Episodes

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...

In this week’s Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Explore Amazon's Venmo partnership. - Praise Sobeys' new "flex store" concept. - Debate YouTube's ability to win in livestream commerce. - Have a blast talking Burberry's interactive deer NFTs for Singles' Day. - And, close with a look at why Nike teaming up on loyalty with DSG shows why Nike is still one of the best retailers around. To redeem your $300 d...

In this week’s Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Explore what Amazon taking Venmo means for the future. - Praise Sobeys for its new "flex store" concept. - Debate YouTube's right to win in livestream commerce. - Have a blast talking Burberry's interactive deer NFTs (yes, you read that right) for Singles' Day. - And, close with a look at why Nike teaming up on loyalty with Dick's Sporting Goods shows why N...

In this week’s Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Question the strategic rationale behind the Kroger and Bed Bath & Beyond partnership that was announced this week. - Explain why Amazon Fresh gaining share in California and Illinois could be a canary in the coal mine that the grocery industry should be watching closely. - Highlight Ubers Eats getting into "Babies and Kids" delivery. - Discuss all the ra...

This week’s Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, David Ritter and David Brown of the A&M Consumer & Retail Group join Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga to talk: - Target's new same-day fulfillment features, with cool names like, "Backup," "Forget Something," and "Shopping Partner." - Amazon's new "Local Selling" program that lets customers order products for pickup from local sellers. - Trigo's second open-to-the-public checkout-free store in...

This week’s Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, was chock full of 10 out of 10 headlines. Every story this week was big, some might even say, HUGE. We have the first-ever retrofitted checkout-free store, a nonsensical +$300 million acquisition, a big scan-and-go test, an ultra fast move into NYC, and a subscription program that one major retailer continues to just piss down its leg. In this week's Fast Five Podcast, Anne Mezzenga and Chri...

"How do you sell snowflakes?" - Andy Reuben CEO of Trove In this case, snowflakes = resale product, and to figure out the answer to that question we had to call in an expert in the circular economy and resale. In the latest Ask An Expert series, Omni Talk's Anne Mezzenga is joined by resale expert and VP of Brand Success at Recurate Cynthia Power. Cynthia started her retail resale career at Eileen Fisher running their "Renew" program, one of the first upcycling and resale programs in the busin...

This week's Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, was a cornucopia of headline delights, a veritable hodgepodge of topics on everything from outright lunacy to some downright shrewd moves from one of the nation's biggest mall operators. In this week's podcast, Anne and I work ourselves into a lather discussing: - The rationale behind the irrational claim by one Mr. Scott Ostfeld that Macy's e-commerce business is worth $14 billion . . . on i...

Your store teams shouldn't be spending time on anything that isn't driving sales or reducing costs. But too much of their day is wasted on less impactful actions and convoluted processes, which oftentimes results in them feeling even more overwhelmed and inefficient. Omni Talk Expert Quorso CEO Julian Mills once again joins Chris Walton for the latest installment of the Omni Talk Ask an Expert Series to delve deep into why agile store management in theory and practice could be the answer. Tog...