Agenda

Millennials are old news. The world became an omnichannel one during their lifetime. Gen Z on the other hand, are the first generation to have grown up inside that omnichannel reality. The new set of consumer expectations and values we face today challenge the fundamentals of all retail and consumerism. The disruption of the last 10 years is only beginning. Trust me. That was primarily driven by technological capabilities and developments. The next step-change is a cultural and behavioral one.

Key takeaways:

• Today’s shopper demands authentic retail experiences that leverage true human connections. Retail needs to rediscover its soul
• The need for retail to move on from marketing communications to consumer conversation and collaborative comms
• How and what retail needs to deliver to this new expectant consumer and why second chances no longer exist

Walmart serves over 300 million customers each and every month. Behind the scenes are over two million associates, serving these customers, creating a seamless shopping experience and helping them to live better lives. At the helm is Clay Johnson, Walmart’s Chief Information Officer, ensuring store and corporate associates have access to secure digital solutions that empower them to excel at their jobs, making the associate experience equally as efficient and technology-enabled as the consumer shopping experience is for Walmart’s customers. This digital transformation, centered around people, is empowering the current and future workforce of the world’s largest retailer, all while reducing enterprise expenses.

In his talk, Clay will discuss the rollout of Facebook Workplace for Walmart’s associates, the offering of the “My Productivity” app to every in-store management team in the US, and the creation of other process automation applications using AI in finance, HR, real estate, governance, food safety, manufacturing, oil, gas and others.

We can talk through all the buzzwords we’ve heard for the past five years, but the reality remains that none of them matter if you are not concentrating on the one word that really matters.  In this session, we’ll take a look at the brands we love as consumers (Netflix, Spotify, Cocoa Puffs) that deliver such relevancy we barely even notice it’s happening, and discuss the one word that makes them so successful (hint: it’s not personalization).

Retailers of all sizes and segments need to rethink the in-store experience in order to survive in today’s competitive and digitally demanding environment. In this session, two seasoned retail executives from long-standing companies will address the challenges they are facing when it comes to drawing shoppers into the store, keeping them there, and motivating them to return.

Barneys New York is finding success with creative and unique in-store events, associate empowerment; and more personalized customer service.

At Victra, the largest authorized Verizon Wireless retailer in the U.S., is focusing on omnichannel initiatives to help drive clicks to bricks, standardizing merchandising across all stores, and a new training program for all store managers.

During this session, Crocs’ Jennifer Fisher will walk through the steps to building a first-class digital merchandising strategy, focusing on three areas:

1. • Buying/Planning
   • Storytelling
   • Personalization

She also will address how to:

1. Merge the merchandising and digital marketing planning teams; and
2. Break down inter-departmental barriers to improve the customer experience.

Too many retailers lurch from shiny new object to shiny new object, tieing them to the unfortunate destiny of becoming a “Zombie Retailer.” The retailers that will win in the long run are transforming now in a meaningful way at fundamental business levels. It’s not about gimmicks. It’s about creating a customer-first experience that fits the way people shop today and can continue to meet their needs in the years to come.

Craig and The Source are succeeding by focusing on the fundamentals: Get to know your customers; invest in customer service and sales training; put your stores where the traffic is instead of trying to drive traffic to you; and let ideas flow from the store level to head office.

Craig will share tips, advice and lessons learned about managing change so your business doesn’t become the walking dead. The Source has doubled down on its retail strategy as part of a complete business transformation — including an accelerated store renovation schedule, strengthened e-commerce focus and brand repositioning. From the stock on its shelves to the customer experience in-store and online (including a completely revamped e-commerce site), The Source is raising the stakes on its 40+ year legacy.

The key to growing sales in today’s click to brick economy is scaling your national retail marketing down to the local level. You must reach customers on their digital devices at dozens of touch points along their path to purchase to get them into a local brick and mortar to buy.

Join us for a deep dive into national retailer case studies who are leveraging their store network to deliver on the promise of hyper-local, personalized digital marketing. Learn how new marketing technology takes the pain away from scaling sales impact and measuring success in every market, and how to “nail and scale” your next campaign to turn local retailers into sales machines and bring new customers in your doors.

In this session you’ll learn:

1. How hyper-local retail digital marketing delivers the best ROI
2. How to attract high-intent buyers to every store across hundreds of retail locations
3. How to acquire campaign data and analytics to make better decisions

You spend a lot of time and money driving traffic to your web site. What do you know about these customers and prospects? Say 4% buy – Are the other 96% of your web visitors a “black box?” Let’s explore what you know about them, what you should know, and why targeting them is amongst the best spends of your marketing dollars.

Technology available today greatly improves the data available on those “black box” visitors – even if they never logged-in. The power of data science and predictive analytics turns this data into valuable marketing information specific to each visitor at a household or even the device level. Retargeting the customers and prospects visiting your site is not only possible but can lead to a great ROI.

The power of the data also extends well beyond the list of who to retarget. Your messaging should address them with personalized content along with the specific products they are most interested in. We will go through examples on how to do this without being creepy.
Join us for this short exploratory session over lunch. We will share insights, case studies and strategies as well as some technology to help you financially evaluate your marketing initiatives.

Technology has forever changed the way we live our lives and no one embraces these changes quite like Millennials. The next generation of shoppers are increasingly seeking the convenience of shopping from their handheld device. Boxed’s service was created specifically for these consumers, and its private brand is thriving in this new landscape.

Boxed, recently named by Forbes Magazine as one of the next “billion dollar startups”, has taken the best elements of the wholesale shopping experience and folded it into one innovative, cutting-edge mobile app that allows consumers direct-to-their-door access to their favorite warehouse club products.

KIDBOX is a fast-growing e-Commerce company offering personalized selections of children’s apparel that just raised more than $15 million in a Series B funding round. The brand has combined innovative leadership, social consciousness, youth empowerment and fun into a successful children’s apparel shopping platform. Come hear the inside story of how both brands are disrupting the retail landscape.

Join Stephen Day, Senior Manager of Program Development for Serta Simmons, as he explains how new marketing technology enables national retailers to execute personalized, streamlined digital marketing at scale for his 300+ America’s Mattress stores. Come away with what you need to nail and scale your next campaign to turn your local retailers into sales machines. You’ll see how this technology takes the pain away from getting total brand control of your assets, scaling special offers and measuring success in every market.

In this session you’ll see:

1. A successful multi-channel digital campaign running at scale, driving customers in-store
2. How new digital tactics deliver total brand control while attracting high-intent buyers dozens or local retailers
3. Get campaign data and analytics to make better marketing decisions

We live in a world where everyone — and everything — is becoming connected. As a result, shopping and buying experiences are undergoing rapid changes by consumers around the world. Eight out of 10 shoppers now say they use technology when they shop, causing them to consistently seek new experiences, personalized treatment, customized products and services regardless of sales channels, and faster service. To keep up with this demand, businesses are seeking ways to blend the online and offline world and build an engaging presence across channels and devices. Mastercard is helping merchants redefine the commerce experience by giving them the ability to accept payments across all technology platforms possible — in-store, in-app, online, and in AR and VR — with the highest security available.

Innovation is #TRENDING but what does it really mean? In this session, we discuss what innovation means and how a creating an internal culture of innovation delivers a transformational customer experience.

During this Fireside Chat, Overstock.com’s Nariman Noursalehi will sit down with Chris Cane from Jounce media to discuss:

• Taking control of digital advertising in-house
  • Why move programmatic/digital in-house?
  • What are some of the tradeoffs/challenges with doing this?
  • How does the in-house team work cross-functionally with other departments (say creative or merchandising)?
  • How do you decide on the right technology partner(s) for an in-house team?
• A modern approach to measuring advertising ROI
  • Did data overload contribute to the industry’s reliance on misguided proxy metrics?
  • How do you measure success?
  • Is incremental revenue the only metric that truly matters?

Retail is everywhere. The “store” is anywhere the customer wants to interact with your brand — whether in the physical or digital space. We can change how people feel, think and behave through the power of compelling experience. A meaningful, memorable and sharable brand experience is crucial to breaking through the retail clutter to expand brand reach, consideration and brand love.

Attendees will hear about Sleep Number’s innovation and technology strategies that drive brand demand through experiential storytelling:

• Integration of emerging technologies to demonstrate product innovations
• Creating meaningful, memorable and sharable activations — do you build, buy or partner?
• Leveraging consumer passion points to bring your brand to where they play
• Lessons learned — when to test and when to scale?
• Real results

Einstein once quipped that you’d be insane if you thought that you would get different results by repeatedly doing the same thing. Today retail survival relies on the same approach, innovation. If we think that retail will survive without significant innovative development, we are insane. But how do we fuel that creative engine in an entire industry?

Well, we begin with ourselves. We have to learn to rewire ourselves to see new opportunities, to look beyond the norm. Learning to embrace play, risk, and discovery in everyday life in order to bring this into the retail boardroom. We need to catalyze our own personal creativity if we are to expect it from our retail teams. If retail is serious about innovation, then we better start equipping ourselves with the personal development skills to achieve it. Get ready for a roller-coaster ride through this thought-provoking and entertaining keynote at how to achieve your personal creative development and energize your teams.

When it comes to online shopping experiences today, one size doesn’t fit all – and as Carhartt has learned, a customer’s needs can change as fast as the weather. Aaron will discuss how and why Carhartt employed real-time personalization to better serve customers and transform its digital customer experience, while staying true to its iconic, 128-year-old brand.

Attendees will hear about Carhartt’s personalization journey and will receive insights into:

• The company’s significant organizational shift;
• How Carhartt implemented targeted campaigns;
• Lessons learned along the way;
• Real-world results; and
• Best practices every retailer can employ to achieve 1:1 and machine-learning-driven personalization.

Despite headlines proclaiming the retail apocalypse, the overall industry is healthy and growing. Growth, however, is coming from new sources on two distinct ends of the spectrum. There has been a dramatic bifurcation between the lower income and upper income consumers, driving clearer distinctions between price-sensitive shoppers and those who are willing and able to pay more for services or benefits, resulting in a dramatic shift in the winners and losers in the retail market.   So despite conventional wisdom of an on-line vs. brick and mortar battle, we find other forces are in play that are impacting the retail environment as much, if not more so than conventional wisdom.

In this session, Lobaugh will discuss the factors fueling the Great Retail Bifurcation as well as how retailers can thrive in this environment. He will then sit down with two leading retail executives to dissect the topic further.

The retail landscape is rapidly changing due to the impacts of, and reliance on, technology. While traditional retail leaders acknowledge this rapid evolution and the role technology plays in their industry, they struggle with attracting, hiring, and fostering technology focused employees who can make real impacts that spur their businesses forward. In this session, we’ll explore how employees with ‘tech’ expertise and ‘non-traditional’ retail experience can influence brick and mortar retailers to drive meaningful advances in technology, user experience, and customer acquisition.

Inglis will lead a discussion on innovative ways to acquire new customers through online channels and offer your customers a better shopping experience through thoughtful and profitable personalization.

Key takeaways include:

1. Bringing in incremental revenue through your .com vs just siphoning sales from pre-existing store shoppers;
2. Leveraging the power of your digital data to replicate the 1:1 customer-storekeeper experience; and
3. Getting to know your online shoppers as if you were you standing in the store with them while they shopped.

Adore Me is a disruptive e-commerce startup revolutionizing the lingerie industry by creating fast-fashion, affordable & inclusive intimates. In only 5 years, Adore Me has grown to become a powerhouse with revenues reaching over $100M in 2017. The company ranked three times Crain’s Fast 50 list of fastest-growing companies in New York, and three times on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America, including the #2 fastest growing retail company in the U.S. in 2015. Much of the company’s success is due to its innovative data-driven approach and its ability of leverage data and IT, which is rare in the traditional fashion industry. Romain will address the following topics further:

• How Adore Me plans to open 300 retail stores in malls across the U.S. within five years: By innovation and differentiation, the company is looking to fuel further growth, and to articulate a stronger brand statement.
• How Adore Me can keep up with growth: Going clicks-to-bricks in parallel with launching a new data-driven curated subscription box, requires a flawless design of an its supply chain network. Adore Me is streamlining its operations by building its own cutting-edge distribution center in New Jersey. The distribution center house an autostore with cutting edge-technology and picking robots – for full speed and efficiency.

BEDGEAR believes in being additive to their industry by establishing strong retail relationships and having an omnichannel presence. BEDGEAR has progressed the traditional bedding industry by bringing innovative, groundbreaking Performance Sleep Shops to over 400+ retailers around the world. Hear CEO Eugene Alletto talk about the value symbiotic relationships create between brands and their retail partners, as well as discuss the act of global expansion and being a global citizen.

Learn how Dunkin’ is closing the chasm between marketers’ illusions about CX and the reality of what customers expect. Dunkin’ Brands’ Paul Murray will explain how the retailer is using a combination of AI data and direct customer insights to achieve competitively differentiating CX.

Murray will be joined by Ernan Roman from ERDM Corp. and DMA Marketing Hall of Famer, who will share new CX findings from VoC research his firm has conducted for Fortune brands. Findings include: Consumers are more irritated by the awful attempts at personalization than ever before and leaving brands that still can’t get it right. Research also identified 7 specific points in the customer lifecycle where consumers expect brands to provide value and engagement.

Attendees will gain actionable CX insights from the VoC research and Dunkin’ case study examples. A 10 Point CX Innovation Checklist also will be provided.

These hyper-successful retail entrepreneurs have figured out how to create a new brand in some saturated traditional product categories: children’s apparel, men’s shirts, and candy.

You’ll be on the edge of your seats when you hear the secrets of success, inspirations, best practices, and lessons learned from these inspirational retail innovators.

SeeLevel HX conducted a mystery shopping study in New York City that focused on “customer experience,” a key focal point of the transformation happening in retail. How do these stores perform in terms of customer experience? Do they deliver on their goal of communicating the brand experience?

SeeLevel Mystery Shoppers visited stores of traditional retailers like Neiman Marcus and ‘newcomers’ like Everlane and Bonobos to assess all aspects of the customer experience offered in stores where the primary focus is no longer on revenue per square foot but creating a unique brand experience.

In this session, SeeLevel CEO & Founder Lisa van Kesteren will present an exclusive first look at the results of the study.

In today’s competitive environment, retailers must outpace consumer demand for personal shopping experiences by implementing digitally driven engagement to reach tech-savvy shoppers. In this session, learn more about the strategies to engage consumers and create loyalty by providing immersive and highly secure experiences.

Find out how to:

 

• Drive engagement via digital signage, message boards, and touchscreens featuring chat and video;
• Boost brand loyalty by offering customers highly reliable, highly secure Wi-Fi ;
• Enable sales forces to move the floor with mobile POS, offering customers better service; and
• Streamline operations, maximize efficiencies, and more.

As retail continues to evolve, Wall Street must adjust quarterly and annual expectations, and analysts and shareholders alike must rethink how they will measure success going forward. The emergence (and convergence) of multiple sales channels and the integration of engaging technologies changes the way these businesses should be valued.

In this session, learn more about the state of retail through the eyes of financial services professionals, particularly:

• The state of e-Commerce and how its growth continues to shape retail strategies;
• How tax reform will affect retailers;
• How retailers balance long-term innovation plans with short-term earnings expectations; and
• Which metrics retailers should be measured by.

While acknowledging Amazon and its power, Dennis stresses that it’s futile for retailers to try to compete with the retail behemoth. In this session, Dennis will talk about the distinction between buying and shopping and how retailers can find success by focusing on shopping. “Amazon is starting to dominate most aspects of buying, which is more assortment, convenience and price driven. Shopping is more experiential and physical stores are often key to being successful.”

Dennis also will expand on what he means by the death of boring retail, “particularly those retailers that got stuck in the vast undifferentiated middle.”

A couple years ago, a group of passionate cross-functional associates at Walmart Canada came together to build a grassroots community to foster a culture of innovation, challenge status quo and drive change in the business. Learn about how this small but mighty group has grown organically to over 500 members in 7 different countries and is providing opportunities for associates at all levels to engage in innovation and deliver value. Leave this session with learnings that can help you unlock the potential for change and further growth in your organization, starting Thursday!

The advent of e-Commerce has changed shopping, sure. But it’s important to understand that it’s also changed our brains, habits, behaviors and expectations. Thanks to Amazon and other online shopping experiences (and frankly, other life experiences in general), we now have elevated and altered habits that traditional retail, whether you like it or not, must abide by.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the six new expectations shoppers bring with them into the store.
• Learn why resolving friction isn’t enough to keep customers coming back.
• Learn which in-store technologies will help bridge the gap to satisfying and delighting online-addicted shoppers.

Over the last 6 years, the average American head of household is shopping in almost 30% fewer different outlets per month. In today’s competitive landscape, retailers must engage shoppers with innovative, personalized and highly entertaining experiences, rooted in technology. In this session, learn how online retailer zulily is driving customer loyalty, growth and engagement – achieving a 91% repeat rate from their 5.8M customers through the rise of conversational commerce, data-driven personalization and above all, the entertainment of discovery-based shopping.

Whichever word we use, Omnichannel or Omnicommerce: Shoppers live fluidly between digital and physical worlds in every aspect of their lives including shopping. In this session, we discuss how retailers are approaching their businesses to create blended experiences from pop-ups to online to mobile and….. yes, Amazon.

It seems like any product tied to a celebrity, reality star or athlete turns to sold. As a result, influencer marketing has become a top tactic for a myriad of brands. So much, in fact, that the U.S. influencer marketing industry is poised to reach up to $10 billion by 2020. And with 84% of marketers now having a dedicated budget just for influencer marketing, we find ourselves asking: is this merely the beginning of the trend, or is the influencer marketing bubble about to burst? During this session, retail analysts and executives will discuss:

• The past and present of influencer marketing
• Key influencer marketing trends and best practices in retail
• Top influencer marketing faux-pas
• Ways to build and scale an influencer strategy
• Predictions for the future

Meet retail disruptors who are embracing retail as a force for change, by implementing strategies around sustainability, a global outlook, hyper-personalization and a relentless focus on customer needs. This fast-paced discussion will provide plenty of ideas for shaking up retail-as-usual.

The digital revolution in retail is taking place and much of the change will be driven by the use of AI, or artificial intelligence. AI was always in ret*AI*l, but its core begins with data collection and analysis. The use of that data to build software and hardware helps ease the shopping experience. Personalization, recommendations, chatbots, augmented reality, virtual reality, image and video recognition, robotics, supply chain efficiencies and more is all centered on AI. AI will help retailers remodel a path to connecting with shoppers. China’s retail momentum is enviable and a model for U.S. stores. Having empathy with customers and resolving issues is the way forward, with instant gratification, convenience, a frictionless checkout, and shoppable images playing roles.

Technology changes consumer behavior and today, artificial intelligence, bots and voice capabilities have transformed the ways customers shop.  The customer experience is now defined by a shopper’s ability to seamlessly interact with brands, however, whenever and wherever they choose. 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. has long embraced new technology to enhance the customer experience, most recently evidenced by its adoption of Google Assistant, Apple Business Chat and SmartGift, among others.  The company’s CEO, Chris McCann, will discuss the leading multi-channel retailer’s relentless focus on innovation and why he thinks conversational commerce represents the next wave of change.