Executive Summary

The Coresight Research team is in Las Vegas this week, attending and participating in the Shoptalk 2018 conference held March 18–21. In this report we share our key takeaways from the fourth day of the conference, which include:

• Alipay announced a partnership with Freedom Pay and First Data to bridge the international travel experience and serve the growing number of Chinese tourists visiting the US.
• Radical retail thinking requires being uncomfortable, feeling wrong and having “one foot in the boat and one on the dock,” according to Walmart’s incubator Store No. 8, Williams Sonoma and Home Depot.
• Albertsons is to launch a digital marketplace which allows vendors to sell direct to shoppers.
• Flexport and Optoro are startups that are transforming the supply chain and logistics industry.
• Tophatter—an AI retail startup that calls itself the anti-Amazon solution—is driving engagement, not efficiency.