Episodes

Anne Mezzenga sits down with Shelley Huff, EVP Direct-to-Consumer Serta/Simmons and CEO Tuft & Needle as part of her ongoing Women's Retail Collective Podcast Series. Shelley's career is unique in that it mirrors how shopping has evolved from her first retail job as a mall department store associate to her current role as CEO of one of the largest DTC categories in retail at Tuft & Needle. Shelley also shares several stories with Anne, including how she worked up the ranks from folding jeans i...

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, let's just say we are glad we are not in the department store industry. In the span of the past week, Nike is rumored to be cutting off many big time wholesale partners and Facebook launched Shops. Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern talk all that plus Best Buy turning 250 stores into fulfillment hubs, Zappos opening a New York store, and Taco Bell building a drive thru line just for order pickup. To learn m...

Walmart's Tennille Webb joins Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga to discuss how she worked with Mamava to make Walmart the first retailer to roll out lactation pods in over 100 U.S. stores. A journey that began with Tennille seeing Mamava pods within an airport ended with her cold calling Mamava herself and then working with the powers that be at Walmart to convince them to overhaul their capital remodel program and to replace Walmart's existing mother's rooms with more efficient, movable, and cost...

In this week's edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern discuss what to make of all the earnings announcements this week (including Target, Walmart, Kohl's, and more), Simon's acquisition of Lucky Brand, Payless making a comeback, Standard Cognition and Circle K, and what Chris thinks is a weak excuse from Amazon on its liability surrounding defective products on its third-party marketplace. To learn more about Fas...

With COVID-19 now ever present, knowing where and in what parts of a store social distancing is working or not working, by way of real-time data, is more important than ever. Kalon Welch, FastSensor EVP Business Development, sits down with Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga of Omni Talk to discuss the ever-trending topic of workspace journey measurement through anonymous radio frequency tracking to make better decisions during these difficult times and how active distance alert monitoring (aka ADAM...

In the latest episode of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern take on all the detractors pooh-poohing the rumors of Amazon placing warehouses in Simon mall properties, discuss Wayfair's first-ever profit, and then geek out at the massive transformative grocery and convenience headlines surrounding Walmart and Instacart, Coty and GoPuff, and Kroger creating its own third-party marketplace. To learn more about FastSensor, v...

In the latest edition of our Omni Talk Spotlight Series, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga interview Sara Batchelder, VP of Retail and QSR for Numerator. Chris, Anne, and Sara discuss Numerator's unique panel data across both online and offline shoppers and then delve into some of the insights Numerator is already seeing around things like Click-&-Collect, the online acceleration in grocery, and the early promotional spending trends across various Back-to-School categories. For example, did you kn...

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss all the week's top retail news, including DoorDash's new DashMart online store, CVS inking a deal with PayPal and Venmo, the rumors that Aldi is getting into the checkout-free technology game, 7-Eleven buying Speedway, and Walmart's new omnichannel advertising platform that Chris and Anne just can't agree on. To learn more about FastSensor, visit: https://www.fastsensor.com/retail To...

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern discuss Amazon meeting with startups to then reportedly launch competing products, Sycamore Partners' plan to merge Belk and JC Penney, Neiman Marcus calling it quits at Hudson Yards, all of retail closing down stores for Thanksgiving, and Rite Aid having no good reason on earth for deploying facial recognition technology for the last eight years. To learn more about Takeoff, visit: https:...

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern discuss the explosive growth in Panera's coffee subscription program, Walmart joining forces with Yahoo (yes, you read that right), LL Bean's decision to broaden its distribution, Domino's new 'fortressing' strategy, and Amazon and Google both getting full up into livestream commerce this week. To learn more about Takeoff, visit: https://www.takeoff.com/ This podcast uses the following th...

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma Irwin the Intern are joined by guest host Ken Pilot to break down all the week's top headlines in retail. This week they talk Amazon's new Dash Smart Shopping Cart, Klarna's Gen-Z shopping event, Apple asking store employees to help customers from home, and Walmart and Amazon now duking it out in the healthcare space. To learn more about Takeoff, visit: https://www.takeoff.com/ This podcast uses the...

Omni Talk's Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga turn their podcast spotlight once again on Syte, the intriguing visual AI startup out of Israel. After having Syte founder, Lihi Pinto Fryman, on the show in 2018, this time Chris and Anne sit down with Syte VP of Marketing Gal Fontyn to discuss how the company has evolved, the successes it has had, and how the concept of visual search is now moving into the arena of creating even deeper visual experiences within retail, the likes of which could make vi...

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma Irwin the Intern welcome guest host Ethan Chernofsky of Placer.ai to talk all the latest news in retail, including Walmart+, Amazon Prime Day moving to October, Harrod's getting into the outlet business, Instagram's new Shop tab, and Venmo launching new tools for small businesses. To learn more about Takeoff, visit: https://www.takeoff.com/ This podcast uses the following third-party services for an...

Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga turn their Omni Talk Spotlight on Kate Reidel of Parcel Pending to discuss the evolving landscape of Buy Online, Pickup in store and how locker pickup could soon change the definitions and the availability of the service for retailers everywhere. **Sponsored Content** This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Omni Talk's Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss Shopify's latest move in the online payment space, Shopify Balance, and where the company also plans to go next. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma Irwin the Intern love Lululemon's acquisition of Mirror, unanimously applaud Brookfield's Fit:Match experiment, are not quite sure what to make of Walgreens' new small format tests, rave about Nike building smaller store footprints, and compare the Gap/Kanye deal to a big bet at the poker table. To learn more about Takeoff, visit: https://www.takeoff.com/ To read Chris's latest piece on the overhype...

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma Irwin the Intern discuss the sweeping changes in the world of social commerce by way of Snapchat and Instagram, how Tanger Factory Outlets is taking off-price digital, while TJX continues to sit on the digital sidelines, and why 7-Eleven's announcement this week about paying at the pump with your voice could be an easily foreseeable future for how we all pay for gas. To learn more about Takeoff, visi...

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma Irwin the Intern discuss Walmart's new partnership with Shopify, Staples using Instacart, a cool startup called Branch, Dick's Sporting Goods' new store formats, and Chris goes on a rant for the ages about how slow apparel retailers have been to adopt technology in the wake of Walmart also announcing its new self-checkout store test this week. You can learn more about Takeoff by clicking here: https:...