I'm not...

[00:18:22] No one would... I don't know a girl fan of, like, dirty sneakers. It's

[00:18:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Right.

[00:18:26] Casey Golden: like please at least wear these. They're doing, they're doing... Their business is on fire right now. So I mean, but this shift might have a little bit to do with it

[00:18:36] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least we're starting to recognize it, right?

[00:18:40] Theme 4 - Get Ready for the AI-Assisted Shopper

[00:18:40] Ricardo Belmar: So, okay, so on next theme and this one I know doesn't come to a

[00:18:44] Casey Golden: Who we at, Kai?

[00:18:45] Ricardo Belmar: who's been... Yeah, I think we're on, we're at is it fourth? Fifth? I'm losing track.

[00:18:48] Casey Golden: You're halfway

[00:18:49] Ricardo Belmar: we're halfway through. We're halfway through. So this was in a session with AlixPartners and you know, they, they brought up a stat, which I guess to be honest, we've heard this before from other sources too.

[00:18:58] So, you know, half of consumers [00:19:00] are already using AI for product discovery and half of those are in some way end up buying. Now, I know there's al- still lots of debate as to how that buying happens and how that's tracked and who g- and, you know, which channel or whatever get, which mechanism gets credit for it.

[00:19:16] But the point to it is not how much of it is happening as much as it is happening, right? So it's not like this is a future forward thing where you're gonna have customers relying on an AI assistant to help them buy something. Yes, there are some details and things like, you know, will the AI, will there actually be an agent that buys it for you?

[00:19:35] Will the person make the, you know, do the final click-through to buy? Which of your website pages? Do they land on product pages? Do they see any other part of your website? And, and so on and so on and so on. So yeah, lots of variables to it, but it is happening, and there's always a debate about you know, are you, are retailers paying too much attention to those, to those sales cases?

[00:19:57] Are they real use cases? Are [00:20:00] they tiny percentage of sales? Is it a fast-growing percentage of sales? Th- those are the questions that came up, and it makes sense that everybody starts asking those

[00:20:09] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, GEO is a big topic of conversation right now, and I'm surprised how many brands have not activated it yet.

[00:20:16] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:17] Casey Golden: Although there's an abnormally large amount of brands that haven't activated Agentforce when they're full Salesforce ecosystem too. So, you know, we all have priorities, right?

[00:20:27] Everybody's,

[00:20:28] Ricardo Belmar: Or it's that everybody's got a different priority. Yeah

[00:20:30] Casey Golden: Everybody's backlogged. But GEO right now, we've got a few months before holiday. There's only so much you can, you can do in the amount of time we have before holiday season. I think the stats are going to be insane when it comes to any engagement with an LLM, when it comes to shopping and gift shopping and search.

[00:20:52] GEO is only like maybe 5% of traffic, but it's getting 80% of the attention. The [00:21:00]brands need to show up

[00:21:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, and there's something to be said for it may only be, 5% of your traffic now because we're, like, at the end of May, but you're right, holiday's not too far off. Give it a few months, and it may be a lot more than 5%. So do you take the chance that it's still only 5%, so you don't worry about it?

[00:21:17] Okay, maybe you miss some of those sales because competitor brand might decide, "You know what? We'll pick-- We'll take that 5% from you. Happy to," because they, they went ahead and looked at how they were optimizing. So I, I think it's one of these things where if you're early, you're gonna take an advantage.

[00:21:32] If you wait, you're gonna lose out

[00:21:34] Casey Golden: I think you're gonna lose out, and I think you're gonna leave yourself open for a longer period of time, dropping your, your ROAS on your paid search and just kind of... And your organic. Like organic I think is gonna be impacted through this as w- as well, because not everything's going to be tracked with a conversion.

[00:21:55] So how much of this GEO is gonna be organic versus [00:22:00] return on ad spend? I mean, we're gonna have to be looking at some different KPIs, some different measurement different ways of tracking,

[00:22:07] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. Yeah, 'cause I think there's a, a, a lack of transparency in a lot of how this is working for everyone. So we're saying, whether the number's 5% or something else, I, I'm not sure we really know how much it's influencing a shopper in that journey, right? We don't know... We-- at the point at which they leave an LLM and they go to a retailer's website, well, if they didn't click through to get to the website, then nobody's tracking that, right, as a GEO or an AI conversion.

[00:22:33] But the fact is for the customer, from that consumer's point of view, well, they weren't-- they went to the website because an AI told them that it was a good idea to go there. But,

[00:22:41] Casey Golden: Right. They may have had a whole entire

[00:22:43] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. And, and the fact-- let, and let's face it, I mean, I think everyone is ignoring the fact that even in plain old Google Search days, right, how many times, I mean, I do this a lot, the Google Search gives me something, and instead of clicking through, I open a new tab and I just go to that website, right?

[00:22:59] So [00:23:00] how, how-- nobody's measuring that, right? That, that's like, like a dark conversion that nobody had a chance to tag or measure or, or keep track of,

[00:23:06] Casey Golden: probably measuring it.

[00:23:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, well, that, that would be why I don't do those searches on

[00:23:11] Casey Golden: Chrome, right? Like, I

[00:23:12] Ricardo Belmar: why my search history's hidden.

[00:23:14] Casey Golden: probably measuring it, but it's not getting to the people that, that need it.

[00:23:18] Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, I've kind of been doing some tests on, on some LLMs and, and just kind of understanding like how do they understand brands

[00:23:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Right

[00:23:32] Casey Golden: So does it really understand Ralph Lauren versus Polo Ralph Lauren versus Lauren by Ralph Lauren versus Black Label Purple collection? And the answer is no. It's like taking you somewhere else rather than keeping you in the house. And I think that there's just... The brands have been telling their story to consumers for so

[00:23:55] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, and that gets to

[00:23:57] Casey Golden: and now we have to like go all the [00:24:00] way back to like you have to educate all of the, this, these LLMs and these agents and AI into, you're gonna have to reintroduce your brand like

[00:24:17] Ricardo Belmar: so how you do that matters, right? That's what--

[00:24:19] Theme 5 - Community Over Audience

[00:24:19] Ricardo Belmar: that to me is another, is a key takeaway, and it leads into our next theme about community over audience, where gosh, so, so many brands-- I mean, granted it was most of the direct-to-consumer brands that were there that said this, but the fact that it wasn't exclusive to them, I think is telling how important community was, because we've all seen these analyses, right, that show where are the LLMs getting their sources from.

[00:24:40] Well, they're coming from what are largely community-driven sources, you know, whether it's like Reddit or in, in case of like B2B things, it's LinkedIn. And now we're starting to see reports that a lot of it's coming from YouTube videos that, that they're analyzing. So the fact is, it's not even necessarily coming from the brand page, right?

[00:24:56] So it's learning what people say about the, your [00:25:00] brand, and so that means the community you build around your brand matters. So, so many brands on stage mentioned how they prioritize building that community over paid media spend. So the one question that I went away maybe not totally answered did, did-- does that mean that we're getting sort of past an influencer-driven brand-building process, or is it just the opposite, that because there's this emphasis on community, are we gonna see more influencer-driven brand building because those influencers may become much more important as a voice to the LLMs than your own brand page?

[00:25:36] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I, I can't say I've ever bet, I think it's bit my- bit myself in the ass a few times by not betting on the influencers,

[00:25:46] Ricardo Belmar: yeah

[00:25:47] Casey Golden: myself included back in the day when like '05.

[00:25:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:25:53] Casey Golden: I think that there's gonna be a lot, this discovery path and [00:26:00] the, is... We've been focused on the path to purchase for quite a while. This whole discovery path is going to shape-shift over the next probably 12 months. I think a lot of consumer behavior is currently in the midst of changing. And I think it's gonna take the na- the brand narratives, the stories, they're gonna have to put out the most meaningful user experience for their brand that they can possibly imagine and translate it back to find those roads in and to create many, many paths of discovery to find the least resistant, the one that brings the most joy, the one that's the most informative and results in conversions and acquisition.

[00:26:48] I think it's not gonna be about one way Everybody needs to, be developing their little spiderwebs of these are all the new paths. This is all the behavior [00:27:00] that we're seeing shift into different customer groups. There was one person on stage that I literally had a visceral reaction to when they said, explaining who their customer is, and they, they started with, "She is X, Y, Z," and gives me a little bit about the lifestyle, right?

[00:27:22] I mean, I think we went through that she is in like 1996 with a poster board.

[00:27:29] there is no she.

[00:27:31] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:33] Casey Golden: There is no one customer profile. There is no longer like 10 cohorts of pr- of customer profile like buckets. I think this is really Joe, Jane, Jack, Mary, Annabelle. Like all

[00:27:48] Ricardo Belmar: it's time to actually get personalization right?

[00:27:54] Casey Golden: You

[00:27:54] Ricardo Belmar: After all these years? How long have we been talking about that? Yeah

[00:27:57] Casey Golden: But I think we need to just really think of [00:28:00] our customer base as like being very dynamic, and it... You gotta really think about getting really intimate with your customers and really understanding who they are because it's not a, "My customer is this."

[00:28:15] It's like that person is that at 9:00 AM, and they're somebody else, and they're completely different by the- by 4:00 PM or on the weekend. Customers are dynamic. People are dynamic. We're ever-changing. We shop for other people which, you know, we have those stats for. And that you make those purchasing decisions for somebody else, whether it's for a gift, you're refilling the closet at home or you're helping out family members

[00:28:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:28:45] Casey Golden: grocery shopping for themselves, or neighbor.

[00:28:48] And it's ruining our alg- it's been ruining our algorithms for, for years. When somebody asks me to help them find a men's trench coat, I'm

[00:28:55] Ricardo Belmar: and it's like one thing I always... Yeah,

[00:28:57] Casey Golden: my whole online

[00:28:59] Ricardo Belmar: and when you hear [00:29:00] people talk about, influencers and how they're leveraging influencers to both build community and to gain, to help with that, like, what, what are people really measuring? Well, they're trying to see who from that influencer's audience is buying from them, right?

[00:29:12] But who stops to think about, well, if I'm working with five different influencers, what if the... Is that five different groups of customers, or is it one group of customers that happens to pay attention to two of those five influencers, and then there's a third type of customer that pays attention to the third one but hates the first two and doesn't care what they say, right?

[00:29:32] And all these things are intertwined and mixed in, and no one's thinking of it that way

[00:29:37] Casey Golden: we are... Before we even think of where the customer is going through that discovery process, think about where that discovery process starts and the r- algorithm that feeds that,

[00:29:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:29:50] Casey Golden: right? Like, my TikTok algorithm is very different than yours, Ricardo. And Loop Earplugs went from a [00:30:00] million to 250 million in five years, and the metric they obsess about: where did you first hear about

[00:30:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Right. Right.

[00:30:09] Casey Golden: That is one of those, It's a key moment. It's a key moment that you need to know. It's so helpful to know. And you don't have to be everything for everyone. I mean, that's-- I mean, I think that's the, the story for AI is like it's everything to everyone. It's existential. You don't need brand dot coms anymore.

[00:30:31] Like,

[00:30:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:30:33] Casey Golden: so not the case. We're dealing with people shopping here. Maybe when agents shop, but again, we've got people shopping. I, I really enjoyed the team from MOMA, the design

[00:30:44] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, yeah

[00:30:44] Casey Golden: where they reject shiny objects when it comes to technology. They run a tight 120 product tests per year and just say flat out, "We're not Amazon, and we don't wanna be."

[00:30:57] Theme 6 - Brand Discipline and the Power of Saying No

[00:30:57] Ricardo Belmar: Well, it, it's like you, you think you knew where we were going [00:31:00]with this conversation because that you take us right into the next one. I think we're down to our second to last theme here, and that's maybe one of the best ones about brand discipline and when to say no. And I think you're, you're right that Mo- MoMA's example is just perfect about how avoiding the shiny objects, you know.

[00:31:17] And, and they weren't the only ones, right? There were other brands that like there was one, Naturium, who said, you know, "You'll never see us at the Met Gala." Right? So they have a clear line about w- who they are and who they're not, and who they're speaking to and who they're not. You know, you had Silhouette the, the glasses frames manufacturer.

[00:31:34] They said very specific like, "We don't make chunky acetate frames." Right? "And, and you'll never see us do that." Right. Then you had Machiage talked about, being so disciplined against what they call the markdown tornado, meaning endless markdowns, right? Once you start down the markdown path, you don't stop.

[00:31:51] And so they just very s- very strongly have the discipline to say, "That's not us. We don't do that." So I guess that means the, the question for-- [00:32:00] that comes out of this theme is, is that kind of restraint the new competitive advantage?

[00:32:07] Casey Golden: I mean, we gotta make sure that, LLMs don't mess up our brand story and get us confused with what we're not, so we have to kinda, a lot of... We're gonna ha- brands are gonna have to draw a line in the sand, say, "This is who we are first. This is the most important thing or characteristic that every single consumer and every single LLM needs to understand about us, is this is who we are, this is the, our values, this is what's important to us, this is what's important to the customer, and you can count on us to deliver this."

[00:32:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:32:44] Casey Golden: And then everything else might just be extra, and that goes into the customer experience. But when it comes to discovery you know, I think it was, gosh, 10 years ago, I asked an athletic company, I'm like, you know, "Who do you think you compete with?" I go, and they go, [00:33:00] "Oh, we don't compete with anybody." And I'm like, "Well, you compete with Lu..." I go, "Well, you directly compete with Lululemon. Let me get you started, right?" They go, "We do not compete with Lululemon." I'm like, "You sell black leggings. You sell workout clothes." And they said, "Yes." And I'm like, "Top seller black?" And sh- they're like, "Well, of course."

[00:33:20] And I'm like, "Great. So

[00:33:23] Ricardo Belmar: Let me list for you how many other people saw that.

[00:33:26] Casey Golden: brand where a customer's typing in black workout pants or black leggings. You now all hang by each other. You're all now grouped together. The ads are now consolidated for all of you. You are now a category of black leggings across multiple brands."

[00:33:47] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:47] Casey Golden: This is also that moment for, I think, this discovery process, is we're not just searching black leggings. We're searching full-on [00:34:00] paragraph descriptions of what we're looking for and trying to be clear, and it is occasion basis, it's weather basis, it's fit basis. Like, we're putting all of that information in all at the same time because we can now.

[00:34:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:34:17] Casey Golden: So those answers coming back,

[00:34:19] Ricardo Belmar: Right

[00:34:21] Casey Golden: it n- it needs to have those clear lines.

[00:34:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And, and I think what's im-

[00:34:26] Casey Golden: between Ralph Lauren, J.Crew, Brooks Brothers, and brands if you're looking for a gingham shirt. I don't know, you

[00:34:32] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think it also, it-- there, there's sort of another un-unwritten thing to that too, that it's easy to get lost, 'cause now that you have this need, right, to make sure that all of your products have this kind of super rich descriptiveness to them so that the AIs can find you, you can't let that AI be your only strategy, right?

[00:34:50] That, that's not the strategy. Your strategy is what your brand story is, and I think that was emphasized by a lot of people on stage. All the AI is doing is accelerating it for you, or if you're not doing it [00:35:00] right, it's decelerating it because it's hiding you

[00:35:02] Casey Golden: Was that Mimi? Was that Mimi from Columbia Sportswear?

[00:35:06] Ricardo Belmar: Maybe. Yeah, could have been, yeah.

[00:35:08] Yeah,

[00:35:08] Casey Golden: like AI can never

[00:35:09] Ricardo Belmar: AI can't be the strategy. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yep. And, and that leads into the next theme, which I guess I lied before. We still-- That was the third to last, not the second to last. I think this is the second to last one.

[00:35:22] Theme 7 - Multiplatform & Multigenerational Reality

[00:35:22] Ricardo Belmar: It's our number seven, and this is, we call this one, it's be multi-platform for multi-generations.

[00:35:28] So what does that mean, right? It's so-- You mentioned before Hey Dude and their, their TikTok shop business and how they grew that like, like wildfire in what, what was it? 18 months. You have brands like Olaplex, right? That, you know, target salons and specialty retail, but then also Amazon, right? And it's all part of a single flywheel for them.

[00:35:45] So you have all these very some DTC brands, but then you have some legacy brands like Brooks Brothers, right? Doing similar things. And why? Because they're all targeting multiple generations, so they're not fixated on, "I only sell to Gen Z," or, "I'm only targeting [00:36:00]millennials," or, "I only want Gen X or boomers."

[00:36:02] No, they're going after everyone. And I love the Brooks Brothers example because they, they talked on stage how, they could see a family where you've got, 50-year-olds and 30-year-olds on the same floor shopping at the same time, right? Veronica Beard mentioned having three generations shopping together.

[00:36:18] So, so that was a key thing.

[00:36:21] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, Olaplex, bougie beautiful hair

[00:36:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:36:25] Casey Golden: re- regardless of age.

[00:36:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:36:29] Casey Golden: And we do have... I mean, we have a lot of generations shopping right now, and I think a lot of these brands built the parents

[00:36:39] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:41] Casey Golden: Certain brands have been in the house. The kids have been stealing them.

[00:36:45] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:48] Casey Golden: And then

[00:36:48] Ricardo Belmar: like they, they inherit it, right? It's like inherited timelessness

[00:36:51] Casey Golden: And yeah, it's an inherited customer that's kind of like graduates through their own household. But then you also have-- I think we have the most single [00:37:00] professionals that we've ever... Like, the largest group that we've ever had where it's just like there's this discretionary income

[00:37:07] of redefining what a basic is, right?

[00:37:11] Like,

[00:37:11] Ricardo Belmar: Right

[00:37:12] Casey Golden: I say bougie, bougie for Olaplex, but like for a lot of, a lot of women, like Olaplex is basic. That is their like staple. That's the only product in the shower, when it comes to certain things. And they, they don't have the kids and stealing it, so like it remains.

[00:37:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:37:36] Casey Golden: But I think it's, it's a really interesting time because we have all these new discovery channels, we have these, all these different platforms.

[00:37:45] We have this multi-generational demographic all shopping. They're kind of intertwined in a lot of different ways. And it's gonna be this discovery piece that is kind of like a maze that each brand is gonna [00:38:00] have to figure out for themselves. And I don't think it's gonna be one... I think certain demographics and certain lifestyles are going to fall into different categories, and you're gonna have to really build out these customer journeys in a new way based off of the channel that they're coming through, and then figure out who they are and what their preferences are.

[00:38:23] And I just see that the only way we would be able to create and identify this many different use cases and customer profile journeys is thank goodness for AI.

[00:38:34] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. 'Cause how do you scale?

[00:38:35] Casey Golden: Because we can get to thou- we can get to hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of different customer journeys. We can get to more dynamic moments.

[00:38:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:38:44] Casey Golden: We can get to a better one-to-one personalization and even creating different assets,

[00:38:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:38:50] Casey Golden: Even for marketing messages, verbiage, copy. I think there's some, some beautiful things that we never [00:39:00] thought we'd ever be able to get to that amount of volume in a customer journey where it's not about volume as a one to many.

[00:39:07] Ricardo Belmar: Right

[00:39:08] Casey Golden: It's like, "Oh, I can do, 20 million emails on Tuesday.

[00:39:12] Ricardo Belmar: Sure.

[00:39:13] Casey Golden: Everybody's getting the same one."

[00:39:14] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:39:15] Casey Golden: That...

[00:39:15] Ricardo Belmar: And what good is that to you,

[00:39:17] Casey Golden: Right. I'm like, could you imagine if 20 mil- 20 million emails went out on Monday and it was 20 million unique dynamic

[00:39:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly.

[00:39:25] Casey Golden: messages and copy

[00:39:27] Ricardo Belmar: With the right

[00:39:27] Casey Golden: with different products?

[00:39:29] Ricardo Belmar: right? Not a generic message.

[00:39:31] Casey Golden: yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, I would never- Nobody would ever want that job to be able to have to do that, right?

[00:39:37] I don't even think it's poss- it's,

[00:39:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, that's where you need AI.

[00:39:39] Casey Golden: So I mean, this is a really great opportunity on really understanding what should be human,

[00:39:44] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm

[00:39:45] Casey Golden: what can you amplify and make and do better than ever because of AI. And I think that that's what a lot of people were talking about in between the sessions, on stage, after the [00:40:00] sessions during, lunch. There w- I felt a lot of hope,

[00:40:05] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:40:06] Casey Golden: where I feel like, maybe two conferences ago There was this heaviness

[00:40:13] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:40:15] Casey Golden: and

[00:40:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:40:16] Casey Golden: I just felt a little bit lighter

[00:40:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:40:21] Casey Golden: at

[00:40:21] Ricardo Belmar: I agree. I agree.

[00:40:23] Theme 8 - Grey Swans: The Conversations Most People Aren't Having

[00:40:23] Ricardo Belmar: So that brings us to our last one, which maybe, even though having, you having just said that, is probably the heaviest theme out of the, out of the group. And this came from Dave Katz's session. He's CMO of Randa Apparel. I've actually talked to him before.

[00:40:38] We, we, we need to have him on the show. Yeah, we'll have to work that out to go into this more detail. But he had a great, great session where he talked about gray swans. So everybody in new media always wants to talk about black swan events and all the- these things, and no, you really need to focus on the gray swan events because what's uncomfortable about them is that you see them coming.

[00:40:56] And so many retailers see them coming, but then don't do anything about it. And [00:41:00]so w- it shouldn't come as a surprise when things take a turn for the worse. And so, you know, these are predictable disruptions that you, you can ignore, but you have to actually do something about, and maybe, just maybe there's some, a way that AI can help you there.

[00:41:13] But he had some great examples. So kind of running through them like, GLP-1, you've talked about this one on the show before multiple times, right? Eight million users today, potentially 100 million by 2030, registering 80% drops in things like alcohol, gambling, general retail therapy, right?

[00:41:28] So is the world ready for that? Are retailers ready for that? What are they doing about it?

[00:41:34] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, just even forecasting, I mean, just trying to put a production order in and forecasting like your size break.

[00:41:41] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:42] Casey Golden: I mean, nobody wants to get stuck with excess or selling out of a size and not selling out of another. The one thing that I do see, like I do fear, is having this accessible size, like accessible, uh, accessible sizing, but like [00:42:00] the plus size category

[00:42:03] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:05] Casey Golden: some of its volume to where the businesses struggle. And then there we go backwards and there's not enough variety in a size 18, there's not enough variety in a size, uh, 22 or 24. And they go backwards because we've got really fashion-forward, better fitting, more brands carrying sizes. Like we finally got to this point and I feel like, with this GLP-1 and the increase in numbers, I mean, come on, not everybody's gonna be taking this, this, this prescription, right?

[00:42:42] But it's definitely gonna impact the business for everyone.

[00:42:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:42:47] Casey Golden: For the

[00:42:47] Ricardo Belmar: some planning that's required there for that one. Th- then you've got things like the aging of America, right? You know what David mentioned, by 2028 it's, there's supposed to be more Americans over 65 than under [00:43:00] 18

[00:43:00] Casey Golden: Yeah. Can we get the whole

[00:43:01] Ricardo Belmar: of the wealth

[00:43:02] Casey Golden: Yeah, we need the whole shirt back.

[00:43:05] Ricardo Belmar: I think I've heard you say that before.

[00:43:08] Casey Golden: Ah, we still don't have going out tops

[00:43:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So that-- to the point, right? So retailers start building for that.

[00:43:17] Casey Golden: I know,

[00:43:18] Ricardo Belmar: on that one.

[00:43:19] Casey Golden: People are getting older. Cover our old, our, our belly buttons that used to have a belly button ring in them.

[00:43:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. And then the last one he, uh, he mentioned that was also-- we, we touched on it before, the supply chain piece. I mentioned the quote that he Dave Sedran, his CEO mentioned before, "A business built around a single geography, a single channel, a single supply chain, that's not lean, it's exposed." So the lesson to be learned, right, that hopefully everybody's caught on the last few years in supply chain, it's not enough just to be agile to move your source.

[00:43:48] You need to have those sources ready to go and built. So, so Sedran's setup was if they're gonna launch a new product, it's gotta be three factories in three different regions ready to go. Otherwise they're not doing it because it-- [00:44:00] you're just exposed to trouble later.

[00:44:02] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I think there were some hard lessons learned with the tariffs. I can't tell you how many phone calls I was on discussing like real-time whip tracking, being able to adjust pr- POs and like production orders from one place to another place, and making sure that they keep their place in line, right?

[00:44:23] Like, there's a whole thing about keeping your place in line and who's getting priority. But you know, it was... You thought you wanted to own your own manufacturing in China. You controlled it. It was yours. And then a lot of people moved significant production into your own facilities but that only gives you, I went to the Keys last week- this week- last weekend. There's one road in and one road out.

[00:44:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right.

[00:44:50] Casey Golden: Somebody blocks it and,

[00:44:52] Ricardo Belmar: you're... That's it. Yep.

[00:44:53] Casey Golden: that's it. And so I saw a lot of companies getting so [00:45:00] creative on being able to react and change where they're shipping, where they're sourcing, and how they're getting all the pieces together across the globe to adjust to whatever made sense, what hit the, the timeline the best without having to lose their spot in line or take a huge price increase and pay extra money to get it going or to change the minimums.

[00:45:30] So I think vendors are being much more flexible, and I think brands have gotten really creative on the supply chain side to kind of prepare for this.

[00:45:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yep. Yep.

[00:45:39] Key Take Aways: What Should Listeners Do Monday Morning?

[00:45:39] Ricardo Belmar: So that brings us to, the, the big moment we're gonna close this out. One, didn't include this in the eight themes before, but there was also an interesting trend about, when people ask questions in panels about, you know, "Well, what are you gonna do with AI over the next six to 12 months?"

[00:45:54] And one person finally said out loud, I think what everybody's thinking, is like, "What are you talking about six to 12 months? If [00:46:00] you're not planning 30 days or less, you're already missing the boat completely." So with that in, in mind, let, let's give our final pieces here. What's your, your one big recommendation that, Monday morning, what should everybody be doing?

[00:46:13] Casey Golden: Get the GEO done. Like, get it started, get it out the door.

[00:46:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:46:19] Casey Golden: Just start. And I think we all just need to ma- ask better questions behind closed doors

[00:46:25] Ricardo Belmar: That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:27] Casey Golden: a lot of times, especially in the fashion industry, kind of keep your mouth shut and pick your battles. I think we need to start asking some really good questions

[00:46:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah

[00:46:38] Casey Golden: and, like, kind of make it a point that everybody brings up one really good question a meeting, or each person contributes something to every meeting to just kind of get these conversations flowing

[00:46:54] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:55] Casey Golden: because it- there's a-- it's a lot right now

[00:46:57] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:46:57] Casey Golden: and everything's moving so [00:47:00] stinking fast

[00:47:01] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. Yep. Very true. Very true. Well, I've got a simple one to go with on the assumption that everybody's already got multiple AI projects going, because the fact is, if you don't, then you are already behind, so get on that. But on the assumption that you are, I think you should take a, a, a good strong look and ask yourself, "Okay, does that project-- is it, is the outcome of that AI project designed to replace people doing things, or is it designed to help the team do something better/faster/more efficient?"

[00:47:33] If it's designed to replace, just stop, because the proof is already there. We heard so many people after another, that one's just gonna fail. It's y- it's not gonna work out. Y- you may think it's gonna work day one, but then by day two, it's gonna be falling on its face, and you're gonna wish you hadn't let those people go.

[00:47:49] So stop those, but then look at the ones that you have that are already intended to augment the team's capability. Prioritize those, because that's gonna have real business impact

[00:47:59] Casey Golden: [00:48:00] Yeah, I agree. I couldn't agree more

[00:48:02] Ricardo Belmar: All right, so of any of these themes, Casey, what do you think is the one thing that we'll still be talking about a year from now on the show?

[00:48:09] Casey Golden: Eh, people are the luxury

[00:48:11] Ricardo Belmar: I'm gonna go with that too. I think you're right. Yeah. People are gonna be the luxury because there are gonna be so many AI tools. I suspect we're gonna see a holiday full of AI tools this, AI agents that,

[00:48:22] Casey Golden: com- it's gonna be a commodity. It's a commodity already to a certain extent, right? But it's just gonna get more and more a commodity,

[00:48:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, absolutely. All right, so with that, you heard it here. That's what you missed if you weren't at The Lead. Go back, rewind, take some more notes, listen again. You'll be glad that you did. But that that wraps up our eight themes from The Lead last week.

[00:48:53] Show Close

[00:48:53] Casey Golden: If you loved this episode, we know you did, drop us a five-star rating and review on Apple [00:49:00] Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. And if you're watching us on YouTube, smash that subscribe button before you go.

[00:49:07] I'm Casey Golden

[00:49:08] Ricardo Belmar: And follow us on LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram, and subscribe to our Substack for highlights and bonus content. For transcripts and guest info, visit retailrazor.com.

[00:49:18] I'm Ricardo Belmar

[00:49:19] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us on The Retail Razor Show, part of the Retail Razor podcast network

[00:49:24] Ricardo Belmar: Until next time, stay sharp, stay human, and stay ahead.

[00:49:28] This is the Retail Razor Show

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