NRF's Matthew Shay On Consumer Resilience, AI & His Bold 2026 Retail Prediction | NRF 2026

Hello, everyone from New York City.

This is Omnitalk Retail coming to you live from NRF's big show.

I'm Ann Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are coming to you live from the Fusion group, booth number 4921.

Chris and I are going to be here for the next three days covering every inch of this conference, every retailer and brand you can imagine.

So make sure to stay tuned.

But right now we have a very special guest.

This is the the best way we could kick off our coverage.

Matt is with NRF President and CEO Matthew Shea.

Matt, welcome back to omnitalk.

It's so great to have you.

Thank you, Ann.

Thank you, Ann.

Chris, I'm glad to be with you guys.

Thank you for the invitation.

Thanks for being here.

I love what you've done with the place.

Every year it gets better every year.

Yes.

This is like full on professional, a real studio.

And the new technician is doing a really nice job for you.

Great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's funny.

Yeah.

Matt's alluded to the fact, for those listening at home and watch, I'm learning new skills.

I'm running the tech today, so trying out some new things.

But yes, the Vuzion Group.

The Vuzion Vuzion, actually not the vision group now named the Vuzion Vusion, does a fabulous job for us each and every year.

So.

All right, Matt, let's get to it.

So, you know, my question for you is you talk to a lot of retailers day in and day out, big part of the job.

What's the general mood and sentiment right now?

Are people optimistic?

Are they cautious?

I know when we talked to you last year, there was a lot of caution.

How would you sum it up right now?

I think someone asked me a similar question earlier this morning and I think think there's more optimism even now than there was a year ago.

And I say that because really last year we knew we were in for a lot of disruptive change from a policy and political perspective.

And we anticipated things might be really challenging.

And in some ways they did get very challenging.

And yet we had a very strong year in terms of consumer engagement, retail sales, very strong holiday numbers, a great Thanksgiving weekend.

And we're going to release tomorrow morning on air with cnbc, we'll release the results of the December CNBC NRF Retail Monitor.

And, and I think everything that we've seen thus far makes us feel pretty confident that, that the holiday season finished in a strong way, which positions us.

Well, I guess back to your Question about why we focus.

Feel optimistic about this year.

There's.

There's, I think, still a fair amount of momentum in the economy.

Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit more about that.

Can you give us any more of a sneak peek of what we might hear tomorrow, Matt, like, what were your general sentiments about the holiday season in 2025 and what do you think that might indicate for retailers and brands for 2026?

I think that there were two things that, that really.

Two words that really dominated the conversation this year.

And, and for the first half and through the end of the year, it was resilience when it comes to the behavior of the consumer.

Sure.

But the longer we got into the calendar year 25, it was also affordability.

And those two sort of are a little bit in conflict with each other.

You can only be resilient for so long if things from a consumer perspective are no longer truly affordable.

And, you know, I had this conversation with a few of the CEOs about.

Well, if you look up the definition of the word resilience, it's about dealing with adversity in a constructive way.

And that's why I think what consumers did.

Consumers are very smart, they're very shrewd, They've got access to enormous amounts of information.

They've got lots of choices in the retail industry.

And so consumers reallocated the way they spend their monthly disposable income relative to the way their expenses changed.

And that had different kinds of consequences for households at different economic levels.

And yet all economic levels managed to continue to be engaged in the economy from a consumption perspective.

So we managed the year pretty effectively.

We're, I think, starting with a good base as we go into the new year.

There is, I think, a strong sense of, okay, maybe in some ways, some of the worst of this is behind us, the policy uncertainties.

I mean, you know, you go through the Liberation Day tariffs, the things that were thrown at the retail industry in the past six months, I'd like to say it can't get any worse.

From a consumer perspective, lightning may strike us here.

Yeah, right.

But.

But I think in general, people would say, okay, we navigated those challenges.

If we could navigate that, you know, we're positioned to keep going forward.

So then as you look to Your role in 2026 and the advocacy that NRF leads, is that what you're focused on in terms of trying to help in regards to that dichotomy you just spoke about, or is there other things that are on top of mind for you?

Well, the conversation around sort of the policy, the economic implications of policy choices on consumers is the way we try to frame our conversation.

So yes, it impacts retailers, you know, tax reform, trade, labor and working conditions.

But ultimately it impacts consumers and working families and Americans.

And so the conversation we try to have with policymakers is, you know, there are always unintended consequences.

And so you may be trying to accomplish this, but stop and think about how that really impacts a household or an employee or a consumer.

And we're all consumers, so it's usually pretty easy to have that conversation and get someone to be able to relate to what you're trying to explain.

So we got tax reform done last year.

That's going to create some more positive momentum.

I think, you know, we continue to watch the labor market, job creation and the unemployment number and particularly the workforce participation rate and which is about 62% right now, which is a little bit on the lower side.

So we'd like to see more people working.

So but anything that grows the economy and I think we're going to see when the various Federal Reserve banks, the regional feds report fourth quarter gdp, it's going to be a big number.

And I think that suggests there's still momentum in the economy.

Right.

Matt, we talked a little bit about resilience.

We talked about a consumer who is changing what they're spending their money on right now.

As we kind of head into 2026, what advice are you giving CEOs at retailers and brands in the US how can they prepare best for the year ahead?

The best way to prepare for the year ahead if you're a retailer is to attend the NRF Big Show 2020.

Right.

Well said to be right here with us.

Proper plug to be walking around here.

Get on a plane and get out.

Here if you're not here.

355,000 square feet of Javits exhibit space here at the Convention center near Hudson Yards.

1030 exhibitors, 180 educational sessions, hundreds and hundreds of speakers.

No, I think really in this environment and I'm not being tried about, people do need to talk to each other and learn from each other and events like this are a great way to do that.

But there are so many tools available to retailers of all sizes.

And of course AI and its various dimensions have been a big piece of what we are all talking about.

And I think that even though it's going to be deployed by different organizations, different retailers at different scale, the there's a value for everyone.

So it's a great force multiplier if you're a smaller retailer or smaller business, it can help you leverage up into, you know, things you wouldn't be able to do otherwise, because so much of this is so approachable from a price perspective.

So I think the technology that we're seeing deployed now and the promise of how that's going to help businesses of all sizes really grow their businesses, but also reach their customers is really exciting.

And that's a big part of the conversations this week.

Well, and Matt, let's also not forget Ryan Reynolds is here, too.

Right.

Like, we can't leave that out.

That's what I heard.

That's what my wife told me.

All right, we'll get you out of here on this.

We always like to leave on the end when, when, whenever we can ask this question.

We like to get predictions.

So we're going to ask you to put your prediction hat on.

What is one bold prediction you would make for the industry in 2026 that people possibly aren't talking about yet?

That is a great question.

I heard some things this morning, both in the green rooms of various of the keynote sessions, but also from the stage that probably might be too provocative to put on tape.

Okay.

But I think there'll be more big announcements about developments in retail companies in the year ahead, about transformation in ways that.

And partnerships and alliances that maybe we don't anticipate right now.

I think it'll be really interesting.

Wow.

Great.

That's a great.

What a great tease.

Wow.

Glad we asked that question.

Can't wait to find out what that's about, too.

All right, well, that wraps us up.

Matt, thanks for joining us, as always.

My pleasure.

Thank you both for being here.

Thanks for your great support for NRF and the big show.

Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Shea, the president and president and CEO of nrf, I should say.

And until next time, Ann, be careful out there.