Remarkable Retail Podcast

Retailers fretting over AI shopping agents are missing the “gold in their own backyard,” says retail media analyst Andrew Lipsman, who expects agentic commerce to stay “the most marginal behavior.” Andrew, founder of Media, Ads + Commerce and former principal analyst at eMarketer, joins Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc to talk about where retail media growth will actually come from and what DoorDash’s $17 billion acquisition of Instacart means for the ad business.

Retail media networks (RMNs) let retailers sell ads across their sites, apps, stores and partner channels, using their own shopper data to target those ads and tie them to sales. Amazon and Walmart control about 85% of the market, but Andrew says what’s left is hardly scraps. It’s already a $10 billion business, and the industry has monetized only about 38% of its owned-media opportunity. He explains how Walmart’s third-party marketplace created the “auction density” behind a $6 billion-plus ad business, and why loyalty programs like Amazon Prime and Walmart+ are the fulcrum of every network that works.

Then there’s the tension between ads and customer experience, online and in stores. Andrew argues that relevant search ads are what let Amazon and Walmart get away with heavy ad loads. He shares research with GroceryTV on how shoppers respond to in-store screens and names the “no-brainer” placements: checkout, the deli counter, the pharmacy and the store entrance. End caps are worth more than any of them, he says, and they’re also more political.

He’s just as blunt about measurement. ROAS and 28-day attribution windows push brands to over-invest in Meta, Google and programmatic, he says, and retail media networks won’t win brand budgets until they offer reach and frequency data. For regional grocers and mid-size retailers, his path to scale is aggregation: act more like a digital publisher than a walled garden.

In the news: Amazon’s third quarter, where AWS grew 39%, first-party online sales grew just 2%, and heavy AI spending pushed trailing 12-month cash flow $42 billion into the red. Plus Starbucks’ improving U.S. comps (against an easy comparison), why the DoorDash–Instacart deal may not close until late 2027 or early 2028, UPS and FedEx raising holiday surcharges 22% to 25%, and Walmart opening its site to ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI shopping agents while Amazon keeps them out.

On the radar: Steve is watching the regulatory review of DoorDash–Instacart and how competitors respond. Michael, fresh from moderating a Retail Council of Canada sustainability panel, looks at textile circularity and whether extended producer responsibility (EPR) rules for apparel are headed to North America.

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc open with the battle of the membership giants. Walmart and Sam’s Club are rolling out a combined bundle that edges closer to Amazon Prime, pairing delivery and discounts with Paramount+ and 10 cents off a gallon at 17,000 gas stations. With Amazon’s 30-minute delivery neutralizing Walmart’s store advantage, Steve sees growing convergence between the two, plus a data grab that sets Walmart up for a more agentic, personalized future.

Next, physical retail’s not-so-dead moment: U.S. retail vacancy sits just over 4%, and on prime blocks there is simply no space to be had. Steve explains why, from strong absorption to years of constrained construction driven by labor, zoning and interest rates. On the holiday front, the NRF’s 4.2% forecast lands in line with peers, but with inflation near 3.7%, much of that growth is price, not units, with consumer electronics up roughly 12% and toys about 6%.

The centerpiece is a deep think on retail technology and how consumers actually shop. Drawing on his new keynote, Steve walks through four famous misfires: Marc Andreessen’s prediction that all shopping would move online, the DTC pure-play boom and bust, the retail apocalypse narrative, and McKinsey’s “10 years of e-commerce in three months.” The cost was real, from lost investment to paused store remodels to Nike’s costly wholesale retreat. His questions for the agentic AI era are simple: why do we shop, and what is a store for? Shopping is social, emotional and tactile, not just an errand, and stores still account for about 80% of retail. Michael adds the trust problem: consumers won’t hand an agent their whole life, or their credit card. Steve credits Microsoft’s ShiSh Shridhar with a key insight: agents unlock tasks we’d never otherwise bother doing.

Back to the news, online grocery keeps surging: 64% of U.S. households bought groceries online in September, Q3 sales rose nearly 21%, and more than 30% of orders are buy online, pick up in store. Then factory-to-customer brand Quince, valued at $10 billion, launches in the UK, its first market outside North America, into a tough apparel market.

On the radar screen, Steve flags global unrest, including protests in France, along with rising fuel costs and exploding U.S. fiscal deficits ahead of the midterms; Michael notes the fallout for retailers like Carrefour. Michael then turns to cybercrime, now increasingly AI-powered, from hacked grocery refrigerators in France to a PHP vulnerability and attacks on major retailers, with simple advice from a cyber expert: map your systems architecture before the hackers arrive.

Photo by Azwedo L.LC on Unsplash

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Steve Dennis is back from Athens, where he keynoted on the soul of the store and walked the Ancient Agora, one of the world’s first marketplaces. He and Michael LeBlanc open with a hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation report: consumer prices up 3.7%, producer prices up 6.3%. How much have retailers been absorbing, and what happens when elevated diesel costs work through the food chain into 2027? The winners keep winning anyway. Costco posted a 7.6% comp excluding gas on 4.7% traffic growth. Aritzia delivered a 34.5% comp with digital up nearly 70%. Uniqlo logged its fifth straight record year. LVMH did not, with fashion and leather goods down 5%. The hosts also size up Amazon’s new Bee wearables and Apple’s new home device.

The featured conversation is with Jon Blotner, President of Wayfair, who runs merchandising, marketing, physical retail and global logistics. After two decades as a pure play, Wayfair has gone from a small test store in the Natick Mall to a 150,000-square-foot flagship outside Chicago. Atlanta and Columbus are open, Denver arrives by year-end, and six more stores are planned through 2028. The early returns are hard to ignore. Illinois sales are growing 15% faster than the rest of the U.S., roughly half of Chicago store shoppers are new to Wayfair, and opening-day crowds included shoppers who bused in from Wisconsin. Landlords noticed.

Jon explains why a showroom model didn’t fit, how the Wayfair Verified program brings merchant discipline to deciding what earns floor space, and how associates with tablets connect shoppers to the endless aisle and two-day delivery. He takes on Michael’s question of whether rent is the new customer acquisition cost, and explains why he expects store shoppers to deliver meaningfully higher lifetime value. He also covers four-wall profitability, falling opening costs, the roles of AllModern, Birch Lane, Joss & Main, Perigold and Wayfair Professional, and Wayfair’s ambitions for Canada. He closes with advice for digital brands going physical, starting with why a store test demands far more planning than an online one.

After the interview, Steve, a longtime Wayfair skeptic, gives his updated take. Then the hosts turn to grocery’s mushy middle. Kroger posted flat sales excluding fuel and cut guidance, Albertsons slipped 1% and withdrew guidance, and the hosts ask whether online grocery and retail media are really additive. They close with their radar screen picks, including the US midterms and the Weston family’s purchase of Boots.

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

 In this special Encore episode from 2025, Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc are revisiting one of our favourite conversations from last year: David Kahan, President and Managing Director of Birkenstock Americas, on keeping a 250-year-old brand relevant. Steve opens with what’s changed since: revenue up 15%, DTC outpacing wholesale for the first time, 13 new stores last quarter, and community-driven concepts in Malibu and Berlin. David then delivers a masterclass in brand stewardship and retail strategy. He traces Birkenstock’s roots from a humble German cobbler to a global fashion phenomenon—revealing how the brand’s success rests on “never deviating from its DNA.” He says every product begins with the footbed, making comfort, health, and purpose inseparable from style.

Kahan credits Birkenstock’s ongoing cultural resonance—from the Barbie movie to red carpet collaborations—to disciplined brand management and “engineered distribution.” He explains how each Birkenstock store is a unique community experience, blending tactile engagement with hyper-local curation. The conversation also touches on leadership philosophy, emphasizing humility, trust, and an unwavering focus on brand equity over short-term sales.  

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Can consumer spending keep defying gravity? Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc open Episode 314 by untangling a contradictory economy. GDP growth is solid and spending is holding up, yet consumer sentiment sits at its lowest since 2014, the latest jobs report came in weak, inflation won't budge, and mortgage rates are the highest since 2002. As one commentator put it, the U.S. is a tortoise economy in a greyhound costume. Nike offers little relief: sales down 4%, another round of restructuring and layoffs, and a stock down 75% over five years as On, Hoka, and New Balance keep taking share. Across the Atlantic, Marks & Spencer is bringing Sephora to 100 UK shop-in-shops and online, a far more natural fit, Steve argues, than Sephora at Kohl's.

The heart of the episode is a luxury check-in on two of Steve's annual predictions. Fresh from a suburban Chicago store walk, Steve explains why the new two-level Bloomies at Old Orchard Mall delivers a sharper, more edited contemporary point of view than a traditional department store. Prediction #7, that Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus would emerge from bankruptcy leaner, meaner, and still fragile, is playing out. The renamed Exemplar Group has cut full-line stores from 69 to 49 and largely exited off-price, but still faces overlapping markets and unpaid vendors. Prediction #8, that luxury's gains would be unevenly spread, is holding too. Hermès grew 17% in the U.S. on an already large base, and Prada, Brunello Cucinelli, and Coach are surging while Kering and parts of LVMH lag. Coach's 23% jump, Steve notes, owes a lot to sharp, targeted marketing.

Walmart's promise to "price the product, not the person," timed to its electronic shelf label rollout, kicks off a lively debate about surveillance pricing, personalization, and how much retailers already know about their customers.

Then it's on to AI. Steve sorts the crowded field of shopping agents into four types: vertical agents inside retailers, like Walmart's Sparky and Amazon's Alexa for Shopping; search agents like Gemini and Perplexity; narrow specialists like Daydream; and broad life assistants, a category Meta's Muse and the startup Instinct are heating up. Cutting through the hype, he argues agents may send shoppers into stores as often as away from them, and that trust will decide who wins.

On the radar screen, Steve is watching rising buy now, pay later use and shrinking savings, especially as shoppers start financing groceries and takeout. Michael tracks Canada's push for growth abroad, with the Weston family eyeing the 1,800-store Boots chain and Couche-Tard making an $8.7 billion offer for Polish convenience chain Żabka Group.

Steve's Baker's Dozen of Provocative 2026 Retail Predictions

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Seth Godin, bestselling author of more than 20 books, visionary, friend of the pod and the inventor of email marketing, returns to The Remarkable Retail podcast  to discuss his new book, The Knot. Seth reframes the Gordian Knot legend: Alexander didn't cut it, he pulled out the hidden pole at its centre and then untied it. The lesson? Every place we feel stuck has hidden entanglements, and the way through is to name them. Seth explains how wanting two incompatible things at once keeps people and companies frozen, and why struggling retailers are often defending real estate rather than embracing their purpose: creating delight worth more than what customers pay.

Drawing on Kodak, Netflix, Blockbuster and Google, he tackles the sunk-cost fallacy with a memorable first-class-to-Dubai analogy, explains how status, affiliation and fear shape boardroom decisions, and offers practical advice for anyone whose boss won't let them change: run small experiments, share the credit, own the blame. Seth also warns that AI is turning every remaining employee into a manager, an identity shift for people trained since childhood to ask for the right answer. His challenge to retail leaders is to trade golf for surfing, tell the truth about where their time actually goes, and get close enough to customers to rediscover the empathy that makes great merchants.

Before we get to Seth, Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc celebrate Steve's hat trick as an NRF Top Retail Voice, then it's into the tail end of earnings season. Costco is Exhibit A for retail's great concentration, posting net sales up 11.2% and a 9.4% comp, with digitally enabled sales up nearly 20%, though higher fuel prices flatten the numbers by a couple of points. J.C. Penney illustrates the collapse of the unremarkable middle, with sales down 8% and net income cut by more than half. And in a return of the Wobbly Unicorn Corner, Stitch Fix's turnaround looks stalled as active clients slip and weak guidance sinks the shares.

We finish with Steve unpacking Adobe's forecast of 6.7% growth in November and December online spending, and why margins, not comps, will be the real holiday story. He also marks the closing of the storied Neiman Marcus downtown Dallas flagship, home of the Zodiac Room, and shares a fun fact: Home Depot is the top-returning S&P 500 stock of the past 45 years. On the radar screen, Steve examines AI's mood swing as data-centre pushback grows and consumer adoption slows. At the same time, Michael looks at the halt of Canadian beer and spirits exports to the U.S., and at U.S.–China retail, from Luckin's rise to Walmart's roughly $30 billion business in China.

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

The Remarkable Retail podcast turns six.  Steve Dennis opens with the macro picture: inflation remains stubborn, driven largely by fuel. U.S. diesel just hit an all-time high, regular gas is up 36% year over year, and retailers absorbing higher freight costs say they're nearing their breaking point. Michael LeBlanc adds that diesel is almost perfectly correlated with food inflation, and that Canadian retailers expect fuel surcharges to persist into early 2027.

The hosts review the first holiday forecasts. Deloitte projects 4 to 4.8% growth for November through January, with e-commerce up about 8%; Bain sees 4.5% growth and roughly 9% online over November and December. Steve wonders whether high fuel costs could push more shoppers online.

At Macy's Inc., Bloomingdale's posted its highest comp ever at 11.3%, while the Macy's nameplate managed just over 1%, in line with Dillard's. Coresight's mid-year data shows store closings down 44% against an unusually heavy prior year, openings at their lowest since 2020, and a widening gap between scarce A-quality space and struggling B, C and D properties. Toys R Us is betting big, planning 120 more small-format U.S. stores before the holidays, though Michael notes the concept stumbled in Canada.

The centerpiece: Steve's Pardon the Disruption post arguing that "the race to the doorstep is escalating." With Amazon rolling out sub-same-day delivery in as little as 30 minutes and holding roughly 40% of e-commerce, most retailers can at best match the offering through store fulfillment and gig partners like Instacart and DoorDash, at far worse economics. The smarter play: reach delivery parity where it matters and compete on reasons beyond ultra-convenience. Both hosts agree traditional grocers sit squarely in the bullseye as Amazon moves from the everything store to the everyday store.

In earning news Inditex posted a 9% August sales gain, Zara plans 20 new U.S. stores, and sister brand Bershka is expanding fast from Miami to New York, India and Brazil. Kroger's sales were flat and guidance was cut, with retail media (up 24%) the lone bright spot.

On the radar screen: Target Beauty Studio replaces Ulta shops in about 600 Target stores, and Michael shares insights from his quarterly retailer conversations on AI's ROI, including a McKinsey finding that change-management costs run roughly three times the technology itself, plus the shock of seat-based bills and exhausted token budgets.

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Remarkable Retail Episode 311 welcomes guest co-host and longtime friend of the pod Anne Mezzenga, Founder & CEO of Retail Field Report, joining Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc on mic and on camera.

Anne opens with her new venture, launched in March as an evolution of the work she built at Omni Talk Retail with co-founder Chris Walton. Retail Field Report takes a journalist's lens rather than an analyst's — working shifts in stores, interviewing executives and walking floors to learn what's actually happening inside retail organizations, not what the headlines claim.

The news opens on a shaky macro backdrop: diesel at a four-year high, the priciest Labor Day gas in a year, worse still across Europe, and a Fed narrative that has flipped from cuts to a 62% market-implied probability of at least two hikes by year-end. Michael adds the Canadian view — reciprocal tariffs, shelved US liquor and a tourism reversal after June's 5% bump in cross-border travel. Anne reports from the field: once fuel, healthcare and food are covered, the discretionary spending big-box retailers count on is running dry.

On earnings, Steve unpacks Five Below's five straight quarters of double-digit comps, 23% revenue growth, its move past 2,000 stores and a rare guidance raise. Victoria's Secret posts a 9% comp; Anne credits store consistency, omnichannel execution and strength in PINK and beauty, and the pair explore whether GLP-1s — increasingly prescribed alongside hormone replacement therapy — are quietly reshaping apparel and beauty demand. Lululemon disappoints, with comps down 9% and the Americas down 12% as Heidi O'Neill steps in as CEO; Anne argues the brand needs a sharper point of view and less rinse-and-repeat product. At Kohl's, Steve flags a second straight quarter of Sephora underperforming the rest of the store.

The centerpiece is Anne's work as a flex retail associate, booking shifts through the Reflex app in cities across the US: point-of-sale systems so intuitive that training is nearly obsolete, twelve strangers running a warehouse sale that moved 3,000 customers in a single shift, and hospitality-only roles at Longchamp in Boston and Sézane in San Francisco, evidence that mid-tier retailers are putting real P&L dollars into the welcome.

The trio then debates Anthropic's open-source Claude Commerce Agents — throttled assortments in agentic pilots, returns exposure, and grocery shoppers splitting weekly lists across banners by price. Anne walks Target stores with executives and lands bullish on the Bullseye, while Steve sizes up Shein's Hong Kong listing at roughly $27 billion against its one-time $100 billion valuation.

On the radar screens: Quince's rumored raise and brick-and-mortar ambitions (Steve's skeptical the assortment translates), and Michael on JBS, the world's biggest meat processor, Brazilian beef imports, and whether beef can price itself out of the grocery basket for good.

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Episode 310 opens with Steve Dennis reporting back from an invitation-only Amazon analyst day in Seattle, two days focused on Prime and grocery. Steve unpacks the breadth of the Prime flywheel, Amazon's push into sub-one-day delivery, the drone facility he toured just before the company announced an expansion to roughly 500 markets, and why Amazon's rise to the number two grocer in North America should have rivals looking over their shoulders.

Then, the numbers. US retail sales grew about 5% excluding fuel. Walmart delivered a lackluster 2.6% US comp, its weakest in six years, offset by a 46% jump in global advertising and nearly $3 billion in tariff refunds the company says it will reinvest in price. Target posted a nearly 4% comp with traffic up 3.6%; real progress, though Steve cautions the invitation can be better than the party. In off-price, TJX comped 4% while Ross Stores turned in a second straight double-digit quarter. And Simon Property Group made the case that great physical retail is alive and well.

The interview, recorded live at the CommerceNext Growth Show in New York, features Scott Friend, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, and Indy Guha, General Partner at VMG Partners. Scott co-founded price optimization pioneer ProfitLogic before joining BCV twenty years ago; Indy co-leads VMG's commerce infrastructure fund after scaling Signifyd. Together they tackle a hard question: when AI makes everything easier to build, how do you tell a real company from a pitch formula? Their answer centers on founder clarity and earned domain expertise, because a couple of quarters' head start has never mattered more.

The conversation ranges across whether personalization and merchandising optimization are now table stakes, the surveillance pricing debate, AI-driven homogeneity versus the promise of the "N of one" customer journey, and Indy's memorable "Claude-proof" test for anyone building in commerce. Both push back on agentic commerce hype, arguing agents will own low-interest replenishment missions while people keep the treasure hunt. Scott points to the revenue ramp of AI-native companies as evidence this cycle is real, not overhyped. Both land in the same place: brand, community, and authenticity are the last durable moats, and retail teams must become architects rather than assembly-line workers.

Back in studio, on the radar: Steve tracks the bond market, with 30-year Treasuries at a 19-year high and the 10-year at 4.75%, squeezing discretionary income and retailer expansion plans alike. Michael watches Canadian icon Roots, newly sold to New York's Marquee Brands with Joe Mimran advising on merchandising, and asks whether the brand can reclaim its former glory.

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Amazon keeps raising the bar. Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc open with the retailer's blockbuster quarter: massive gains in AWS and advertising, staggering AI capex, and retail revenue up 16% year over year, up from 12% last year. Third-party sellers now drive more than 60% of the business, and Citi pegs underlying GMV growth near 10%, roughly double the industry average. Amazon's B2B division alone now tops $60 billion, bigger than all but eleven U.S. retailers. Then the hosts dig into the agentic commerce numbers Amazon disclosed as Rufus folds into Alexa shopping, why sample bias demands caution here, and how grocery momentum is turning Amazon into a mega market-share threat. 

Then: Shopify's revenue up 32%, and the tale-of-two-cities reality that a handful of giants now drive nearly all e-commerce growth. A mid-year check on Steve's Prediction #8 — luxury's future won't be evenly distributed. LVMH, Kering, and Capri lag on China softness and war induced Gulf weakness, while Hermès, Ralph Lauren, Richemont, and Zegna keep delivering outsized results.

Live from the CommerceNext Growth Show: Kartik Hosanagar. He's Wharton's John C. Hower Professor of Technology and Digital Business, author of A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence, and co-founder of Bliss Labs. His argument: the biggest shift in retail isn't a new technology or channel. It's a new customer. Treating AI as another distribution channel is the same mistake movie studios made with Netflix.

There's no marketing science for AI yet. $9.99 pricing, scarcity, social proof — a model may not respond to any of it. Kartik walks through the Ridge wallet case: invisible in ChatGPT's "gifts for men" results, then the default recommendation within three weeks, complete with a hallucinated promotion. Every retailer faces the same fork: efficiency or meaning. The middle is the most dangerous place to stand.

Kartik also details the simulation sandboxes that let brands test counterfactuals in a day instead of eight weeks, why you can't just ask an LLM why it picked a brand, and the three attitudes retailers need now: curious, experimental, collaborative

Back in studio: Wayfair's encouraging quarter and Steve's change of heart, Warby Parker's mixed report as store count passes 400, tariff rebates ($100 billion of $160 billion already repaid, more tariffs looming), and whether live selling has hit its tipping point with QVC out of bankruptcy and Whatnot valued at $20 billion.

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.

Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.