Episodes

Jesse Michael, Managing Director at Adeptmind, returns to the Omni Talk Ask An Expert Series with Mall of America's VP Marketing Grant Buntje to discuss all that it takes to make the Mall of America shoppable online. When Omni Talk last spoke with Jesse, we learned about Adeptmind's first foray into making a mall shoppable online based on their work with Centennial's MainPlace mall, where together Centennial and Adeptmind made nearly 2.0 million skus available for online delivery and pickup. F...

In today's Fast Five Video, sponsored by Takeoff, the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and Attentive, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Question the real motives behind Target's holiday price adjustment promise. - Love, love, love (that's three "love's" if you are keeping score at home) Amazon's new gift-giving feature. - Discuss how astute Gopuff's plans to open up live retail stores might be. - Place quite a bit of importance on Aldi Nord's announcement of a 4,300 square foot checkout-free groc...

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff and the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Do the math on what a $10 delivery fee at Whole Foods means annually (the number will blow your mind). - Study the idea of "instant delivery" through the lens of The Giant Company's new 30 minutes or less partnership with Instacart. - Praise Hy-Vee for expanding its in-store robotics test. - Question the execution and strategy behind HomeGoods' new e-commerce...

In today's Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff and the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Recap their biggest lessons learned from Groceryshop through the lens of the explosion of recent announcements from DoorDash, Shipt, and Instacart this week. - Laud Amazon for continuing to rollout its Palm One payment system. - Question the authenticity of Walmart's move to label 2,000 items as healthy and sustainable. - Get put on the spot by the A&M Consumer and Reta...

In this special Groceryshop edition of our Omni Talk Spotlight Series, sponsored by Cleveron and UntieNots, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down to chat with FRONTdoor CEO and Co-Founder Dan Bourgault. When Chris and Anne first heard the news of what Dan and FRONTdoor collective have been working on, they immediately said to each other, "We have to get Dan on our podcast." Dan and his team have created what they are calling the "first micro-last mile delivery network" with the capacity to c...

In this special Groceryshop edition of our Omni Talk Spotlight Series, sponsored by Cleveron and UntieNots, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga interview Shipt Chief Business Officer Rina Hurst about Shipt's new partnership with Visa that gives free Shipt memberships to Visa card holders. In addition, Rina also shares Shipt's three ring strategy for expansion: - Ring 1 -- local and beloved grocers - Ring 2 -- general merchandisers - Ring 3 -- specialty retailers And also touches on Shipt's new pre...

In this special Groceryshop edition of our Omni Talk Spotlight Series, sponsored by Cleveron and UntieNots, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down to chat with one of Omni Talk's favorite guests, the always mellifluous Indy Guha, the CMO at Signifyd. Indy, as he always does, gives Chris and Anne a crash course in the growing importance of fraud prevention and revenue generation in grocery. For example, did you know that with the explosive growth in curbside pickup and contactless scan-and-go ...

In this special Groceryshop edition of our Omni Talk Spotlight Series, sponsored by Cleveron and UntieNots, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down to chat with Cooler Screens Founder and CEO Arsen Avakian. Cooler screens, as its name implies, is one of the cooler companies around. It specializes in helping retailers amplify their in-store touch points by getting the right message in front of the right customers at the right time, and in a brand safe way. Starting with digital cooler screen do...

In today's Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff and the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, A&M's David Ritter and Kristin Kohler Burrows join Chris and Anne to debate: - What Amazon's latest moves to increase wages and offer free college tuition for its employees signal for the rest of the retail industry. - The recent layoffs at Casper and whether they are a canary in the coal mine for other DTC brands or simply an isolated event. - Amazon mega-roller-upper Thrasio's recent $100 million spend...

It’s been a trend throughout the pandemic, but BOPIS, Click-and-Collect, whatever you’d like to call it, is here to stay. It’s time to get a solid solution, and unfortunately, it’s not as simple as setting up lockers inside or outside your store. In this podcast, Anne Mezzenga and Cleveron Co-Founder Indrek Oolup dive deep into the complete strategy required to set your enterprise or SME retail operation up for success. Omni Talk Fast Five fans will recall the news of Cleveron’s robotic fulfi...

Quit sending all your customers all the same promotions, and while you’re at it, make it fun! In this live recording of the Omni Talk Spotlight Series, Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton sit down with UntieNots co-founders, Zyed Jamoussi and Cédric Chéreau to talk about how they’re utilizing AI and gamification to make loyalty programs better for retailers, and more importantly, for their customers. The UntieNots team has deployed their loyalty and promotion platform with retailers throughout Euro...

In today's Fast Five Podcast, sponsored by Takeoff and the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Chris and Anne: - Debate the significance and many angles to consider in the momentous announcement by Amazon to put its Just Walk Out Technology into two new Whole Foods stores. - Discuss Kroger's continued storeless expansion in Florida. - Question Walmart's newly announced partnership with Instacart to deliver groceries to New York City. - Argue the merits of the "shop-in-shop" trend by turning the micr...

There have been a lot of shifts happening as a result of the pandemic: people have new shopping behaviors, they’re discovering product differently, engaging with retailers in new places, on new channels, and in new ways that are requiring brands and retailers to evolve their thinking around talking to their customers. Omni Talk has heard you! We know your marketing teams are just coming up for air after the height of the pandemic, and now the rules are changing even more quickly than customers'...

In the latest edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer & Retail Group and Takeoff, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga: - Praise Amazon for its Affirm partnership and once again setting the table years ahead of everyone else in regards to mass market BNPL adoption. - Iterate and explore what Ikea's new buyback and resale program could one day mean for the Pennsylvania town of Conshohocken and Americans everywhere. - Discuss why Allbirds' IPO smell afowl. Whoops, we mean afou...

In the latest Omni Talk Ask An Expert Series, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Signifyd SVP of Operations and Client Development, Bennett, in a conversation you may need to hear for yourself to believe. Bennett shares with the audience the growing types of fraud retailers are faced with as customers demand delivery or order pickup within minutes, contactless payment options, and online returns. As fraudsters evolve their strategies, retailers large and small need to tap technology ...

In the latest edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer & Retail Group and Takeoff, Chris Walton rejoins Anne Mezzenga on the show after a long medical absence to discuss: – Amazon's move into department stores. – The insanity that is Macy's new Toys R Us partnership. – All the sizzle without the steak in Walmart's new GoLocal delivery service concept. – The positive and potentially negative repercussions of Shipt's new preferred shopper innovation. – And why Warby Parke...

In this Omni Talk Special Report Anne Mezzenga and Shlomo Chopp Managing Partner of Case Equity Partners & Founder of RetailOS, dive into a conversation about the state of malls and retail real estate and why the current model has the potential to see a fate similar to Ryan Gosling's falling Jenga tower in the Big Short. Shlomo takes Anne and the audience on a journey behind the scenes to break down why, when so many malls are struggling, there's little appetite for REITs, Landlords, and mall o...

In the latest Women's Retail Collective Podcast brought to you by Parcel Pending by Quadient, host Anne Mezzenga sits down with Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Sucharita Kodali. This is a special one, in particular, because the retail industry may have lost one of their most valuable analysts and experts to Hollywood director, Judd Apatow. Sucharita explains her very unique career journey and the full details of that story in this podcast. They also cover important pointers from Sucharita o...

In the latest edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff and the A&M Consumer & Retail Group Anne Mezzenga and guest hosts Mohit Mohal and Hemant Kalbag of the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer & Retail Group discuss: -Target’s and Walmart’s banner Q2 earnings and what, if anything stands in their way. -If Allbirds has all the right stuff to become a competitive and successful player in the activewear space, or if this pre-IPO move will have them wishing they stuck to the soft and sweat-...

In the latest edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff and the A&M Consumer & Retail Group Anne Mezzenga and guest host James Cook Americas Director of Retail Research for JLL and host of the podcast Where We Buy discuss: -Kroger and Kitchen United’s ghost kitchen partnership allowing picky families everywhere to each order a different restaurant meal and the week’s fill-in groceries in one trip. -No more waiting In lines for click and collect pickup or, more importantly, to ma...

In the latest Omni Talk Ask An Expert Series Anne Mezzenga sits down with Lowes Foods E-commerce VP Chad Petersen to hear about the strategy they're putting together for the next year in grocery. Lowes Foods is no stranger to online grocery ordering, they've been doing it since 1997, but as Chad explains, like many regional grocery chains, they are experimenting with the right mix of resource allocation for in-store pickup vs. delivery and owned vs third party services for picking, packing, and...

In the latest edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff and the A&M Consumer & Retail Group Anne Mezzenga and guest host Najla Kayyem of Pacific Retail Capital Partners discuss: -Twitter, better late than never, finally enabling shopping in-app and exposing a large and diverse audience to the concept of social commerce. -Shopify widely sharing the increased revenues merchants using Shop Pay, their BNPL feature, have seen but keeping the word on merchant processing fees for this ...

In the latest edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer & Retail Group, and Takeoff Anne Mezzenga and guest hosts David Ritter and Kristin Kohler Burrows of the A&M Consumer & Retail Group discuss: -Uber announcing partnerships with both Albertsons and Costco sending the Fast Five team into a debate about what this means for the grocery delivery ecosystem and grocers moving away from Instacart -Foxtrot’s ambitious expansion plans and some ideas on how they should consid...

Sunny Jiang started at then startup EyeBuyDirect right out of university as a financial controller. Like many of her coworkers at the online eyewear retailer, she has remained with the company almost 15 years later. Unlike many of her coworkers, after many successes, she made her way from finance controller to leading the entire company as CEO and President in 2017. Sunny attributes her success leading EyeBuyDirect and the over three million customers they serve to her dedication to leading by ...