Walmart Goes All-In On DSLs, Costco Makes A Tariff Pledge & Kroger Anoints An AI Chief

In this week’s Omni Talk Retail Fast Five, A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, Quorso, and Veloq, Chris and guest host Jenn Hahn of J Recruiting Services discussed:

Walmart expanding its digital shelf label technology to all 4,600 of its US stores, completing what is likely the single largest ESL rollout in retail history (Source)
Costco CEO Ron Vachris is publicly pledging to return any tariff refunds directly to members through lower prices (Source)
Kroger creating a new Chief Data and AI Officer role by elevating Milen Mahadevan, president of its 84.51 analytics subsidiary, to lead its entire AI and data agenda (Source)
Kroger deploying autonomous inventory drones from Corvus Robotics into sub-freezing cold chain distribution facilities (Source)
Dick’s Sporting Goods, thanks to its Move fitness rewards app, unexpectedly rocketing to #3 on the Apple App Store free download chart, landing right between Claude and Gemini (Source)

And Jenn also helped us hand out this month’s OmniStar Award — given in partnership with Quorso — to Mark Chenier, SVP GMM of Footwear at Academy Sports and Outdoors!

There’s all that, plus nihilist penguins, spring break plans, March Madness predictions, and green beer.

You can give this week’s Fast Five retail news roundup a listen by clicking above or on the platform of your choice below:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Amazon Music | YouTube

Be careful out there,

– Chris, Jen, and the Omni Talk team

P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/

P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our podcast rankings on Feedspot

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