This episode comes to you live from our pop-up studio at the CommerceNext Growth Show in New York City. Our guest: Jason LaRose, CEO of Bombas — the brand that turned socks, underwear, and tees into a mission-powered growth machine, with more than 200 million essential clothing items donated to people experiencing homelessness.

But first, the news — and in our summer biweekly format, there's plenty.

Steve breaks down Nike's unimpressive quarter: revenues down, China off 12%, and an operating profit boost driven almost entirely by a nearly billion-dollar one-time tariff refund. The contrast with Levi's couldn't be sharper — under Michelle Gass, the brand posted 8% sales growth, expanding margins, and momentum across women's and tops.

The winners keep winning elsewhere too. Aritzia's remarkable run continues with comps up an eye-popping 35% and digital up nearly 60%. Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing delivers 22% revenue growth from its 2,500-store global fleet. And Costco's monthly numbers offer fresh evidence of retail's Great Concentration.

Then there's Kroger, acquiring regional grocery powerhouse Giant Eagle — a $9 billion revenue business bought at a strikingly low multiple. Michael and Steve debate the real question: does acquiring-to-compete solve Kroger's relevance problem, or just buy cost leverage against Walmart, Costco, and Amazon?

Then it's on to Jason LaRose, who joined Bombas after leadership roles at Under Armour and Equinox. What drew him in: a genuine mission wrapped around outstanding economics — profitable essentially since day one. He traces the brand's arc from Indiegogo campaign and Shark Tank's most successful company ever to nearly $2 billion in cumulative sales, now expanding into underwear, tees, footwear, and slippers — the very items most requested in homeless shelters.

LaRose also delivers a masterclass in disciplined distribution: highly curated wholesale partnerships with Target, Dick's, Nordstrom, and Scheels, each with distinct assortments for distinct customers, alongside the brand's first stores and expansion into Canada. His mantra — quality, comfort, mission, in that order — explains why repeat rates keep the funnel from leaking where so many DTC peers sprang holes.

Wrapping up, on Steve's radar: a Dallas-area tour of the newly merged Container Store and Bed Bath & Beyond format (who exactly is this store for?), plus his provocative new Substack essay, "Convenience is Boring." On Michael's radar: the soon-to-open Gordie Howe Bridge, his conversation with U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, and why USMCA review limbo keeps piling uncertainty — and cost — onto businesses and consumers across 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. 

Recorded live on the CommerceNext Growth Show main stage in NYC, Steve Dennis sits down with Kimberley "KG" Gardiner, Chief Marketing Officer of Tractor Supply Company, who traces her path from senior marketing roles at Toyota, Lexus, and Volkswagen to leading one of America's most distinctive lifestyle retailers — 2,400 stores, 50,000-plus team members, and a culture she felt firsthand walking a Virginia store with CEO Hal Lawton during her interview. She explains how the "Life Out Here" platform works as a strategic decision filter, not a tagline, and walks through five core customer segments — from the Country Dabbler to the Big Barn customer, who shops up to 52 times a year. The conversation digs into the jobs-versus-joy duality of the Tractor Supply shopper, the balance of AI and human connection in stores, and why frictionless isn't always the goal. KG breaks down the retailer's proprietary in-store LLM, "Hey Gura," which helps team members field questions on everything from sick livestock to pet nutrition — and explains why 80% of online orders get fulfilled through stores. As she puts it: digital scales convenience, but stores scale trust.

Up front, Steve and Michael open on the Strait of Hormuz, where ceasefire whiplash has eased fuel prices but left them well above pre-incursion levels. Fresh Moody's data on the K-shaped economy lands hard: the top 20% of US households now drive 60% of consumer spending, their outlays up 6.5% year-over-year, while the bottom 80% can't keep pace with inflation. That split is finally hitting grocery — Kroger comped 1%, Albertsons 0.7%, Publix flat — while Walmart, Costco, Amazon, T&T, Whole Foods, and Sprouts keep surging. The unremarkable middle is collapsing in grocery just as it did in department stores and category killers.

After the interview, Steve recaps CommerceNext, including a sharp Mickey Drexler fireside with Simeon Siegel on taste, curation, and craftsmanship, before unpacking Walmart's $1.4B Vibe.co acquisition — a connected-TV play that rhymes with the earlier Vizio deal. On the prediction tracker: Starbucks is tapping the brakes on its all-third-place strategy, teasing up to 5,000 smaller, drive-through-led US locations. On the radar: an early start to back-to-school promos and a moved-up Prime Day, both hinting at margin pressure ahead. Michael closes on disappointing FIFA World Cup numbers across host cities, and crowns Taylor Swift the clear winner in the economic-contribution battle.

Steve's Starbucks Prediction 

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 304 reunites The Analysts — Remarkable Retail's celebrated panel of Forrester's Sucharita Kodali, Guggenheim's Simeon Siegel, and GlobalData's Neil Saunders — to take stock of retail coming out of earnings season. Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc open on the paradox of 2026: results are largely strong, sentiment is dismal. Simeon argues the link between the two is "tenuous at best" — people talk one way and spend another. Neil has the data: roughly 60% of shoppers who expect the economy to worsen still spent more than a year ago, propped up by spring tax refunds that won't repeat.

Then the K-shaped economy. Higher-income households drive most of the real volume growth; middle-income shoppers prop up value growth mainly because prices are higher. Sucharita revisits "peak ambiguity" and the "vibe session," noting record sales barely outrun stubborn inflation. The panel unpacks the standouts — Ross's 17% comp, Victoria's Secret up 15% — and debates GLP-1's role in surging apparel and beauty: wardrobe replacement, new confidence, trading up to statement pieces.

On turnarounds, Simeon lands the episode's sharpest thesis: brands "ubiquitize" and peak around $3–4 billion in the US. Lululemon got too big, over-distributed, and over-earning — so the bad sales have to "walk out the door" before the brand can re-elevate, the same lens that frames Nike's long reset. He and Sucharita draw the Gap parallel ahead of Simeon's on-stage interview with Mickey Drexler, noting Old Navy now dwarfs Gap itself. Neil makes the case for Macy's under Tony Spring — basics fixed first, satisfaction and visitation improving — while Steve stays skeptical of the pace.

Next, the DTC reckoning. Simeon reframes his old "DTC is not all it's cracked up to be" call as "anti-anti-wholesale": outside high-margin luxury, nearly every brand needs a healthy wholesale business — and stores remain the best channel because "the customer is your employee." Sucharita pushes back on the AI narrative, reminding everyone it's far more than generative hype, as the panel digs into why scaled players — Amazon, Walmart, Costco, off-price — keep compounding through retail media, marketplaces, and flywheel economics.

It closes on the wealth effect, trillion-dollar market caps, and whether a market correction could rattle high-end spending — then rapid-fire hot takes: brands to watch (Cozey, Ross Stores, Goyard) and what's on each analyst's radar, from inflation and surging oil prices to a quiet "middle of the doughnut" news lull and an election year's hunt for stability.

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. 

On Episode 304 of the Remarkable Retail podcast, co-hosts Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc dig into a busy earnings season, the global forces reshaping retail, and the competitive divides separating winners from also-rans.

They open with the department store sector, which Steve frames as "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." Macy's shows incremental progress and Bloomingdale's posts double-digit growth, but Kohl's stays stuck and JCPenney's latest numbers underscore the structural problems dogging traditional operators. The throughline: shifting market share, real estate decisions, and changing consumer behavior keep narrowing the path forward for the format, and the gap between the sector's healthier players and its laggards continues to widen.

From there, the hosts turn to retail's brighter turnaround stories. Victoria's Secret keeps building momentum with stronger comps and improved profitability, while Gap Inc. shows how disciplined brand management and sharper product focus can revive a business. They also weigh the intensifying competition among athleisure brands as the category's leaders pull further ahead and the middle of the pack scrambles to keep up.

Value retailing is the episode's recurring theme. TJX, Ross Stores, Burlington, and Five Below all posted strong results, reinforcing the durable consumer shift toward value and the treasure hunt. Steve and Michael explore why off-price keeps outperforming while dollar stores wrestle with a tougher customer—and they spotlight Costco, where fuel, membership economics, and traffic-driving loss leaders keep the warehouse club model ahead of much of the sector.

Drawing on his recent travels through Portugal and Spain, Steve shares observations on European retail: the distinct dynamics of specialty players, the enduring pull of department stores like El Corte Inglés, and one of the world's most remarkable retail experiences, Livraria Lello in Porto, a bookstore so beloved that shoppers pay admission and book a timeslot just to get in.

The episode closes with Walmart's fast-expanding same-day delivery, the rise of faster fulfillment across retail, Saks Global's exit from bankruptcy, and the geopolitical risks looming over supply chains and consumer spending. Michael also previews his visit to T&T Supermarket's first California store—a reminder of how much innovation is still alive in modern grocery. It's a wide-ranging look at a sector where the winners are pulling away and the stragglers are running out of time.

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 episode 303 of Remarkable Retail, Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc deliver a sharp, fast-moving episode built around a single conviction from one of retail's most influential retailers: the future is people-led and tech-enabled.

Chris Nicholas, former President & CEO of Sam's Club and now President & CEO of Walmart International — a global operation spanning 18 countries, 5,700 stores, and over 500,000 employees shares how humanity and technology are intertwined to drive growth. In this encore interview, Chris makes the case that retail innovation isn't about replacing people with technology. It's about using AI and digital tools to strip out friction, empower associates, and build better member experiences. Technology serves the human, not the other way around.

Chris unpacks Sam's Club's nearly $90 billion membership-driven model and explains why the warehouse club sector keeps gaining momentum worldwide. He goes deep on the "club of the future" strategy — including the closely watched Grapevine, Texas location with computer vision-powered exits, Scan & Go checkout, AI-enabled shopping, and a radically redesigned store built around convenience, inspiration, and engagement. His core belief: consumers everywhere want the same things — value, convenience, innovation, and experiences that genuinely improve their lives.

Before the interview, the hosts break down a blockbuster earnings week. Walmart posts another massive quarter, adding a staggering $18 billion in quarterly revenue while investing aggressively in price to hold share against inflation. Target delivers one of its strongest quarters in years, a sign its turnaround may finally be gaining traction. TJX proves resilient yet again as off-price rides the consumer "stampede to value." Home Depot and Lowe's, meanwhile, keep struggling in a sluggish housing and renovation market as higher rates squeeze big-ticket spending.

The episode closes with Shein's surprising acquisition of Everlane — which Steve calls "where irony goes to die," given Everlane's brand built on radical transparency. Steve and Michael also dig into rising bond yields and the broader implications of AI legislation and the growing political clout of major technology investors like Andreessen Horowitz.

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 Episode 302 of The Remarkable Retail Podcast, Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc sit down with Eric Sadi, Co-President, North America at Simon Property Group, for a long-overdue conversation on what the modern mall has actually become—and why the obituaries keep aging badly.

Eric walks through Simon's reimagination strategy: replacing tired anchor boxes with mixed-use destinations that braid together dining, entertainment, fitness, hospitality, and even residential living. He explains why occupancy at the top of the portfolio sits above 96%, why rents and tenant sales keep climbing, and why human connection, discovery, and community still drive the consumer behaviour the algorithms can't replicate. The "third place" isn't a slogan—it's a deliberate redesign of what a shopping center is for.

The conversation also takes on the most misunderstood narrative in retail: why Walmart, Target, Apple, and a new generation of experiential brands keep pouring billions into stores when so much of the growth lives online. The short answer? Stores aren't just sales channels anymore. They're infrastructure, media, and community. The "stores are dying" story is one of the laziest media frames in the business, and Steve and Michael take it apart.

Before the interview, the hosts unpack a packed news week: renewed inflation worries as fuel, transportation, and food costs climb again, and what that means for retailer margins; standout earnings from some of the most remarkable performers in the business, including Simon's continued strength, On Running's expanding margins and rising cultural heat, and The RealReal's case that luxury resale is one of the fastest-growing corners of fashion. They also weigh in on GameStop's bid for eBay—and eBay's flat rejection—a strong candidate for dumbest story of the year. Plus Amazon's latest AI moves and what they signal about where the platform wars are headed.

The episode closes with Steve wondering whether rising fuel costs will drive more online sales and Michael's specialty grocery discoveries in Los Angeles: Laurel Supply, Gonzalez Northgate Market, and the much-anticipated arrival of T&T.

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, Walmart, and Costco aren't just winning—they're pulling away. In episode 301, Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc dig into what Steve calls "Retail's Great Concentration": the accelerating shift of sales, traffic, and profit toward a small group of super-scalers. Fresh data shows just six retailers now capturing a disproportionate share of industry growth—and the structural forces behind it, from fulfillment economics to consumer migration toward convenience and value, aren't slowing down.

The conversation revisits two of Steve's core frameworks—Death in the Middle and the bifurcation between value/convenience and premium/specialty—and traces how the Great Concentration is the logical next chapter. Central to the discussion is the distinction between buying and shopping: buying is about efficiency, price, and speed; shopping is about inspiration, discovery, and emotional engagement. For mid-market retailers, that distinction is existential. If you can't out-Amazon Amazon, where do you actually create differentiated value?

Steve also addresses AI—useful, even transformational, but not a substitute for the human side of retail: experience, service, and genuine connection.

In the news: Tapestry delivers strong earnings, with Coach standing out on the strength of sharp customer insights and disciplined brand execution. Warby Parker shows continued profitable growth and store expansion, though slowing momentum raises questions about discretionary spending. Then comes the year's most head-scratching retail story: GameStop's bid for eBay. Steve dissects the financial logic—or conspicuous lack thereof. The hosts also examine Saks Global's restructuring and debate whether the luxury retailer has a credible path to relevance post-bankruptcy. Finally, on the radar: soft travel demand around the 2026 FIFA World Cup and what it may mean for hospitality, tourism, and local retail—plus the return of dynamic pricing, and yes, world peace.

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 hits a major milestone with its 300th episode—and Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc mark the occasion with a conversation they've been looking forward to: a rare, candid sit-down with Pete Nordstrom, one of the most respected executives in modern retail.

As Nordstrom celebrates its 125th anniversary, Pete offers an inside look at what has allowed the business to survive—and by most measures, lead—through dramatic shifts in consumer behavior, technology disruption, and industry consolidation. He traces his own journey from working the stockroom as a teenager to running one of North America's most iconic retailers, and reflects on the culture, customer obsession, and early omnichannel bets that continue to define the company. The conversation covers the future of department stores, the role of physical retail, Nordstrom Rack's continued expansion, the evolution of luxury partnerships, and hard-won lessons from the Canadian market.

Before the interview, Steve and Michael dig into the week's biggest retail and macroeconomic stories. Rising oil prices, stubborn inflation, weakening consumer confidence, and shifting savings rates all raise questions about the health of the North American consumer—and what it means for retailers heading into the back half of the year.

From there, the duo breaks down Amazon's latest earnings, where cloud, advertising, grocery, and AI-powered shopping tools continue to drive outsized growth. They examine early signs of operational momentum at Starbucks and debate whether Wayfair can convert market-share gains into something that actually looks like sustainable profitability.

In the back half, Steve and Michael turn to TikTok Shops' explosive growth, the rising momentum of European resale platform Vinted, and the evolving economics of hybrid retail modell, including Bed Bath & Beyond's latest attempt at reinvention.

Closing out the show, both hosts share what's on their radar: U.S. consumer savings trends, retail spending pressure, and the looming review of the North American trade agreement and what it could mean for retailers, brands, and cross-border commerce.

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. 

What happens when retailers keep playing the hits after the audience has moved on?

Steve Dennis opens with that question — drawn from his latest Substack essay — and it anchors everything that follows. From Bed Bath & Beyond's overreliance on the 20% coupon to QVC's slow fade, the episode explores what happens when leaders confuse past success with future relevance. The problem, Steve argues, isn't always fear. Sometimes it's a failure of imagination.

That theme runs straight into DTC strategy, with Nike as the cautionary case. The promise — better margins, direct relationships, more control — turns out to be misleading. The middleman doesn't disappear; the brand becomes the middleman, absorbing fulfillment, real estate, and marketing costs that were previously someone else's problem. Levi's, Moncler, Yeti, Vuori, and On all point toward the same conclusion: the winning model is almost always a blend, not a binary.

The news section is equally dense. Conflicting signals from CNBC/NRF, the U.S. Census Bureau, and Circana make the current environment genuinely hard to read — retailers are being asked to make big decisions in a fog of contradictory evidence. Walmart's continued investment in store remodels is a clear counter-narrative: physical retail isn't retreating, it's evolving. Leadership transitions at Lululemon and Best Buy raise harder questions about succession, inherited playbooks, and whether new executives will have the courage to break from them.

Michael closes with surveillance pricing — the emerging debate over whether AI-powered individualized pricing is something retailers should do, not just something they can do. It's a fitting final note for an episode about what happens when the old formulas stop working and leaders haven't yet found new ones.

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 and Michael open earnings season for March-ending retailers with a tour of luxury's stumble. LVMH posted just 1% organic growth, with fashion and leather — including Louis Vuitton — remaining soft. Kering continues its turnaround "with more promise than proof" under new CEO Luca de Meo. Even Hermès saw growth slow and its stock fall. The common thread: the Middle East, where mall traffic has reportedly dropped 30–50% at locations like Mall of the Emirates. Albertsons' 0.7% comp reinforces the "unremarkable middle" thesis. Meanwhile, Amazon's Andy Jassy confirmed in his shareholder letter that Amazon has surpassed Kroger to become America's #2 grocer — a milestone that largely slipped past the headlines.

March core retail sales came in hot at 7.05%, with apparel, health & beauty, and sporting goods posting low-double-digit gains — likely fueled by tax refunds and the ongoing GLP-1 wardrobe refresh. On tariffs, refunds appear to be coming. Even so, the Treasury is already signaling new tariffs to replace those ruled illegal.

The centerpiece of the episode is Retail Rumble Part 2, recorded live on the ShopTalk Las Vegas stage. In Round 1, Steve faces off against Ken Pilot, Founder and CEO of Ken Pilot Ventures, on whether department stores can be resurrected. Ken argues format and geography still matter — pointing to thriving concepts in Dubai, Beijing's SKP, and El Corte Inglés — and jabs at Steve's alleged American-centric view. Steve fires back with the numbers: department stores' share of U.S. retail has collapsed from 10% to 1.8%, with poor momentum and store closings running rampant.

Round 2 pits Lauren Livak Gilbert against Sarah Enge, on whether AI is a threat or opportunity for your job. Lauren leans into Goldman Sachs' 300-million-jobs figure and the hollowing out of analyst roles. Sarah counters that AI effectively returns a full workday to marketers and frees humans for storytelling and connection. 

In the back half, Steve revisits Allbirds' bizarre reinvention as NewBird.ai — a GPU-as-a-service AI compute platform that sent the stock up 700% before it cratered. The duo also unpacks Starbucks' strategy under Brian Niccol, now being called the "couchification of Starbucks" — leaning into comfort and dwell time over throughput.

On the radar: Steve flags global travel disruption tied to the Iran conflict, including warnings of a potential European jet fuel shortage within six weeks. Michael highlights New York State's new cash-acceptance law for retailers and softer-than-expected World Cup ticket 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.