Episodes

In the first of our special weeklong Spotlight Series highlighting AI in retail, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga interviewed Anand Muralidaran of NVIDIA and Andi Huels of Lenovo live from the NRF Innovation Lab. Anand is NVIDIA's Head of Global Growth Strategy and AI Business Development for Retail, Consumer Goods, and QSR, and Andi is Lenovo's Head of AI for North America. In other words, they are both two absolute experts on the subject of how retailers are looking at AI in the coming years. ...

How to fight online return fraud when all the players don't play by the same rules is a growing problem in retail. And nowhere was this more evident than this past holiday season when the overall rate of e-commerce returns increased and so, too, did the rate of online return fraud. Resident Omni Talk expert and retail commerce protection expert extraordinaire, Signifyd’s SVP of Operations and Corporate Development, Bennett, joined Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga to discuss this very topic and w...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, David Ritter and Jonathan Sharp of A&M join Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga as they discuss: - Walmart's porch delivery program. - Gopuff's overt move into private label. - Who made the bigger move in the checkout-free retail war this week: Aldi or Wakefern? - The relative value of voice-assisted ordering in QSR vs. retail. - And, closed with a discussion on the long-term viabili...

In a special NRF edition of The Omni Talk Spotlight Series, sponsored by Cleveron, Firework, and Scandit, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Gopuff Co-CEO and Co-Founder Rafael Ilishayev. Gopuff started delivering a hundred or so products to college students back in 2013, today they're delivering over 4,000 SKUs in as little as 15-20 minutes to customers in many major cities in the US and around the world. In this interview, Raf shares Gopuff's bold expansion plans for 2022, releasin...

In a special NRF edition of The Omni Talk Spotlight Series, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Leap Co-founder and CEO Jared Golden to talk about how his company's proprietary platform helps retailers and brands take the "leap" in licensing the soup to nuts operations of their physical stores. From Mack Weldon to Ashley Stewart, Jared and his team at Leap are launching brands with one store or one hundred stores, offering a full menu of services from point-of-sale management, leasing,...

In a special NRF edition of The Omni Talk Spotlight Series, sponsored by Cleveron, Firework, and Scandit, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Takeoff CEO and Co-Founder Max Pedró. Takeoff has been making headlines of late, launching an automated microfulfillment center with Jewel-Osco in Chicago this past December. The center allows the grocer to pick, pack, and deliver online orders more efficiently, and do it in a way that expands their bottom line profit. Sound too good to be true?...

In a special NRF edition of The Omni Talk Spotlight Series, sponsored by Cleveron, Firework, and Scandit, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Firework President & Chief Business Officer Jason Holland. When many retailers come to the Firework team, it's because they're interested in replicating the on-site live streaming applications Firework's has created for companies like Albertsons and The Fresh Market, but what Anne and Chris discover in this interview is that's only just a part of...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga hotly debate even more topics than normal, including: - Who had the cooler board appointee this week? Meta with DoorDash's CEO? Or Shopify with Instacart's? - Whether the Yeezy Gap and Balenciaga partnership will amount to a hill of beans. - If there is anything at all to read from a supposedly leaked Shopify patent on in-store traffic monitoring. -...

Retail store employees are drowning in workload like never before with very few tools to help them survive. And, as a result, so much of their day is wasted on less impactful actions and convoluted processes that oftentimes get clouded and more confused by the actions of management from the top down. Omni Talk Expert Quorso CEO Julian Mills once again joins Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga for the latest installment of the Omni Talk Ask an Expert Series to delve into one simple answer that may h...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Microsoft, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Takeoff, and Sezzle, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Discuss why moldy cheese isn't the only thing that smells in Walmart's in-home fridge delivery plans. (Minute: 3:33) - Talk about why Bed Bath & Beyond's rapidly declining registry business shouldn't be a surprise at all since it, too, is rooted in the same strategic flaw I recently wrote about in Forbes. (Minute: 9:14) - Shine light on a cool new...

In the latest edition of the Omni Talk Women's Retail Collective Podcast, Anne Mezzenga sits down with Fanatics Chief Strategic Retail Officer Gina De Caro Sprenger. Gina is like no other woman in retail we've interviewed. She wanted to work in this industry so badly, she applied (and was hired) for a job operating the elevator at a luxury department store at age 14! She definitely made her way to the top floor. From running the entire home business for Target to her current role leading the r...

Yes, you read that right. Best Buy recently cut a hole in the front of one of its stores and installed lockers to enable a 24/7 pickup experience for their customers. And that's just the beginning. After trialing the new Best Buy lockers (in this video https://youtu.be/O7KLj7sUhIU), Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga had to find out how this revolutionary new retail experience came to be, so they got the locker company's President, Luxer One's very own Josh Middlebrooks, to join them for the lates...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Takeoff and the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, our good friends Kristin Kohler Burrows and David Ritter stop by to help Chris and Anne hand out this year’s Omni Talk 2021 Retail Awards! Categories up for grabs include: - Retailer of the Year - Retail CEO of the Year - Retail Technology of the Year - Most Overhyped Technology of the Year - Retail Headline of the Year - Best New Retail Partnership of the Year - And, much, much more! To redeem your ...

When people hear the word “scanning,” some immediately think of a scanner in the checkout lane or a barcode reader in an app, but there are many use cases for scanning technology, especially as retailers gear up for the changes ahead in 2022. In our latest Spotlight Series Omni Talk's Anne Mezzenga sat down with Scandit VP of Product, CTO & Co-Founder Christian Floerkemeier to discuss how retailers can implement scanning tech to simplify store operations, like picking and packing online orders,...

In the latest Omni Talk Spotlight Series, Anne Mezzenga sits down with ciValue VP of Marketing Pearl Lieberman to talk about Retail Media Networks and why many retailers and brands already have all the data they need to get them started. In this episode, Pearl and Anne discuss: - How ciValue helps retailers deploy machine learning and AI to supply pertinent and organized data for brand partners - Why brands and retailers must prioritize the development of their data into Retail Media Networks...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Examine Jewel-Osco's new microfulfillment partnership with Takeoff. - Question the activist pushing for a Kohl's e-commerce spinoff. - Put marketplaces square in our sights as one of the most overhyped tech trends of 2021, following Giant Food's plan to build one. - Discuss what DoorDash's announcement of instant delivery in NYC means for the last-mile d...

“Smash and Grab” robberies at several retailers stole the headlines during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the real concern for retailers should be the significant increase in digital “smash and grabs” as fraud spikes with the growing number of “card not present” and online transactions. In the latest edition of The Omni Talk Ask An Expert Series, Signifyd SVP of Operations and Corporate Development Bennett joins Anne Mezzenga to discuss this and more, including Signifyd’s latest Pulse repor...

There is quite possibly no trend hotter right now than the Buy Now, Pay Later space. So Omni Talk invited Sezzle’s very own Paul Paradis to join Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga for the latest installment of their Omni Talk Ask An Expert Series. Collectively the three of them explore: - The history and origin of Buy Now, Pay Later - The categories and demographics that tend to use BNPL the most - How the BNPL adoption curve is shifting to in-store payments - And what we can expect during the ho...

In this week’s Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: – Discuss what to make, if anything, of the retail sales results from the past week. – Laud Macy’s for its Thanksgiving Day parade NFT play. – Temper our expectations surrounding the new Toys R Us store that is opening soon at the American Dream shopping mall. – Curiously explore the intersection of online warehouse club shopping and grocery shopping throu...

In this week’s Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Discuss the dangers of Sainsbury opening a checkout-free store in London that leverages Amazon's "Just Walk Out" technology. - Extol the many virtues of a combo Amazon Go and Starbucks store. - Are happy and somewhat skeptical of the news that Target plans to close permanently on Thanksgiving. - Throw patio umbrella shade at Best Buy for acquiring Yardbi...

A&M's Jonathan Sharp gets hit with tough questions as he shares the most important insights from the A&M Consumer & Retail Group's Fall 2021 Consumer Sentiment Survey in just five minutes! To read the full survey, head here: https://alvarezandmarsal-crg.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ConsumerSentiment-WriteUp_For-Publication_15Oct2021.pdf *Sponsored content* This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy Chartable - https://chartable....

In this week’s Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, Chad Lusk and Abhinav Chandra of the A&M Consumer & Retail Group join Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga to talk: - Casper going private. - The rise of retail media networks through the lens of Albertsons. - Instacart's, what some may call, "desperate," new shopping features. - Instant Turkish delivery startup Getir launching in Chicago. - And a deal from Chase and GoPuff that seems almost too ...

Omnichannel retailing during the pandemic has placed one hell of a premium on inventory accuracy in stores and throughout the supply chain. But so much of the legacy store level and DC level infrastructure is not equipped to give us the data and level of accuracy that we need to meet these new demands. Kris Barton of Avery Dennison and Umesh Umesh Cooduvalli of Detego join Chris Walton for the latest installment of the Omni Talk Spotlight Series to discuss why RFID may just be the answer. Tog...

2022 is right around the corner, so who better than Microsoft to tell us all on what retail technology trends they would place their bets in the upcoming year! So Omni Talk is pleased to announce that Microsoft’s very own Chris Dieringer and Ricardo Belmar have joined Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga for the latest installment of their Omni Talk Ask An Expert Series. Collectively the four of them will explore things like: - Cloud Commerce - Automation - Computer Vision - And who knows? They may...