Retail OCD

What makes a store worth leave leaving home for? In this episode we talk with Tyler Winograd, Studio Director of Retail & Consumer Experiences at Gensler about how experience led design turns a store into a revenue driver. We get philosophical about what the hospitality industry already knows about consumer behavior that retail still misses. And we learn where brands should start when they decide to open that first physical store. Design choices make shoppers want to stay longer, spend more and come back often. Listen in to learn how!

Chargebacks have become one of retail's most expensive, yet least talked about drains on profit. Fighting them is a balancing act between stopping fraud and protecting the customer experience. We talk to two active industry experts about the real operational and financial cost of chargebacks, the problem of friendly fraud, and why retailers are losing money in more ways than they realize. And most importantly, our experts share their best strategies and tools to dramatically reduce losses, protect repeat business and ease the heavy burden of chargeback management, even at scale.

Every brand that sells on Amazon knows the truth: the customer belongs to Amazon, not to you. The Mall Street was purpose built to change that forever.

While Amazon quietly steals data to sell their own dupes, The Mall Street's platform has figured out how to deliver a revelation: the discovery power and prestige of a luxury multi-brand shopping destination, without asking brands to hand over their customer, their data, or the control of their own brand relationships.

The Chief Growth and Chief Brand officers walk us through how The Mall Street went from Amazonian anger to a digital flagship mall, where every brand keeps its own front door, but share infrastructure, traffic, and operational economies of scale.

Given retailers' forced march toward agentic commerce, we found this discussion especially fascinating. And timely. If you're a brand tired of renting space on platforms that treat you as inventory more than a partner (or an AI training tool) this episode is for you!

Career pivots aren't just for people who failed, sometimes they're for people who succeeded and still felt unfulfilled. In this episode, we talk with two executives who left high-level roles at Gap to start their own businesses. They break down how they made the decision, what the transition actually looked like, and why it's never too late to build something that feels like yours. And how you just might have skills you didn't realize were lurking within you that will bring you joy in a new career direction you hadn't anticipated.

Every e-commerce site has them: small, invisible friction points that silently push shoppers away before they ever reach checkout. In this episode, we go under the hood live on LinensNThings with the co-founder of Zenyt.Ai to expose key hidden revenue holes most retailers don't even know exist, and show what fixing even a fraction of them can mean for your bottom line. We also learn from a veteran e-commerce retailer what real-world best practices they've learned from years of online selling. If you sell anything online, this one will improve your ROI. It did for LinensNThings before the end of the show!!

What does it take to resurrect a beloved but broken retail brand? In this episode, we sit down with Josh Rockoff, long time retail turnaround expert with deep experience in distressed brands to explore the high-stakes, high-reward world of brand resurrection. With a career spanning private equity, venture capital, and executive roles across brands like Diane Von Furstenberg, Urban Decay, Kmart, and Destination Maternity, Josh knows what makes broken brands worth saving, or forgetting. We dig into how investors identify distressed retail IP and what it costs to bring a zombie brand back to life. If you've ever wondered about the business of brand comebacks, this one's for you.

We also learn Josh's business origin story, which is so unique and incredible that he should definitely sell the film rights!!

What has been trial and error in the past is now coming into its own, and is rapidly becoming the backbone of modern retail operations. In this episode we bring Ed Crowley, Founder of URWay Holdings, and Nick Leonard, CEO of VoiceRun, two of the industry's foremost experts, into the studio to talk about how they have made online and in-store voice agents transform the customer experience. We break down the tech driving this shift, the challenges retailers face in adopting it, and what it means for the future of the shopping experience. DeAnn ponders the joy of buying chocolate from Brad Pitt, and we try our hand at pranking Josh, but fail miserably.

PR doesn't drive demand, it builds belief, which underpins everything in retail. In this episode get the inside scoop on how PR helped to build Saatva into a premium brand that stands out in a competitive market. We'll explore how A.I. has redefined the role of PR, and why influencers and global audiences, such as Saatva's Olympics sponsorships, matter more than ever. We often hear from marketing leaders. This is a rare chance to hear from one of the best retail PR leaders in the business.

AI is about more than just optimizing your ads, it's rewriting the rules of who you can reach and how. In this episode, we sit down with AS Beauty's Head of Growth to unpack how artificial intelligence is transforming performance and programmatic marketing from the ground up for the brands they own, including Bliss, Laura Geller, and more. From targeting hard to reach shoppers, to building entirely new tools for engagement and conversion, this is the industry's future playbook. If you're still running campaigns the old way, this episode will change how you think.

Loyalty programs were built on points and perks, essentially training customers to "shop like minnows, not whales "to quote our own Josh Rockoff. But AI is rewriting long established rules, almost in contravention of what seems to make sense. Yet with surprising results! We dig into the shift from discounts to data-driven relationships, and what it means for trust, personalization, and long-term customer value.