Introduction

Coresight Research is a research partner of Shoptalk Fall 2025, which took place during September 17–19 at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois. It serves as a complementary, second-half-of-the-year counterpart to Shoptalk Spring—offering industry leaders another strategic touchpoint to connect, collaborate and act on fast-moving trends.

This year, Shoptalk Fall attracted more than 3,000 retail and brand leaders, technology innovators and decision-makers for an immersive experience built around the theme of “Retail Alchemy.” Featuring hands-on workshops, peer-led sessions, and insights from more than 130 industry luminaries, the event spotlighted key retail priorities, including AI-driven intelligence, product innovation, customer loyalty and executive leadership in a currently volatile environment.

At the event, the Coresight Research team presented at panels, attended conference sessions, met with clients and participated in one-to-one sessions.

In this report, we present our top insights from Shoptalk Fall 2025, centered around four key themes that align with Coresight Research’s predictions for retail in 2025 and beyond:

• Data-Driven and AI-Augmented Retail Intelligence—Modern retail is moving beyond static dashboards and datasets, using machine learning (ML) and agentic AI to create intelligent, responsive systems for forecasting, planning and operations. These tools help brands anticipate disruption, navigate inflation and tariffs, and fine-tune supply chain, inventory and omnichannel performance in real time.
• Product Curation and Innovation Under Pressure—With supply chains in flux and consumer preferences shifting rapidly, merchandising teams are piloting new categories, reallocating inventory across formats and making bold assortment decisions to stay competitive.
• Brand Identity, Loyalty and Customer Experience in a Shifting World—Brand building today is about staying relevant, resilient and resonant in the face of cultural shifts, generational divides and algorithm-driven discovery. Marketers and customer experience leaders are focusing on personalization, loyalty and emotional connection to strengthen relationships across channels, platforms and regions.
• Leading Through Volatility and Change—Today’s leaders must act decisively in uncertainty while planning for what’s next. By balancing stability and innovation, cost control and expansion and unity with decentralization, forward-thinking brands are reshaping organizational culture and empowering teams at every level.

Shoptalk Fall 2025 Wrap-Up: Coresight Research Analysis

A recurring theme at Shoptalk Fall 2025 was how AI, tariffs and market volatility are driving the need for resilience and agility. Speakers stressed that successful strategies involve pivoting when needed, keeping supply chains flexible and using AI thoughtfully as a tool rather than pursuing it without a clear purpose. At the same time, the human element remains critical: associates play a key role, and maintaining clear communication with all stakeholders—brands, retailers, vendors and logistics partners—is essential to navigating change effectively.

1. Data-Driven and AI-Augmented Retail Intelligence

AI As a Driver of Retail Reinvention

Across the sessions, speakers highlighted that AI is now a practical tool helping retailers stay resilient and make smarter decisions in uncertain times. It is already proving its value in areas like personalization, customer acquisition and productivity. But the real impact comes only when AI projects are directly linked to clear business goals—such as revenue growth, cutting costs and saving time—rather than being pursued as isolated technology pilots. Collectively, the success depends on disciplined adoption: aligning solutions with customer needs, building internal know-how and viewing AI as an enabler, not a magic fix.

Neelima Sharma, SVP, Omnichannel & Ecommerce Technology, Lowe’s, outlined three areas of AI focus for the company:

• How we shop: Style Your Space, shopping assistant, personalization
• How we sell: Inventory planning, assortment planning
• How we work: How to automate store teams and associates’ workflows

She described innovations, such as “Style Your Space,” a GenAI tool that allows customers to upload a photo of their home and receive personalized design recommendations. Lowe’s has also deployed semantic search capabilities to respond to problem-based queries (“show me patio furniture that fits my balcony”) and launched shopper assistants to provide design inspiration and answer product questions. Internally, AI is being used for inventory and assortment planning, as well as to streamline workflows for associates.

Sharma highlighted that the goal is to empower associates to be more productive and better equipped to solve customer issues. “Human connection will always be there, but AI will help them drive productivity,” she added.

Manju Kuruvilla, Founder & CEO, Spangle, noted that traditional brand websites are no longer built for how consumers shop today and suggested that the future may move beyond conventional websites entirely. Instead, personal digital agents, integrated with individual calendars and preferences, could become the main way people discover and buy products.

Many speakers highlighted how AI can accelerate experimentation and testing. Josh Payne, Co-Founder & CEO of Coframe, pointed out that 95% of website traffic never converts. Traditional conversion optimization is slow and resource-intensive, with experiments taking weeks to launch. Coframe uses advanced AI to design and run experiments in hours, allowing companies to test at ten times the previous volume while cutting time-to-market and costs. Partnering with OpenAI, Coframe has already delivered double-digit ROI for clients by boosting conversion rates, saving team effort and reducing operational expenses.

Neelima Sharma, SVP, Omnichannel & Ecommerce Technology, Lowe’s
Source: Shoptalk Fall

 

Strategic Pivots Enabled by Intelligence

Every company eventually reaches a point where the old way of doing things no longer works. Retail leaders noted that real pivots are not just about chasing big new ideas, but about making tough, disciplined choices—often deciding what to stop. They emphasized that associates play a vital role in guiding customers through these changes, and that true transformation is only real when it shows up in the customer experience, not just in company announcements.

Bruce Smith, Founder & Chairman of the Board, Hydrow, described pivoting as “a euphemism for near death.” Hydrow’s breaking point came after the pandemic, when rising interest rates and soaring customer acquisition costs undermined its growth model. The company responded with drastic cuts—halving the workforce, reducing marketing and scaling back technology investment. Though painful, these decisions restored profitability and sharpened focus. He emphasized that leadership in crisis means knowing where to compromise, such as in the supply chain, and where to double down, such as investing in AI to strengthen new growth areas. Hydrow also used acquisitions to move into broader wellness, positioning itself as a multi-modal health platform. For Smith, transparency—even about bad news—was key to maintaining trust with both employees and investors.

Nicole Parry, Head of Merchandising at H&M Americas, highlighted the discipline pivots demand in environments with finite resources. With 600 stores and fixed space, H&M must constantly decide what to prioritize and what to cut. She explained that merchandising is about making “small pivots,” but today’s rapid trend cycles require faster and sharper decisions. By narrowing Key Process Indicators (KPIs) to just sales, profit and speed, H&M ensures pivots are clear, actionable and measurable organization-wide. Parry added that celebrating even small wins helps teams stay motivated and aligned, ensuring pivots translate into progress.

Supply chain leaders emphasized that true agility is not just about being lean, but about having options and backups to navigate disruptions. Jennifer Kobus, DVP of Global Supply Chain at REI, described agility as moving beyond reactive responses to fostering a culture of continuous improvement through test-and-learn initiatives. REI experiments with small-scale pilots that can be scaled when they prove valuable, maintaining flexibility without compromising operational stability. Derek Geiss, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Nutrabolt, described agility as “optionality”—keeping multiple sourcing and logistics pathways open so the business can adapt quickly when conditions change.

Bruce Smith, Founder & Chairman of the Board, Hydrow
Source: Shoptalk Fall

 

2. Product Curation and Innovation Under Pressure

Physical Retail As Customer Acquisition and Insight Engine

Digital-first retailers are discovering that physical stores can be a strong engine for customer acquisition. Kate Gulliver, CFO and Chief Administrative Officer of Wayfair, shared that the company’s first Chicago store, which opened a year ago, revealed important results—over half the shoppers had never engaged with the Wayfair brand before, proving the reach of brick-and-mortar stores. Certain categories like gift items and storage solutions are performing better in-store than online, highlighting the importance of tailoring product assortment to each channel.

Gulliver also pointed to the importance of shipping speed in the furniture category, where most shoppers do not leave the store with a product in hand. Wayfair leverages its nearby Chicago fulfillment centers to deliver items within one to three days—an experience that, in Gulliver’s words, left customers “impressed with how quickly and conveniently our delivery experience was.” The physical channel move also benefits suppliers, who see the store as another valuable channel for customer exposure.

For U.S. Polo Association, physical retail remains a critical insight engine. Jose Nino, VP, Global Digital & Ecommerce, U.S. Polo Association, noted, “bricks drive clicks,” and the brand’s global network of 1,200 stores provides invaluable signals that inform adjustments to both direct-to-consumer channels and marketplaces.

Sam’s Club executives explained that they view each store as a vast sensory network, equipped with cameras, RFID readers and app telemetry. AI turns this stream of information into practical insights that improve the member experience. For example, floor scrubbers are outfitted with cameras, capturing 24 million images a day to monitor aisles. AI models analyze these images to flag inventory gaps or pricing errors and instantly send next-best-action alerts to associates’ handheld devices—like restocking shelves or fixing a sign. The scrubbers also carry Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) readers that scan 180 million tags daily, providing real-time visibility into product location and availability. Together, these tools enable associates to act faster and keep operations running smoothly.

Kate Gulliver, CFO and Chief Administrative Officer of Wayfair
Source: Shoptalk Fall

 

Scaling Beyond Pilots

Many retailers can launch pilots, but few succeed in scaling them into programs that deliver lasting value. True success comes from being agile enough to adjust quickly, staying authentic to maintain customer trust and building the right infrastructure to support growth. Putting the customer first, actively involving vendors and fostering cross-team collaboration are essential to turning pilots into sustainable engines of growth.

George Chang, General Manager, Shein USA Marketplace, shared Shein’s experience building and growing its third-party marketplace. Launched two years ago, the initiative was designed with speed, agility and execution in mind. “It’s a different muscle,” from the traditional business, he explained. Chang said, “we have two customers: our end customer and our merchants. We are very intentional about how we get merchant feedback.” To strengthen those relationships, Shein hosts five annual events and regular workshops to engage directly with sellers.

Michael Jacobs, Chief Growth Officer, Consortium Brands, warned that after years of investment in building a brand story, it would be reckless to “hand over the keys” to influencers who lack authenticity. Instead, Consortium Brands seeks creators who are genuine customers, using tools like Yotpo to identify reviewers whose voices resonate. He emphasized that ROI comes from “brand love and connection,” not paid promotion. To ensure alignment, the Consortium established a cross-functional structure linking affiliate and influencer teams across its portfolio brands. This coordination ensures that workflows are consistent with brand positioning before scaling user-generated content (UGC) programs.

Enna Allen, SVP Marketing, Simon Property Group, shared the journey behind Simon+, a loyalty program over two decades in the making. Allen explained that creating a program valuable to both shoppers and retailers required first laying a foundation through earlier initiatives: the VIP Shopper Club built a database of engaged customers, the Mall Insider Program drove awareness of events, Shop Simon extended the mall experience online and Simon Search enabled shoppers to check local product availability. These programs cultivated consumer behaviors and infrastructure that ultimately supported Simon+. Building Simon+ demanded extensive cross-functional collaboration, involving operations, leasing, product development and digital teams. The program launched in beta in August, with early results showing strong engagement from consumers and retailers alike.

The Next Frontier in Search

Search is no longer about keywords—it is becoming the central nervous system of retail, acting as both a cultural radar and a transactional bridge between shoppers and retailers. The future of search is moving to conversational, context-aware and agent-mediated experiences that will redefine how consumers discover products and how retailers must structure their data and content.

Ranjeet Bhosale, VP, Digital Product Management, Target, underscored the fundamental shift from keyword-based search to conversational queries. He noted that traditional two-word searches are giving way to natural language prompts like, “What’s a good gift for a 9-year-old?” To prepare for this, Target is investing heavily in foundational data infrastructure, ensuring that product details—price, promotions, availability and policies—are machine-readable. This is essential for the emerging model of “agent-to-agent commerce,” where customer assistants (like Alexa and Google) directly interact with retailer systems. He stressed that the best search experience is the one that feels invisible: reducing guest friction so effectively that shoppers no longer reformulate queries.

Ranjeet Bhosale, VP, Digital Product Management, Target
Source: Shoptalk Fall

 

Retail Media’s Expanding Horizons

Retail media is not only the fastest-growing advertising channel but also one of the most versatile, ready to benefit from AI advancements. For brands, digital endcaps are high-impact yet underutilized spaces, while performance TV and in-store experiential activations can drive additional sales. The real opportunity lies in using AI to connect inspiration with conversion, creating personalized, native experiences that enhance the customer journey rather than interrupt it.

Andrew Lipsman, Founder & Chief Analyst, Media, Ads + Commerce, highlighted the physical store as the next major frontier for retail media. Currently representing just 0.1% of ad spend, in-store retail media has enormous untapped potential. With in-store audiences twice the size of digital audiences, retailers such as CVS, Best Buy and Hy-Vee, are already investing in digital signage and endcaps. “Whether a static or digital endcap, it drives significant sales,” Lipsman said, describing the digital endcap as one of the most valuable but undervalued pieces of retail real estate. Experiential activations in-store are also a powerful tool for driving incremental sales and lifetime value.

Unified Commerce: Breaking Down the Walls

Speakers noted that unified commerce goes beyond linking transactions—it connects the entire customer journey before, during and after a purchase. Achieving this means breaking down data and operational silos so that online and physical channels work together seamlessly, informing and enhancing each other.

Spencer Hewett, Founder & CEO, Radar, said the “missing ingredient in omnichannel has been the ability to measure the physical store.” He explained that while distribution centers offer high accuracy, most retailers still lack clear visibility into what customers are picking up, trying on or putting down in stores. Hewett said American Eagle now conducts 24 billion RFID counts per day across its stores, giving real-time instrumentation comparable to e-commerce. He emphasized that stockouts should no longer happen in 2025: “If you can find the product for the customer, you can sell more product.”

Hewett gave an example of linking marketing to in-store behavior, pointing to a Sidney Sweeney campaign that led to a major spike in store traffic over a weekend. With real-time measurement, the company was able to quickly see conversion rates and tie campaign performance directly to sales. He also predicted that agentic AI and AR glasses will make the world itself a shopping environment, with recommendations surfacing automatically as customers interact with products.

Creativity, Joy and Storytelling

Creative leaders reminded audiences that retail is at its best when it delivers originality, bold ideas and authentic stories—not just promotions or tech upgrades. Jonathan Adler, Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Jonathan Adler, explained that stores should spark joy and feel like “mini vacations,” filled with surprise, swagger and theatricality. He warned that copying the same bland format across all locations drains retail of its magic and emotional pull.

Emerging brands showed how fresh thinking can break through crowded categories. Fiona Simmonds, Co-Founder, Pinkie, said that the company tapped into overlooked needs around puberty products, winning shelf space at Amazon, Target, Walmart and CVS by positioning itself as a go-to solution for moms shopping for daughters. She stressed the importance of knowing both the purchaser and the end-user and using humor and education to reach them in the right spaces online. Similarly, Carly Bigi, Founder & CEO, Laws of Motion, explained how AI-powered apparel sizing—built on billions of data points and proven in its own DTC business—can hit 99% accuracy and slash returns to just 1%.

3. Brand Identity, Loyalty and Customer Experience in a Shifting World

Creativity That Connects

Earning loyalty in today’s fragmented market takes more than smart algorithms. It requires stories that feel real, messages that resonate with culture and a balance between digital precision and human connection. The brands that win are those that fuse AI-powered insights with creativity—solving practical needs while also building an emotional bond with consumers.

Debbie Woloshin, Chief Marketing Officer, Stitch Fix, described how her company embodies this hybrid approach. Stitch Fix leverages AI for data-driven personalization, matching customers with clothing that suits their size, preferences and lifestyle. But Woloshin emphasized that it is the human stylists who deliver trust and empathy, making customers feel understood. She cited the mantra: “We are powered by AI, but styled by humans.” Programs, such as Retail Therapy and Unscripted, use client stories as content, bringing community and authenticity into the brand narrative. Meanwhile, Stitch Fix is piloting new tools, including virtual try-ons, conversational commerce and Stylist Notes to deepen engagement. These tools are designed not to replace stylists but to augment their creativity and efficiency, demonstrating how AI and human intuition can work hand-in-hand to create stronger customer relationships.

Cultural Relevance and Heritage

As consumer demographics shift and social norms evolve, brands must balance heritage with adaptability. Staying relevant means meeting people where they are—across cultures, life stages and new channels. Brands that overlook these cultural and demographic shifts risk losing their place in consumers’ lives.

Leah Johns, Head of Global Consumer Lab at Bain & Company, highlighted key shifts shaping today’s consumers: aging populations, changing family structures and rising loneliness. She divided seniors into two groups—“Gold,” who travel and spend, and “Old,” facing health declines. Single-person households are growing fastest globally, and family structures are more fluid, with pets often replacing children and plants replacing pets. She also noted that consumers are transferring expectations across categories—demanding the same convenience in apparel as they do from Spotify or Netflix.

Brands must recognize that culture increasingly shapes buying decisions. Latino content is proliferating, and products and experiences inspired by Latino culture are gaining popularity. Young, bilingual Latinos are driving growth in content consumption and online shopping, often using digital channels as a substitute for in-store visits. Personalization is valued, but shoppers also want transparency and control. Social media and online reviews remain key drivers of brand discovery.

4. Leading Through Volatility and Change

Retail leader discussed that disruptions are creating both pressure and opportunity: tariffs create permission to innovate, AI is maturing from hype to board-level action, Gen Z is redefining the role of stores, and loyalty and media are undergoing fundamental reinvention. Constraints and complexity are forcing retailers to act faster, rethink what creates value and make bold bets on AI and new customer engagement models.

Deborah Weinswig, CEO & Founder, Coresight Research, explained that tariffs, which cut into margins at companies, such as Gap and Lululemon, have paradoxically given leaders “permission to try something totally new.” She said boards are now urging teams to move faster, supported by tools like AI to quickly disseminate critical information.

Weinswig highlighted the rise of private label as a structural response to margin pressure, noting that in some cases it has grown from 10% to 30% of mix, giving retailers flexibility and higher margins. On AI, she saw marketing and inventory as the two most immediate opportunities: marketing pilots can deliver results in as little as 3–4 months, while inventory applications like sizing, allocation and forecasting can reduce waste and even extend back into materials sourcing.

Joe Laszlo, Global Head of Insights, Shoptalk, observed that constraints often unlock creativity. He said the physical store, once considered “old-fashioned,” is returning to relevance, with malls becoming newly important. Holden Bale, Global Chief Strategy Officer, Merkle, supported this, citing Merkle research showing that 81% of Gen Z prefer in-store shopping, higher than any other generation. He called the physical–digital divide a “false dichotomy” and described stores as a force multiplier.

Ben Miller, VP of Original Content & Strategy at Shoptalk, described retail as part of the larger attention economy. He highlighted the rising power of creators and influencers, noting that as platforms like Google Gemini surface more influencer-driven content, they will play a bigger role in product discovery. Miller stressed that retailers must prepare for a future where earned media is just as important as paid advertising.

Deborah Weinswig, Founder & CEO, Coresight Research
Source: Shoptalk Fall

 

What We Think

The Coresight Research View on AI

We stand at the cusp of a new revolution in AI with the advent of agentic AI.

The first generation of AI/ML (machine learning) centers on the ability of AI to find relationships—even hidden ones—among large amounts of data, and ML excels at prediction and optimization. The steady improvement in computing power, driven by Moore’s Law, and the resulting decrease in the cost of computing, aided by cloud computing, have served to enable greater capabilities of AI/ML. Today, AI/ML still offers productivity gains and optimization benefits for retailers and other enterprises.

The advent of GenAI, the second generation of AI, adds the ability to communicate in natural human language to handle unstructured data, such as text, audio and video. Early GenAI applications were the creation and summarization of text and chatbots with natural language interfaces. Multimodal models enable the analysis and creation of voice and video, as well as synthetic data and computer code. We have also seen the creation of applications that manage multiple language models as well as the formation of businesses with new business models that are entirely built on GenAI technology. Combining AI/ML for making predictions with GenAI for its ability to generate multiple media outputs offers many powerful new capabilities.

Agentic AI builds upon GenAI’s ability to understand natural human language, which is used to create the instructions that agents follow. Agents take action, activating other software, following instruction or acting proactively on behalf of humans. We are in the early stages of the agentic AI revolution, with major cloud computing platforms offering developer tools and a few enterprises just beginning to roll out agents. The future promises AI agents everywhere and their value could increase even further from agent-to-agent communication.

Agentic AI is just one of the AI trends that Coresight Research predicts for retail in 2026 and beyond. We expect 2026 to be a pivotal year for the development of AI, with many GenAI projects seeing deployment. These projects will likely come in a variety of forms, including direct tests with language models; AI models offered by major cloud-service and enterprise software providers; and enterprise applications that control and monitor AI models. Healthy investments in AI and research into new AI technologies will likely result in new models that dramatically leapfrog the technology currently available.

Implications from This Report

The Shoptalk Fall 2025 conference outlined how retailers must rethink their playbooks to stay resilient in uncertain times. Success depends on blending human creativity with AI-driven tools, adapting fast to cultural and economic shifts and leading decisively through disruption.

Implications for Brands/Retailers

• Align AI initiatives with specific business goals, ensuring every investment drives tangible results like increased revenue or efficiency. Brands and retailers should start with quick wins in marketing and inventory management, where results can be seen in a short period, then scale successful pilots across operations.
• Treat physical stores as more than sales floors—they are key customer acquisition hubs, insight generators and media platforms.
• Prepare for conversational commerce by making all product data machine-readable. The future of retail search will be natural language queries handled by AI agents, requiring retailers to structure their information clearly so algorithms can easily understand and recommend the right products.

Implications for Technology Vendors

• Develop platforms that can rapidly test and scale innovations across multiple channels. Technology vendors who can help retailers move from pilot to full deployment in months rather than years will have a significant competitive advantage.
• Create measurement and analytics tools that connect online behavior to in-store actions. The ability to track customer journeys across all touchpoints and provide real-time insights will be crucial as unified commerce becomes the standard.
• As search evolves from keywords to conversational queries, vendors should offer solutions that help retailers organize their data to be machine-readable and compatible with emerging “agent-to-agent commerce”. There is also a significant opportunity to provide tools for in-store retail media and experiential activations.

Notes

Data in this report are as of September 24, 2025.

Companies mentioned in this report include: American Eagle (NYSE: AEO), Bain & Company, Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Coframe, Consortium Brands, CVS Health (NYSE: CVS), Gap (NYSE: GPS), H&M (STO: HM-B), Hydrow, Hy-Vee, LON: WPP), Lowe’s (NYSE: LOW), Lululemon (NASDAQ: LULU), Merkle (owned by Dentsu, TYO: 4324), Nutrabolt, REI, Sam’s Club (Walmart, NYSE: WMT), Shein, Simon Property Group (NYSE: SPG), Target (NYSE: TGT), U.S. Polo Association and Wayfair (NYSE: W).