S5E12 The Future of AI in Merchandising & Buying with Noah Herschman and Jeff Fish

In Season 5, Episode 12 of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Noah Herschman and Jeff Fish of Intelo.ai to explore how agentic AI is revolutionizing retail merchandising and buying. From the art and science of retail merchandising to the persistent challenges of planning and allocation, this episode dives deep into how collaborative intelligence empowers merchandisers, planners, and buyers to make smarter, faster, and more creative decisions.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why merchandising is the “hub of the wheel” in retail success
• The balance between creativity and analytics in buying decisions
• How agentic AI enhances human judgment without replacing it
• Real-world examples of AI improving in-season planning and merchandising financial plans
• Why spreadsheets aren’t going away, but AI agents make them smarter
• The future of retail technology and how Agentic AI delivers superpowers to retail merchandisers

Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

About our Guests

Noah Herschman. Senior Industry Advisor, Intelo.ai

Noah is an ecommerce strategist who’s been shaping online retail since the 1990s. He’s held leadership roles at Amazon, eBay, and Groupon. As a Microsoft Senior Retail Industry Architect, he has worked with more than 150 global retail & CPG clients. Noah has lived in China for 15 years and fluent in Mandarin, Noah operates out of Hong Kong. He is currently a Senior Industry Advisor for Intelo.ai

Jeffrey Fish, Co-CEO, Intelo.ai

Jeffrey Fish Co-Founded the Chatly platform serving global retail & hospitality brands targeting the China market (exited to Salesforce in 2020). He then led Salesforce China in partnership with Alibaba Cloud. Now he's scaling up Intelo's Collaborative Intelligence Agentic Merchandising & Planning Platform.

Chapters:

00:00 Previews 

01:39 Show Intro 

04:13 Welcome Noah Herschman & Jeff Fish 

04:37 Guest Backgrounds and Expertise 

07:33 The Importance of Retail Merchandising 

11:41 Challenges and Solutions in Modern Merchandising 

16:25 The Role of Agentic AI in Merchandising 

23:09 Future of Agentic AI and Merchandising 

40:04 Practical Steps for Retailers 

41:36 How to Reach Out And Contact 

42:10 Show Close

Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Allianceadvisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.