Serious and Sometimes Comic Musings on the Future of Retail
In the latest edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern break down Apple’s big fitness subscription news, Sam’s Club’s Scan & Go at the pump, Amazon suburban warehouses and its new luxury play, and poke a little much needed fun at made up retail holidays and all the PR hype around the newest one — 10/10.
Julian Mills, CEO of Quorso, sits down with Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga for the latest edition of their Omni Talk Spotlight Series, the series that highlights the people, the companies, and the technologies changing the future of retail.
Quorso first caught Omni Talk’s attention a few months ago, right when the pandemic hit. As former store-level and HQ-level retail executives, Chris and Anne have always wondered if there were better ways for both sides of a retail organization to connect and to optimize performance around clearer priorities, and COVID-19 has only brought that question to the forefront even more.
While many decisions in retail get made by the loudest voices in the room or just trickle down from the top, they could and should, especially during a crisis, come from all directions and be prioritized around what matters most, iteratively, over time.
In reality, as Julian elucidates, retail management, especially at the store level, should be no different from agile software development. It is just that retailers have never had the tools to help them run a store in this manner before.
Julian shares how Quorso’s weekly performance platform works, how it prioritizes decisions, and how it helps leaders drive accountability and personal attachment through real-time metrics monitoring and feedback down through every level of an organization.
This just may be the most important retail technology podcast of the entire pandemic or at least one that will get you thinking differently. For, without leadership, accountability, and shared goals, not even the best of the best technology matters.
In their latest Omni Talk Spotlight Series interview, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga chat with FIT:MATCH Founder and CEO Haniff Brown.
Haniff shares his unique background and inspiration for FIT:MATCH, a startup that is making waves in the virtual try-on space. With implementations already in the books at a number of Brookfield Properties’ sites, Haniff and his team are attempting to change the way consumers shop for clothes.
Walk into any one of their virtual fitting rooms and within moments consumers can expect to have detailed view of their fit and body type as well as understand what products are right for them across a myriad of apparel retailers.
This podcast will challenge your thinking about everything from online personalization to what the roles and looks of physical stores and fitting rooms may actually be in the future.
In this week’s Omni Talk Fast Five, Carl Boutet joins Chris, Anne, and Emma the Intern to talk the Amazon and Kohl’s grocery partnership, JCP’s buyout, Instacart and 7-Eleven, Ikea in downtown San Francisco, Walmart, drones, and shepherds.
Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga interview Jordan Fisher, CEO of Standard Cognition, about the future of checkout-free retail.
AI Computer vision-based checkout-free retail is all the rage right now, and Standard Cognition, with over $80 million in VC funding to date, is right at the center of that conversation, and especially in light of its recent announced plans with Circle K.
Chris and Anne discuss the origin of the company, where the technology is now and where it is going, and why deciding whether or not to retrofit physical store footprints is one of the key questions that will determine future retailer adoption.
They also put Jordan right on the hot seat (which Jordan handles with aplomb) when they ask him the question on every retail insider’s mind — “What was the deal with all those marketing claims of 3,000 Standard Cognition stores in Japan in time for 2020 Olympics?”
Jordan explains how that rumor came to be and why the next few months will be a put up or shut up moment for him and his company.
Grabango launches a live checkout-free store with Giant Eagle, Walmart+ gets a date, Amazon Fresh opens to the public, Mall of America goes livestreaming, and Macy’s has the temerity to think that the world needs smaller, off-mall versions of itself.
Grabango launches a live checkout-free store with Giant Eagle, Walmart+ gets a date, Amazon Fresh opens to the public, Mall of America goes livestreaming, and Macy’s has the temerity to think that the world needs smaller, off-mall versions of itself.
Nike cuts ties with wholesalers, Facebook launches shops, Zappos plans a store for NYC, Best Buy turns stores into distribution hubs, and Taco Bell makes a pickup-only drive thru lane.
Walmart’s Tennille Webb joins Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga to discuss how she worked with Mamava to make Walmart the first retailer to roll out lactation pods in over 100 U.S. stores.
In this week’s edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern discuss what to make of all the earnings announcements this week (including Target, Walmart, Kohl’s, and more), Simon’s acquisition of Lucky Brand, Payless making a comeback, Standard Cognition and Circle K, and what Chris thinks is a weak excuse from Amazon on its liability surrounding defective products on its third-party marketplace.
With COVID-19 now ever present, knowing where and in what parts of a store social distancing is working or not working, by way of real-time data, is more important than ever.
Kalon Welch, FastSensor EVP Business Development, sits down with Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga of Omni Talk to discuss the ever-trending topic of workspace journey measurement through anonymous radio frequency tracking to make better decisions during these difficult times and how active distance alert monitoring (aka ADAM) could be one of the most important tools for retailers to deploy in their stores, in their warehouses, or even as they are unloading trucks to protect all involved.
As Kalon says, “That which gets measured, gets done,” and social distancing is pretty darn important to get done.
In the latest episode of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern take on all the detractors pooh-poohing the rumors of Amazon placing warehouses in Simon mall properties, discuss Wayfair’s first-ever profit, and then geek out at the massive transformative grocery and convenience headlines surrounding Walmart and Instacart, Coty and GoPuff, and Kroger creating its own third-party marketplace.
In the latest edition of our Omni Talk Spotlight Series, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga interview Sara Batchelder, VP of Retail and QSR for Numerator. Chris, Anne, and Sara discuss Numerator’s unique panel data across both online and offline shoppers and then delve into some of the insights Numerator is already seeing around things like Click-&-Collect, the online acceleration in grocery, and the early promotional spending trends across various Back-to-School categories.
For example, did you know apparel promotional spend is down 60% vs. the year prior? We sure as heck didn’t.
In this week’s Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss all the week’s top retail news, including DoorDash’s new DashMart online store, CVS inking a deal with PayPal and Venmo, the rumors that Aldi is getting into the checkout-free technology game, 7-Eleven buying Speedway, and Walmart’s new omnichannel advertising platform that Chris and Anne just can’t agree on.
In this week’s Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern discuss Amazon meeting with startups to then reportedly launch competing products, Sycamore Partners’ plan to merge Belk and JC Penney, Neiman Marcus calling it quits at Hudson Yards, all of retail closing down stores for Thanksgiving, and Rite Aid having no good reason on earth for deploying facial recognition technology for the last eight years.
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Omni Talk is the retail blog for retailers, written by retailers. Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga founded Omni Talk in 2017 and have quickly turned it into one of the fastest growing blogs in retail. Know More →
