Hello OmniTalk Fans!
Well, we’re trying something new this week.
After a whirlwind few weeks of conference travel, some last-minute schedule reshuffling, and our planned guests from the A&M Consumer and Retail Group no longer being able to join, I found myself in a hotel room in Nashville attempting something I’ve never done before on the Fast Five: a solo show. Or, as I called it, the Tom Hanks in Castaway version of podcasting.
Luckily, Producer Ella was there as my good luck charm and stepped in to put me on the spot with A&M’s questions. And this ended up being a pretty fascinating week to try the format because nearly every headline came back to one big question: who gets to control the customer? Is it the retailer? The AI agent? The marketplace? The delivery platform? Or, apparently, even the company-issued shirt?
Here’s what I covered, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Quorso, Veloq, and R&S Logistics:
Amazon vs. Meta’s Muse
Amazon has blocked Meta’s new Muse personal AI agent from shopping on Amazon.com, citing concerns around data security and how the agent accesses its site. Meta says Muse cannot see users’ passwords or payment information, but this story is much bigger than Amazon vs. Meta. Amazon has spent much of the past year trying to keep outside AI shopping agents off its site, and I’m not sure that is a battle Amazon can ultimately win.
AI engines and agentic storefronts are coming, and if consumers decide they want to begin their shopping journeys inside an LLM, somebody is going to meet that demand. In the short term, protecting Amazon’s massive advertising business makes sense. Longer term, though, shutting out AI agents could start affecting both advertising revenue and retail sales. Jeff Bezos famously said, “Your margin is my opportunity.” Well, now the LLMs are looking at Amazon’s margin the exact same way.
Tapestry Throws The Doors Open
In the very same week Amazon slammed the door on Meta, Tapestry essentially threw its doors wide open to Google. Coach and Kate Spade products can now be purchased directly through Google Search, including AI Mode and the Gemini app, with an inline buy button and Google Pay checkout. And I actually don’t think this is all that risky for Tapestry. We’re talking about branded apparel, which doesn’t depend on retail media economics in the same way Amazon or a large grocery marketplace does.
If consumers want to shop this way, I’m perfectly fine with Tapestry experimenting with it, but I wouldn’t overinvest just yet. I would prioritize getting agentic search working incredibly well on my own site first, where customers are already actively looking for my products. Still, the contrast with Amazon is fascinating. You can try to block the agents, but if enough retailers start plugging into them, eventually it may become very hard to beat them without joining them.
Kroger Gets A New Look
Kroger has updated its store uniform policy for the first time in a decade, requiring nearly 400,000 associates across its 21 chains to wear company-issued shirts after customers said they were having trouble identifying employees. Is a new shirt going to turn Kroger around? Of course not. But I do think it is a darn good first step, and I’ve experienced the problem firsthand shopping at Ralphs in California. When you walk into a store and need help, particularly when something is locked up, knowing who actually works there matters.
More importantly, I see the dress code as a signal. It says the stores matter, the store experience matters, service matters, and the expectations around all three are going up. Sometimes the smallest operational changes can communicate something much bigger to an organization, and this feels like one of those changes.
Amazon’s Prime-Sized Trojan Horse
Amazon is now allowing U.S. merchants using its Multichannel Fulfillment service to offer Prime delivery directly on their own websites at no additional cost to the retailer or shopper. So A&M put the question to me: is this a gift to mid-sized retailers or a Trojan horse that makes them even more dependent on Amazon? My answer is that it’s kind of both. Retailers get the speed and confidence associated with Amazon’s fulfillment network, while Amazon gets to embed itself even deeper into the infrastructure powering those retailers.
And that second part is important. If there is one thing I have learned covering Amazon over the past decade, it is never to discount how far ahead the company is thinking. If the customer interface eventually shifts from websites and apps to AI agents, Amazon can still win by becoming the infrastructure underneath the transaction. Amazon has always played the long game, and I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing here.
Lowe’s Takes Flight
Lowe’s is getting into drone delivery through partnerships with DoorDash and Alphabet’s Wing, making it the first home improvement retailer to offer the service. The pilot is starting in Matthews, North Carolina, where shoppers can order more than 100 products through a dedicated Lowe’s by Drone storefront in the DoorDash app and have them arrive in as fast as 20 minutes. And I actually think this use case makes a ton of sense. You start painting and realize you’re out of painter’s tape, you need caulk, batteries, or one small tool to finish the job. Those are exactly the moments when you don’t want to stop everything and drive to the store.
My one concern is discoverability. Right now, customers have to find a dedicated Lowe’s by Drone storefront within DoorDash, which could make the service difficult enough to find that Lowe’s ends up seeing false negatives in the test. But if customers seek it out despite that friction and actually use it, that could be pretty darn validating.
Lightning Round: Burger King, Vegas, Pizza & Smart Glasses
And because going solo apparently wasn’t enough pressure for one episode, Producer Ella took over the lightning round and kept the questions coming. Best retail employee uniform of all time? The 1980s Burger King uniform. One night in Nashville or Vegas? Vegas, hands down. One thing I’d want dropped into my backyard by drone in 20 minutes? Pizza. I could probably eat pizza every day, so I’m frankly surprised pizza-by-drone hasn’t become a bigger thing already.
And finally, would camera-free AI smart glasses make me more interested in buying a pair? Absolutely. I’m still waiting for the style to get there, but the non-camera use cases are increasingly interesting to me, particularly real-time translation. I may even have to make another trip to Best Buy to check them out.
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Be careful out there,
Chris and the OmniTalk team
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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.