Hello Omni Talk Fans!
The Fall retail conference season is officially underway! With NRF Paris having just wrapped, and massive industry events like Groceryshop in Las Vegas, Shoptalk Fall’s Retail Unplugged in Nashville, and NACS just weeks away, the event season is back with a bang.
If you’re anything like us, right now you’re probably planning meetings, trying to decide where to spend your time, figuring out what you need to see, and plowing through hundreds of DMs. To help you cut through the noise, Chris Walton (OmniTalk, President & CEO) and special guest host and conference content producer extraordinaire Ben Miller (GrocerTalk, Founder & Editor-in-Chief) put together an ultimate primer of the must-see tech that caught our attention this year.
Whether you’re hitting the conference floors over the next few months or experiencing some serious FOMO from afar, we’ve assembled a deep dive into the cutting-edge solutions providers thinking about how to make retail work better.
Tackling Retail’s Toughest Questions
Chris and Ben sat down to ask two key questions: What challenges is our community grappling with right now, and what solutions are out there to help? In this special session, we unpacked major operational hurdles with the help of some incredible industry leaders:
- Georgina Nelson – TruRating, Founder & CEO: Joined the show to discuss how traditional survey methods miss 99% of customers and how TruRating integrates with 95% of North American payment terminals to capture verified, in-the-moment feedback at checkout with an 84% response rate, helping grocers pinpoint issues like produce freshness and close store execution gaps.
- Daniel Slowe – Quorso, Founder & Chief Product Officer: Cut through the AI hype to explain why large language models excel at high-frequency, “boring” operational tasks (like handling broken store equipment or summarizing surveys) rather than open-ended strategy, and how Quorso guides daily store execution.
- Daniel Duty – Conlego, Conlego, CEO & Founder of Portager & Alex Kopplin – Conlego, Principal and Architect of Portager: Joined the show to highlight insights around Portager and how their SaaS platform transforms merchant buying processes. They discussed how moving away from manual spreadsheets and fragmented emails helps retailers and CPGs find millions of dollars in bottom-line value by leveling the analytical playing field and streamlining joint business planning.
- Oliver Leigh – Portal, CEO & Co-Founder: Explored solutions for off-site media attribution and tracking consumer behavior for CPG brands. He shared how Portal intercepts traffic between browser clicks and retailer websites to help brand marketers optimize ad performance in real time without violating consumer privacy or exposing proprietary site data.
- Justin Samakow – Mirakl, Head of Platform Strategy: Shared strategies on scaling marketplace models and helping retailers capture profitable non-trade activities. He outlined key ingredients for success—including executive C-level sponsorship, dedicated marketplace teams, and building a “minimal viable ecosystem”—to help brick-and-mortar retailers transition successfully into platform models.
Catch Up on All the Conference Action
Be sure to check out the rest of our podcast this past week and the next few to catch exclusive content, interviews, and deep dives from some of the biggest retail conferences of the season.
We can’t think of a better way to get a bird’s eye view into the tech shaping the retail of tomorrow, today!
Be careful out there,
The Omni Talk Team
You can listen to or watch the full conversation with all of our experts wherever you get your podcasts.
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Omni Talk® is the retail blog for retailers, written by retailers. Chris Walton founded Omni Talk® in 2017 and have quickly turned it into one of the fastest growing blogs in retail.