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To Omnitalk's Retail Fast Five, ranked in the top 10% of all podcasts globally and currently the only retail podcast ranked in the top 100 of all business podcasts on Apple Podcasts.

The Retail Fast five is the podcast that we hope makes you feel a little smarter, but most importantly a little happier each week too.

And the Fast 5 is just one of the most many podcasts you can find from the Omnitok Retail Podcast Network alongside our Retail Daily minute which brings you a curated selection of the most important retail headlines every morning and our Retail Technology Spotlight series which goes deep each week on the latest retail technology Trends.

Today is December 10, 2025.

I'm one of your hosts, Anna Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton and we are.

Here once again to discuss all the headlines not from the past week but from the past year, making waves in the world of Omni Channel retailing and chr.

I can't think of anyone better to join us for this show as they do every year.

The one, the only Chad Lusk of the Alvarez and Marcel consumer and retail group.

Chad, welcome.

This is year two for you.

Thank you for being here to count down with us all of the best retail headlines from the past year.

How are you doing, Chad?

I'm doing fantastic.

I can't believe we're sitting here in mid December and the year is almost at a close.

These things go so fast.

But happy to be part of the Omnis again.

Thank you for having me back.

That's right.

I forgot last year, Chris, Chad named these the Omnis.

And we, we've totally.

I totally forgot about that until right now.

But yes, you're right.

The Omni Award.

Yes.

Yeah, he brought back the original name, which was, I think the name we gave it ourselves when we first did it in 2018, and then he brought it back for us.

So.

Yeah.

And Chad's running solo today, so he's got to.

To live up to the expectations.

He's got the whole A and M consumer and retail group looking at his awards and who he's planning to hand things out to you today.

So I can't wait to see what he's got for us.

It's a.

It's a big burden, one I'm willing to carry.

You know that this is a tough show to do.

As you guys know, there's a lot of going back to the, well, the old memory banks to figure out what happened in the year, you know, pretty boring year, right?

Nothing developed over the course of it.

So, yeah, excited to get going though.

Nothing at all.

Yeah.

With great power comes great responsibility, right, Chad?

So, so.

And, but you know, before we get the headlines too, like this is our second to last show of the year, so program, you know, we're going to do one more Fast five next weekend and we're already gearing up for NRF and anything exciting that you, we.

You want to tease the audience about for nrf.

Yes, there are a lot of really fun events that Chris and I will be out at, but one that I am going to be announcing soon.

This is a little sneak peek and amu's Bush, if you will, for our listeners of our podcast.

I am going to be doing a special hosted walkthrough of the Zara store at Hudson Yards.

We're going to be going in, we're going to see all the latest and greatest technology that they've installed in that flagship which Chris and I saw.

What, what, when was that?

2019.

Back in Madrid.

Madrid.

No, it was post pandemic for sure because.

Oh, God, was it?

Yeah.

Yeah, it feels like that long ago.

Yeah, I think it was like 22 or 23.

But yeah, the store hasn't been open that long.

But yeah, no, we saw it in Madrid and now they've brought, they've, they've, they've brought it to Hudson Yards, right, Ann?

Yes, they just reopened in Hudson Yards.

So we're going to be doing a special walkthrough for a select number of guests.

So if you are interested, hit us up on LinkedIn.

Send me a direct message.

We'll get you registered for that.

It's going to be Monday night at 4:30 at Hudson Yards.

So look it up.

Plus many, many more exciting events happening.

So check in with us and let us know what your nrf, please, plans are.

Chris.

Yeah, me too.

And, and of course we'll be at the Fusion Group's booth also doing interviews with retail executives all week long as well.

So if you're at the show, definitely stop on by, say hello.

We always love it.

It always makes our day when some fan comes up to us and says, hey, you're Chris.

And, and it's great to meet you.

And you, you're here.

You're actually at the Fusion Group booth.

You're doing interviews.

And we're like, yeah, we are, it's us.

And we're kind of like it.

We are what you see too, folks.

So that's.

So we're excited about that as always.

All right, well, let's get this party started then.

We've got everything from headline of the year to most over hype tech of the year.

And you're going to want to stick around to the end, everyone, because at the end we're going to close out the show with a few 2026 predictions as well.

So let's kick it off.

Chad, you go first retailer of the year.

Oh man, you're going to be first.

Okay.

All right, all right.

The first Omni that I'm giving out for retail of the year goes to, goes to Aldi.

Oh.

Aldi.

Aldi is expanding, nobody else.

225 new stores this year.

Biggest US growth spurt for them ever.

The kind of strategic expansion that just changes the landscape of grocery.

And when you think about their value proposition, right, Like Aldi is delivering unmatched value at the exact moment that consumers need it most right now.

Inflation, higher grocery bills, tighter wallets, like that's the reality for most of Americans right now and across income brackets, which is really unique.

Right?

And their entire business model, it's almost as if it was basically engineered for this moment.

Right.

So I previewed some, some data from our consumer sentiment survey on a recent five insightful minutes for you guys.

Right.

43% say that they're decreasing grocery purchases because of the impact of prices and tariffs.

So prices are up, volume down.

As a result, consumers are looking for new ways to stretch their wallets.

About 60% or so are reporting having increased their trips to lower priced retailers that actually over indexes on higher household income earners.

And private label has never been hotter.

Right.

It's meeting consumer expectations not just for value, but 68% say that store brands are offering quality that's as good, if not better than national brands.

Right.

So all these just delivering this business model which continues to be simple, focused, discipline, consistent.

That showed up in their decision earlier this year to divest like 40% of the Southeastern grocery stores that they had acquired.

Right.

Like they're leveraging this model that works especially now.

And they're doing, you know, they're doing it to great effectiveness.

Wow.

All right, Chad.

So Aldi.

Okay, that's a good pick.

That's a really, really strong pick.

I, I did not think about them as I was doing this and I probably should have.

So I'm curious and what, who is your retailer of the year?

Well, before I say that, I'm a little disappointed, Chad, that you're not wearing the Aldi clothes if you're going to give them retailer of the year.

Like I expected the velour Aldi tracksuit on in top today.

But that's okay.

That's okay.

That's still a great award.

It's fair.

Today I'm wearing the teen approved quarter zip, so.

Oh yeah, the quarter zips are big.

Says, says all good.

Yep, yep.

Okay, well I'll go on to my retailer of the year.

Very obvious choice, but I think it has to be Walmart this year.

Wow.

Okay.

I think I say Walmart because they were early on at NRF earlier this year or they were adding the first ones to add a GPT like search function to their site.

They were the first ones to do.

They did an ESL electronic shelf label chain wide rollout with Fusion Group.

I think that was really important.

And then throughout the year it seemed like as we were going back and looking at the headlines from every week, Chris, I mean there was something that Walmart was doing almost every week that was notable, that was forward thinking from gas station expansions to auto centers to same day RX delivery.

And then finally I think the thing that I've been, I've been talking about for a long time but I was fortunate enough to go to New York to see their pop up for New York Fashion Week.

And that's another area that I don't think gets talked about a lot but is seeing tremendous growth at Walmart is this, this kind of fill in trip and especially as they're bringing in some of these upper income consumers that are looking for those pick those quick grab and go fashion items.

And Walmart's serving that up with really well with their scoop and free assembly line.

So that was, that was for me just a banner year for Walmart and, and I think tying it up really nicely at the end with, with John Furner being named next CEO.

What did you have though, Chris?

Yeah, yeah, I, I actually didn't do Walmart because it'd be too obvious for me to do Walmart.

You know, I think everyone would expect me to do Walmart because I, you know, and it's probably honestly hard not to pick Walmart.

But, and you know, to your point, like they've done a great job with the income demographic too, like getting people into fashion through the, the online plays that they've done and their retail media is exploding.

So there's so much to love about Walmart.

But your point about it?

Yeah, they were just in our headlines each and every week.

As I was reviewing everything, I was like, oh my God.

But yeah, they'll come up a lot in my awards as we go through the show.

But, but for me I actually, I picked Costco, you know, and the reason I, and you know, the reason I did that is I've been tough on Costco in the past.

Like I've been, I think some might even call it scathing in my reviews of Costco in general.

But I think you got to give them a lot of credit.

They, for one, they held their ground on DEI and for all intents's purposes it seems like the right move for that brand because they have been gaining high income shoppers, particularly from the likes of Target as well.

And they've also been really smart about their operations.

So they've, you know, they've done the expanded hours for executive team members.

They also crushed Black Friday.

You know, traffic was up like almost 8% on Black Friday to a club.

So that's, that's really telling.

The one misgiving I have, if I was to like hit myself on the head with one issue is the stock price.

The stock price is down 11% this year.

But when I look back on it over two years, it's still up 46% and I think that's how you have to look at Costco over the long, you have to look, take a longer term view to Costco because that's still impressive performance over two years.

So for me, just because they know who they are, they stick to who they are, they get it done, they continue to increase traffic, they continue to drive sales comps quarter after quarter, that's who gets my pick.

I like that.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

I wouldn't have thought of Costco either.

So maybe, maybe not a unanimous show as we, maybe we expected, but we'll see.

Let's go on to headline number two award number two headline of the year.

Chris, I'm gonna go back to you to start on this one.

What was your headline of the year?

Yeah, okay, this one.

Yeah, yeah.

Walmart's back at it.

For me it's Walmart and chat GPT's integration and say that not knowing what the hell it even means yet.

Like I think it's just kind of been announced.

We don't know it, what it, what it's going to look like.

It's kind of amorphous in terms of how they're describing it.

And meanwhile like you said Ann, Walmart's fortifying generative AI search on its own site via Sparky.

So but net net, I think this announcement or this headline is important because one, if they do do it, if they do integrate with ChatGPT, it potentially hurts Amazon because Walmart has always been the third banana to Amazon and Google in terms of first product search.

And that gives Walmart some entry into that game in a way they haven't had before.

And it still gives Walmart the option value of deciding what products it wants to make available via the LLM.

You know, for example, they're very smart to not allow groceries into that equation right now.

They've said that from the get go and I think that's a really smart move.

And then the third piece I'd say is, you know, the reason this is important is it means competitors are going to be rushing in there.

Everyone's going to be looking at this now, they're going to go willy nilly into it.

They're probably not going to be articulating their long term strategies inside their boardrooms that well.

And it just opened Pandora's box effectively in terms of how retailers are going to start thinking and interacting with these LLM search engines.

Yeah, I going to just tag on to the end of that.

Chris.

Because my headline of the year was actually Etsy and Open Air teaming up to allow transactions through, through chat GPT because of the impact, like you were just saying.

I think that we, we witnessed this year and I think I called this out when we read this headline earlier this year.

But this is a, a, you know, seismic shift in how we are shopping as consumers that I think we're going to look back on.

The same way we look back on 98 and 99 is kind of the year that E commerce really kind of came to the fore.

So I think for Me, Etsy and OpenAI.

Well, Etsy was an, maybe not a complex retailer to start with.

I think that really was, was the kind of the first launch of this new wave of shopping.

Chad, I'm going to let you close us out here.

Headline of the year.

What was it?

Yeah, now I'm seeing where we're going to converge over the course of the show across different, different omnis.

Right, but let me put a pin in that for a second because what I chose is the actual headline of the year and it's bigger than a Walmart story.

But it was Doug McMillan retiring and taking over.

Right?

And you know, so I'll start with a little like you know, celebrating McMillan and kind of Walmart portion of it, right?

And elevate that.

Right?

Because you know, I mean, listen, a decade ago Walmart was largely seen as a legacy retailer struggling to compete with E commerce rivals.

Right?

And you guys alluded to it.

How many headlines just this year, let alone the last couple years, have you ended with statements actually suggesting that some big strategic swing that Walmart was taking is giving it advantage over Amazon.

Right.

Like unheard of maybe a decade ago.

I mean like under McMillan, Walmart has added things that Amazon does really well, right?

Building out digital commerce.

They got Walmart plus to a place that's arguably as valuable as Amazon Prime.

They've created a retail media superpower.

One of the headlines that I've loved over the last year or so is like them buying Vizio and building that out into this, you know, retail media implications.

Now Chris, what you said in terms of like agentic AI, right, like they now have the things that, but they also, sorry, have the things that Amazon does not advantaging them with the brick and mortar footprint.

Right?

So there's all of that dynamic.

They've moved upstream from you know, a legacy low income consumer to all income brackets, from general conservative risk adversity to an agile fast, you know, fail fast retailer.

Right?

Stocks up, forex over this time.

All these things.

All these things.

But ultimately the reason I picked this is because I think it's bigger than celebrating McMillan and Walmart specifically.

Right.

Like we have.

We're venturing and you said it right, we're venturing into the most disruptive time in retail since the advent of E Com.

Right.

And as we look at this game changing tenure of Doug's and Sunset, that sets up for John but the whole industry to really think about how they now fill this space and define the next phase of retail.

Call it this post Amazon disruption era, how that's going to go.

And Fortune will favor those who make similar proactive structural shifts that's going to shape the direction of the industry.

So I toast you Doug.

I wish John the best coming in.

And we're entering a new era.

Doug is such a great name for a podcast.

I toast you Doug.

But you're bringing up a great point, Chad.

Like Doug was the seemingly the exact right person for Walmart given the phase of where retail was.

And now you're right, we're at this point now with all these announcements that Ann and I just talked about regarding generative AI to say, okay, what does that next phase of retail look like?

And now it's John Furnish reigns to drive and steer that ship.

So yeah, it's crazy.

All right, Chad, I'm going to stick with you then because I am curious.

Our next award is Retail Technology of the Year.

What wins your award for Retail Technology of the Year?

Yeah, I man, I circled the wagon a couple times in terms of how I wanted to address this one.

But you'll see in a later omni.

Why I didn't just go with like pure agentic AI commerce or something like that.

What I'm going with is, and go with me on this one.

Pricing transparency afforded through AI.

And I'm going to specifically, I'm going to specifically use grocery deals as an example of this.

Right.

So for those who don't know it and you featured one of the founders of grocery deals, I think in a retail tech spotlight some time ago.

Yeah, it's basically the gas buddy of grocery.

Right.

Where and even just getting piloted in one market mid year as when this was announced.

So it's not like it's taken off yet, but it price compares like items across grocery retailers and helps you build an online cart for the grocery industry.

Right.

Like this is super disruptive and scary probably to grocery retailers at least of a certain type.

Right.

Particularly high low pricers, which is slowly, maybe not slowly becoming an antiquated model anyway.

But with this kind of technology, it eases the ability for AI agents to coordinate offers orders from different grocers on price.

Right.

Incredibly disruptive.

It may even put grocers out of the ability to compete on E commerce depending on where their margins are.

I actually lived through the actual gas buddy advent when I was in the convenience store industry pricing fuel.

This is going to be even harder for grocers.

Right.

And I think it's.

You're going to find that it's going to split kind of the innovative thinkers on how to leverage this from the old school stalwarts who kind of refuse to change.

And the winners are going to be the ones who really lean in and take hold of this AI capabilities and start to embed that within their site.

So I think it's the tip of the iceberg.

I really took notice when this kind of technology was available now.

And I think it's going to set a course for us going forward.

Wow, Chad, that's really interesting.

Particularly as well, I don't know if you saw, but just in the last 24 hours, Consumer Reports put out a report about Instacart's pricing and how, you know, it's very, it, it varies widely across.

They surveyed like 400 different people and all 400 different people had a different price for specific items.

It was crazy.

And so like what you're getting at is a real need case here of price transparency and generative AI enables that.

So that's, that's really interesting.

And shout out to Michael and Matt at grocery deals.

They're gonna love, they're gonna love that drop for them.

So they're gonna, they're gonna be stoked when they see this.

But, but, and I'm curious, like what's, what's your take on the hot technology of the year?

I was with Chad where I mean agentic search and agent commerce was, you know, an obvious one.

But I went with electronic shelf labels.

And the reason that I did was one, we saw Walmart decide in early in the year we're going to roll these out to all of our stores.

And once Walmart does something, the rest of the industry is typically very, very fast to follow.

However, it really didn't dawn on me how pervasive this technology was, Chris, until we were at the Spartan Nash conference in July and you and I talked to retailers that had, you know, four store locations, they were in the middle of Nebraska or Ohio.

Yeah.

And when we talked to them about electronic shelf labels or any in Store technology really, they had already deployed these shelf labels, one, for the pricing transparency that Chad just talked about in grocery being very important, important to getting their, their customers to come back to them time and time again.

But then two, for the labor savings.

They, they don't have access to labor in these smaller rural communities that they used to.

And so this saved them time, it saved them money and, and it really allowed their staff to focus on the customers in their community, which is what sets them apart and what's, what keeps customers coming to them versus, you know, the big box retailer or grocer down the street.

So that really, that really changed my opinion of how doable this technology is.

We've heard for a long time that it's expensive or it's hard to make pencil.

But if a rural retailer is pushing forward with this technology, I think and Walmart on the other end of the spectrum, I think it's something that we're really going to start to see in more and more places in the years ahead.

Yeah, that's a great point.

You know, that conference was really wild because you mentioned it like they were very laser focused on their biggest line on that income statement, which was stored labor in a way that we had never really heard from the big guys before, even though they probably are too.

And some of them, to your point, and some of them were literally on a mission to God.

From God.

A mission from God to put electronic shelf labels in their store.

Like it was, it was wild to hear them talk about it.

So.

Well, I don't, I mean for me, my, my technology of the year, it's agentic AI, but which I think is where Chad was going too.

He's like, you know, I want to put a little wrinkle on this, but for me it's agentic AI on the operational side of the business.

Like how do you run your warehouses better?

How do you inform your stores of the next best actions they need to take?

How do you run your inventory management more productively?

That's where I think people should be experimenting first as opposed to venturing into the realm of the consumer facing experiences.

Because I think the jury's still out on, you know, how much, how many of us are going to shop this way and what the impact of that is going to be in the long term.

So, so that's, that's my plug.

But agentic AI, it's, you know, to chat to your point, I think it's what you're saying too.

It's like kind of hard not to go with it in some ways, yeah, 100%.

Okay, well, I think I know based on your previous answers, where both of you are going to go for this one.

One for Chris because of just background and the last several years since we've been doing the show, and Chad, after your rant about the successes of this particular CEO.

But let's go to award number four, Retail CEO of the Year.

Chad, let's have it.

Who did you pick for Retail CEO of the Year?

No, I'm gonna surprise you.

Incredibly.

No way.

Oh yeah, Well, I didn't get it.

Out in the earlier one.

I suppose you did get to give two awards technically, but.

Okay, okay, I did.

I did kind of feel like I gave a CEO award for accomplishments already in a way, but I'm actually going to give a retail CEO for a.

How to describe this?

A personal choice or a personal move in terms of its signal.

So go with me on this.

Okay.

All right.

So I don't remember what month it was.

I guess it was about mid year or so.

Fiji Sumo moved from the CEO of Instacart to the CEO of Applications at OpenAI.

Right.

And I just thought that that was such a smart move for someone individually.

But it's also a microcosm for retail commerce more broadly.

Right.

And we've kind of talked around this already a couple times.

E commerce used to matter.

I will matter tomorrow.

Right.

So you know Fiji's background.

Like she ran the Facebook app at meta until 2021.

Instacart, through the time when grocery delivery acceleration mattered.

Now moving to AI when that matters, she's basically thought of as a guru for productizing, scaling, monetizing consumer apps like that's the job.

But it was also a big statement for OpenAI itself.

Right.

That they were ready to turn this just amazing research and innovation lab into actual large scale AI deployment to create and monetize products and services, certainly not the least of which is commerce, advertising platforms, et cetera.

So again, not giving the award based on as much what she's done in role.

You know, she's new at it, right.

And actually we'll probably spend a lot of time in the future debating.

I mean, ChatGPT is on such a path.

Like what is managerial ingenuity and effectiveness from just the technological magnificence.

Fine.

So not a big, bold strategic move for a company, but a big, bold, risky strategic move for a person who's betting on the direction of the industry and the role that she can play to shape it.

So kudos.

Maybe I'll be Back in a year, given the award for what she's actually done.

But I thought that was a big signal headline and you know, good for you on the move.

Yeah, there's a lot of interchangeability there between your headlines of the Year and Retail CEO of the Year, Chad, both with Fiji Simo and with Doug McMillan.

So well done in how you just very nicely served that up to give both of them, technically both of them, one award.

But Chris, let's go to you next.

I know your answer.

I think I gotta Josh chat a little bit.

So like, so the Retail CEO of the Year is effectively the person that had the best CEO or the best job move of the year.

The best job.

Absolutely right.

Yeah, you got it.

Yeah.

That's really the award we're giving out to you.

The shrewdest job Change of the year is the winner of the reason.

Does it allow me to make a different point?

Absolutely, yeah.

You talked yourself around it really well.

Bad.

But, but hey, I think, I think the point, like Ed said, the point is you think that space is really going to heat up like that.

That's what you're saying here and that that is the big nugget takeaway from this podcast thus far.

So like when we say like what nugget won the show like that you're, I think you're in the lead on that one.

So.

All right.

Yeah, I mean, for me it's Doug.

I mean, the joke on this show every year is that I always pick Doug, but this year I'm legitimately picking Doug.

I mean, Doug's going to go down as the second best CEO in the history of Walmart.

I've said it before.

And when the founder is Sam Walton, that's really saying something.

And to me, the biggest thing when I look at what he's done is the Houdini like, feat of getting higher income shoppers to shop at Walmart.

That is something that no one saw coming and he deserves a ton of credit for that.

Yeah, I agree.

I also picked Doug for all the reasons that we've talked about, for all the reasons that he, that Walmart won Retailer of the year.

But I think it's also really important again, and we talked about this when this headline came out, Chris.

But I also think it's really important to talk about the culture that Doug instilled in Walmart, that he changed the culture there to be appealing to a new market.

He gave people autonomy to make decisions.

He changed how, you know, operations were going to be handled.

He made it.

He removed Some of the politics, I think, that were weighing down, decisions being made quickly to allow Walmart to really kind of go down the path that we're all warning and lauding Walmart for right now.

So I think it's not just, it's not just Doug, but it's also the culture and the team that built.

He built around him and the way that he operated that retailer, too, so that they would be able to, to do all the things that they accomplished in this year.

Yeah, success always requires three things.

People, technology, and great process.

Right.

So that's just the way it works.

Yeah, he's done a great job on those things.

I hope I said those three things right, too.

And if I did it, correct me, please.

You too.

Most overhyped retail technology of the year.

Ann.

I went to smart carts for this one because.

Oh, you used to be on the smart cart bandwagon.

I did, but I, I really had a problem with one particular headline that was coming out of Instacart this year that was talking about the number of stuff stores that had deployed.

And, and my biggest, like, sticking point on that was that we don't know anything about how many carts are in those stores.

We don't know how, you know, what the payment structure is.

And so I think it kind of gave.

False confidence for retailers who were considering those putting smart carts in as though, like, oh, this is a deployment with, you know, 100 carts, or we're replacing all of our carts and putting in smart carts and we're seeing all this success.

And yes, that, that's fine in those stores, but when we, when you get down to it, and we've talked to a lot of grocery retailers who are testing them this year, and they have like 10 carts in the store or maybe 20 carts in the store, if that, if that.

And so I think, I just, I think that for me, I think they were early on in the year, and especially coming out of grocery shop last year, I was starting to see more of the possibilities.

I still see the, the possibilities in the technology, but I think when you're looking at all of the decisions that grocers have to be making right now about how to continue the success of their business, I wouldn't be leaning into smart carts.

I would be leaning into transparent pricing, like Chad said earlier.

I'd be leaning into electronic shelf labels that can return a quick ROI or even, you know, in store robotics to start to get some of this, the shelf view technology that, that, you know, the smart carts are starting to add on to what their capabilities are like, those are the things that I would be focused on.

I would not be putting, you know, tens of thousands of dollars per cart into my store.

So that's my overhyped technology of the year.

No, I think that's a good one.

So you're basically calling out the.

I think it was the modern retail article, right?

Where they said, like, instacart store placements are up 300% over the year before.

But there was.

We don't really know what that means.

And that you're.

You're right.

It's a very risky place to put your money if you're a retailer.

But you can understand it, too, because the retail media craze that we talked about on last year's show being the overhyped technology aspect of things.

All right, Chad, what about you?

What's your most overhyped retail technology of the year?

I have a feeling you might be going in the same direction I did.

I don't know.

This is gonna sound like an odd one, given the conversations that we've been having and the fact that I've already given a couple for AI oriented things, but.

All right, hear me out, Chris.

I think you will agree with me.

I think you will agree with me, but we'll see.

Okay, Overhyped or let me rephrase ahead.

Of the reality.

We're too fast on it.

Whatever.

It's agentic AI commerce, 100%.

Right.

All right, good, good, good.

That's mine, too.

Mine too.

All right.

I mean, listen, I know it sounds blasphemous because it, like, listen, it's our future to an extent, full stop.

Like, there's no dispute there in terms of where this locomotive is going.

It's also anything anyone's talking about.

And that's why it scares me, right?

Like, we're so early.

Like, if you.

If you go back and look at the trajectory of headlines just in.

In this year alone, right, In March, March, we were talking about Google's new AI shopping tool, and we actually had a couple of crgers on the podcast, and you guys were debating whether it was even being discussed in retailer boardrooms, right?

Like Walmart announced Sparky In June in Q2, like, we were talking about being able to Transact directly in ChatGPT, like, integration with Shopify.

But then by July, Shopify was already saying, like, we got to put some limits in place and block the bots from making purchases without human review.

Right?

Like, it's gone so fast from Q1 intrigue to Q4 Chief AI officers and every.

Boardroom like forcing themselves to take a stance and saying they feel behind.

Right.

And how I know it's gone too far too fast and this I know you'll 100% agree with me.

Oh my God.

You're gonna say what I'm gonna say.

No.

A hundred percent.

Right.

Target gave away farm.

Yes.

Putting its digital experience directly into ChatGPT versus owning it.

Right.

So I'll end where I started.

Right.

I cannot and will not minimize the direction and importance of this movement for sure.

But the reactions and what consumers are even doing on it as a cat commerce platform, way overhyped in the here and now.

O, case closed.

Wow.

Wow.

I mean, you literally said what I was going to say, Chad.

Like I'm going to read the notes here verbatim that I had here for the audience because like you literally said what I said, like I, I picked agentic AI too.

So yes, a technology can be the technology of the year, but also be overhyped at the same time.

And particularly it's the consumer facing side of agentic AI that's overhyped.

And to me, the number, the number one experiment that was the proof point for that to me was what you said.

Target putting its app directly in the interface during peak.

Two days before peak.

That shows me that people are right.

Two days before peak, that there's no reason to do that.

Absolutely none, strategically.

And it shows me that retailer.

And then there were a flood of announcements after that.

So I don't want to just single out Target because like, you know, I probably have that reputation to some degree.

I don't want to do that.

There are a lot of retailers that have followed suit on that, that type of thing, you know, and, and it shows me that there's kind of digging around in the dark without a flashlight and everyone, I agree with you, Chad.

Everyone just needs to take a breath, slow down, decide who they are strategically and what's most important to them in terms of allocating their resources.

But, and I don't.

And do you want to jump in here, you guys?

I think I, I understand the points of view.

I do think that there's prudence that needs to be applied to like what is the right move, what's the strategy?

I think people personally don't, I don't think we understand all of the facets of this.

So I think to go after Target, any retailer who is experimenting in this way, to me, without us being able to see the long tail effect of what, like my whole thing is like everybody's experimenting right now.

Yes, There.

Everybody's going into the dark without a flashlight right now.

I think that you have to test and figure out what reasons there were to make the moves that they did, because Target's not the only one doing it.

They, they maybe were looking at, what are Walmart, what's Walmart doing?

And do we want to do the opposite of that so that we can test and see if this works?

And again, I think, I think we're giving too much credit.

And not that it's, it's your fault or anyone's fault, but I think Target put that out as a we and you said it, Chris.

This is a PR move.

They're talking about getting involved so that they can get credit for testing AI but it's still in beta.

They're not going live with it to the same extent that Walmart did.

So I think we can't punish people right now for testing a variety of different methods of attacking this very, very new way of doing commerce.

So that's my only thing is that I, I agree.

Slow the roll.

That's fine.

But also, everybody's gonna have to test and learn for a little while till they figure out what the right move is.

So.

Yeah, but I don't know.

But with that said, I mean that part of the reason we started the show is to say that not all experiments are good experiments.

And sometimes we hear the phrase we're experimenting as the catch all for, like, we made a good decision when in reality it might not be a good experiment.

So, Chad, I'm curious, last word here.

How do you, how do you reconcile the conversation?

Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll reconcile that.

So I completely agree.

Right.

Which is why I tried to caveat in terms of, like, this is overhyped now in terms of its effect.

Now you look at some of the numbers, even from Black Friday, and, like, they're not even as impactful as I would have expected some of them to be.

Right.

Compare that to, you know, like, smart carts.

Right.

We've been talking about smart carts for, I don't know what was the first advent of when that came out?

Maybe two years ago, three years ago.

I don't know.

Whatever it is, in reality, it's like 30 years, but yeah, yeah.

And you're giving that overhyped in 2025, which means there has been testing.

There has been, but people have dabbled with that.

It's still kind of sitting there and like, okay, it didn't work.

We are in barely the first inning of this technology and people absolutely should be testing against it.

But just how I hear the conversations develop in terms of the be all, end all now.

Right, Like, I agree with you, Chris, how we said it, like, let's take a pause, let's take a breath, let's test, let's learn.

This is an incredibly ambiguous space, so let's treat it like that versus diving in headfirst.

Okay, let's go and move on to retail headline you most want to see turned into a movie.

Chris, this is one of your favorite categories, so I'm going to go to you first.

Which.

Which headline did you most want to see on the big screen this year?

Yeah, well, the obvious answer for me is Red blood and khaki, the hubris that destroyed a once proud brand.

But I'm not going to go there, actually.

Believe it or not, I'm going to go with the headline that she and made its first move into physical retail in Paris.

Because that did not go well.

There was a lot of drama related to that announcement.

And so the title of this film, man, is she in Sac Les Bleu.

And, you know, and.

And the person that would play the lead is my favorite favorite French actress, the Bond girl, Lia Sedo.

And she would take up the cause in this film, leading the protesters who are up in arms over the whole she and thing in Paris.

That.

That's my movie of the year.

Oh, my God.

I would go to see that for sure.

Chad, what is your movie, your retail headline of the year you'd most like to see turned into a movie?

I understand why you love this, this omni so much, Chris.

All right, I looked at a few different ways that this was described in the press to pick what was the best kind of movie teaser in the end.

I like how the Wall Street Journal put it.

I tried the robot that's coming to live with you.

It's still part human.

Followed by a futurism did $20,000 robot servant comes major catch.

Of course, we're talking about Neo, the chore robot.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, chore robot fails make.

Yeah, Chore robot fails make for just amazing video content.

But, you know, for me, this turns into a thriller horror, kind of based on the CEO's own statement, right?

Like, if we don't have your data, we can't make the product better.

Right.

Like, there's a human on the other side of those doughy robotic eyes.

Like, dear God, this is exactly the stuff that Black Mirror episodes are made of.

Movies like, Megan, my favorite genre of like, human versus Machine.

Like, I'm in for that.

Oh, my God, I love that movie.

And it would be absolutely terrifying.

It already is just as it is.

So, I mean, imagine what Hollywood would do to that.

I'm gonna close it out with my.

My movie that I want to see.

There's two headlines that captured my movie title.

The first one is the Kohl's Ashley Buchanan investigation, the Cole's CEO leaving and the Wall street or the I think it was Washington Post article that came out about that, which I feel like would make for a great probably not movie.

We're really probably talking like made for TV movie on Netflix direct to streaming or something.

But either that whole, like the reading that article, it felt like you were reading straight from like a romance novel where things went awry or the Kroger CEO mysteriously getting fired.

Like, I think that there's a lot of intrigue and mystery that are happening and no one really knows what happens.

So it's like Unsolved Mysteries meets Danielle Steele for the Ashley Buchanan one.

And.

And just straight up Unsolved Mysteries for the.

The Kroger CEO.

Yeah, that Ashley Buchanan one's good.

And like coffee beans and favors would be my title for that one.

Producer Ella, let's bring you in here.

Which.

Which of these.

Which of these three movie choices, which of these three headlines that we could turn into a movie or actually four, because Anne gave us two.

Which movie would you most like to see?

I'm curious.

Producer ELLA I'm totally going with Chad on this.

Like the Megan the Robot robots.

Totally.

Would be terrifying, but Hollywood, they'd eat it up.

Right, right, right.

And it's probably already in production.

It's definitely in pre production.

Somebody's thinking about it right now.

Without a doubt.

What do you call it if you actually get to win an Omni and an Oscar and like, what happened?

Like, what is Santa and title?

But you should add Omni to that rank.

We should.

The aspiring scriptwriter in me may one day want to figure out exactly what that's like.

All right, Best strategic move from a struggling retailer.

And let's go to you first.

I picked Macy's for this one.

I thought that they closed down a lot of their small format stores.

They seem to really be shifting focus again this year on what makes Macy's Macy's and how to figure out how to get people back into the store.

And the second part of that would again be the emphasis that they put on their own brands and high style and really well executed fashion across their on 34th brands and the collaborations that they did for the Inc Brand, which had its 50th anniversary this year.

Like, I think that we just awarded Emily Arusha Hillake, the head of the SVP of private brands, the Omnistar last week for this exact type of work.

And I think they're, they're just, they're giving people a reason to go back to Macy's by tightening the belt, eliminating some of the, the waste that was happening there and really putting their focus into those core stores that they're, that they're going to move forward with.

So I'm giving it to Macy's.

Yeah.

You know, funny enough, so am I.

So am I.

And yeah, and, and you know, I think if I've been hard on Costco, I've been really hard on Macy's over there the past few years.

So like.

But I'm actually starting to like Tony Spring.

They just come off their best, they just came off their best quarter in the last three years and it was positive growth.

So that's saying something.

But I like how he's focusing on the store experience too.

Like improve.

Like he's basically putting money or investment towards improving things like the amount of service being deployed in the shoe area, the things that are part and parcel differentiators for Macy's and trying to increase the allure of the store experience in what matters.

And so that's your advantage.

That's where you should be investing.

So I give him a lot of credit for doing that.

And, and you know, it's not something that is that easy to do.

His predecessor wasn't able to do it.

So.

Yeah, I 100 agree.

Chad, what about you.

Here?

This one is like tailor made for you.

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not gonna round it out with the trifecta here.

So we didn't go unanimous on this one, but I did go with a marketing spin.

Right?

So okay, headline was gaps Viral milkshake denim ad with cat's ey is right.

And I say that because that's a microcosm for Gap being back in the cultural conversation.

Right.

Song, dance and celebrating a pant fabric.

Just like I remember in the 90s, right.

Interest in the brand is high.

Like comp sales were up 7% in Q3.

Doubling analysts expectations.

Listen, an ad campaign does not make a brand.

Like it's not enough.

Like we know that there's a lot to deliver on, not the least of which is actual product, of course, but it starts with people paying attention and being relevant again.

Right.

Especially for as the Omni category would suggest.

Right.

The struggling retailer, you gotta get people in for the first time because typically struggling retailers aren't getting that first buy.

So it's a, it's a great move on what Gap's doing with the brand.

Now they just have to back it up with product and experience.

Got it.

So you, so you love the Cat's Eye partnership and it brings you back to your nostalgic days.

So, Chad, I'm curious, what's your favorite Gap ad of all time?

Oh, man.

I would have to think about the specific song.

I just remember a lot of snapping and dancing and khakis in the 90s.

I can't like, remember specifically, like the swing, what the songs were.

Right.

But, but yeah, there you go.

It was, it's, it was legit.

It's funny, we were just telling producer Ella she needs to go back and look at all the old ads from the Gap to get a real sense of the nostalgia.

And what's yours?

Remind the audience, what's your favorite Gap commercial of all time?

What's the one that sticks in your mind?

I mean, I thought this choir won the la.

The last one was.

Probably has kind of dominated now as my new favorite just released a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah, I thought it, it was a good way to incorporate not just the typical, like young, fresh, 20 somethings, 30 somethings wearing the product.

It really showed like, okay, there's.

We've got young and old people all in the product all together.

And it was just very like moving, I think, for this time of year.

So that has now taken my top spot.

But yours is what?

Mine's mellow yellow, they call me.

Yeah, that's right.

That's a good one.

But Ella, producer Ella, did you do it?

First of all, did you do your homework?

I'm curious, did you go back and look and see?

And did you have a favorite?

I did go in a rabbit hole.

I was watching yes videos.

But what do I have a favorite?

They were all so good.

They were really good.

The production was insane.

So I don't know if I have a favorite.

I.

But I could watch those for hours.

So good.

Yeah, yeah.

The.

Everybody at leather ones were good.

The khaki ones are good.

They were all good.

But yeah.

All right, and let's go to the next.

All right, we'll move from Cat's Eye and Gap to this next award, which is best new partnership of the year.

Chad, who do you have for best new partnership?

First of all, nod to like the first half of the year when didn't it feel like there was some, you know, marketplace partnership that was being announced on a near daily basis.

They were very hot, very strategic.

Ebay and Facebook, a bunch of folks went live with third party marketplaces like Miracle.

You know, you had Best Buy and Ulta and Lowe's like slowed down a little bit in the back half, like correlated with the rise of agentic commerce.

Right.

Where AI can scour on your behalf.

I don't know if that's correlation or causation, but so I'm going with one of those partnerships that was probably the most unexpected one that I recall from the year because it fundamentally felt different than the others.

And that was Walmart and its rebag program where they had luxury partners like Chanel and Fendi and Louis Vuitton digitally available on Walmart's site.

Right.

And we've all mentioned it now multiple times when discussing McMillan and Walmart and even Aldi.

Right.

Like consumers of all income brackets are going to lower price retailers.

Walmart was able to scale up to higher household income brackets very, very well.

Walmart's giving them a great experience and value at a time of need.

Resale, secondhand markets are hot, tends to skew younger.

But with Walmart has the ability to play across age demographics.

Right.

Like, but Walmart brought in this partnership as a way to expand their reach digitally without any real downside to the core.

So I just thought it was, it was a really cool, innovative, surprising partnership that happened really early in the year.

So I had to go back to remember it.

Yeah.

And who ever thought you'd be searching for Gucci wallet on Walmart.com or getting served up a Walmart.com result in Google when you're searching for, for a Gucci wallet.

All right, Chris, what about you?

Where are you going for this one?

Yeah, 100%.

I mean Walmart, God, Walmart's winning this show already.

Like they've, they've just been in announcement or in award after award after award.

I mean for me I'm going with Walmart and Avery Denison, believe it or not.

I think you know their partnership on inventory tracking and perishables.

I've said it before, I said on a previous podcast like that's the holy grail of retailing.

If you can track and understand and limit your spoilage in the perishables area, that's just immediate bottom line money that you're going to get and it's going to help the profit line enormously.

And again, like we've talked about already on this show because Walmart's doing it.

Other grocers are going to follow suit as well.

So, you know, kudos to them.

Yeah.

I actually also had Walmart and Avery Denison as my first, but I did have a second runner up, so I'll focus on that one.

And that one was the IKEA and Best Buy partnership.

I think this was a really smart use of real estate.

I think if you've gone in and seen these, like, I. I don't think most people think about ikea.

It's like one of those moments where you're wearing something and people are like, oh, it's from Walmart.

And people are shocked.

I think this is happening to people when they go into a Best Buy kitchen, an IKEA kitchen setup, and they see these cabinets and cabinets are a very expensive part of a kitchen remodel.

And I think when you go in and you see, like, like, oh, these cabinets are actually ikea, like, it opens up a new customer for Ikea, and it feels like it fits in with this Best Buy customer.

So I'm.

I'm curious to see how they continue to expand that and, like, what it looks like throughout different times of the year beyond just the first setting.

But.

But I really like that.

I thought it was a good play, particularly in the kitchen.

Again, the.

The laundry portion, I feel like that's less of a concern.

Maybe that's more of a reason why people would go for IKEA cabinets in their laundry room where it's less visible.

But I thought that was a really smart partnership and good use of real estate and Best Buy for Best Buy.

Wow.

I did not see that one coming at all.

But, you know, gosh.

Well, we've already had that debate on what we think about that topic, so we won't rehash that.

But if you want to listen, if you want to go back and listen to that episode, folks, you can, because, yeah, I don't.

I don't.

I don't know if I could get on board with that one.

But, hey, that's why it's a debate show.

All right, next award.

Most laughable headline of the year.

My most laughable headline was, and I quote, starbucks is ditching its mobile pickup stores due to lack of warmth and connection.

Yeah, I want the receipts.

I want to know who is saying I'm not getting warmth and connection when I go to pick up my perfectly orchestrated Starbucks drink.

I think that's a load of Huey and I, again, could not be more for Starbucks figuring out how to do Mobile pickup faster, better and, and really just make that money on the side that's recurring revenue and focus less on what the store environment looks like.

I've never complained about warmth and connection when I'm getting my coffee, only the warmth of my coffee.

So that's my most laughable headline.

Yeah.

You know, I think you, I think you spun me in your direction on this argument too.

Like, you know, and it's.

You inspired me to write an article about it too.

Like in the sense of like they've got to do something on this and in fact it's going to come up in our last prediction too, I think as well.

But Chad, what was you.

What was your most laughable headline?

So I contemplated whether I wanted laughable to be just like a bad strategic move that was laughable on why someone would try it.

But in the end I went with a headline that just honestly made me laugh.

And it's more CPG than, than retail, but it is Liquid Death's pit.

Diaper flies off the shelves following a viral bathroom incident.

Oh my God, that's right.

Now I'm not sure I ever found out what the viral bathroom incident was and I am certainly not searching for it.

But listen, I go to a lot of concerts during the year, including this one massive four day, all day, all night, you know, festival.

Like this resident, it's a classic, you know, funny because it's true moment.

Like I'm still young enough, knock on wood that I'm able to hang on.

But you know, you get enough 24 ounce beer cans during the day and a headliner you love, you know, I don't know.

But this one, this one definitely made me laugh.

Like you get up in the front, you can't go run out your spot.

No, no, give up your spot.

So you got to very strategically figure out when you're last drink of the evening is relative to the bands you want to see.

No doubt about it.

So Chad, I guess you could say in terms of your interpretation of this award, I guess you could say it all depends and how you want to.

How you want to perceive it.

Is that right?

I think you could say that.

Well done.

Yeah, well done.

I'd like to give you a huggy.

Right?

Nice, nice.

Way to double down.

All right, so mine, mine is mine.

I went the opposite way.

I went.

I went on like the strategy move where I just read it.

I was like, what the heck is going on here?

And that.

I hate to say it, but it was target.

Small, small, small town strategy.

That to me Seems like a PR reach when you don't have any ability to grow in the suburban markets.

Your urban strategy is not working as well.

And having run stores in small towns like Casper, Wyoming and Scottsbluff, Nebraska, I just, I just don't think there's a play there.

So that one still, still unfortunately makes me chuckle.

All right, let's close out the show with our final award.

Tomorrow's headlines Today, what is one headline you predict for 2026?

Chad, let's go to you first.

So I gotta say there's some pressure on this one because last year I used this Omni to talk about Target and what would most likely be leadership changes in 2025.

Sure enough, in August Brian Brian Cornell announced he'd step down.

So what to do here?

Like it, it felt like it needed to be something open AI related, something Chat GPT will unveil.

The obvious one is, you know, advertisers flood as Chat GPT introduces ads to its free tier.

Right.

And then you know, maybe you get a two for here like as the agentic commerce does accelerate when it will, maybe OpenAI creates its own payment platform.

Now you can use ChatGPT Pay for your AI agents to do all your holiday shopping for you or something like that.

But you know, steamrolling ahead on that.

That, yeah, we're starting to see some announcements with Visa jumping in there and Amazon and some other ones too.

So I think those are great call outs.

Chris, what is yours headline for 2026?

I kind of tease it before but for me I think, I think, I think Ann, to your point about Starbucks and the laughable headline, I think, I think Starbucks is going to do an about face on this whole.

Like we can't have a coffee shop without seating in it.

Like that just I think doesn't make sense operationally.

They're gonna, at some point they're gonna avail a new mobile order and Ghost Cafe concept where that's just what they're focused on of getting those orders into people's hands as quickly as possible because they need the throughput, they really do.

And that's the only way I can conceive of doing it as opposed to like a full scale redesign of their stores which is gonna take time and a ton of money.

So I think, I think we'll see that at some point.

I don't know if we'll see it this year technically, but I think we'll see it at some point.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're right.

We'll certainly see the impact of focusing more on these store redesigns that they're doing and if the investment is going to be worth it for them or if they need to pivot and go more to just the ghost kitchen model that you're talking about to Chris.

Well, I, I'm closer to Chad on this one for my, my tomorrow's headlines today, but the headline I'm most excited about seeing in 2026 is agent influence Shopping around the Black Friday Cyber Monday and holiday season of 2026.

I, I believe we will see that at least double if not triple compared to the stats that we saw this year because I think it's another a hold a whole additional year now that we've got people familiarized with using these agencies to do their shopping.

And I think as they start to, to use that for things outside of just shopping, for making appointments, for doing other things, I think we'll start to see an increase, hopefully with payment options like Chad's talking about to make those gift buying shopping experiences less stressful, you know, and, and more impactful.

Especially as the deal season seemed to get stretched out this year.

Black Friday week lasted two weeks at seemed like so those agents will be really helpful I think with people making sure that they're getting the right prices and potentially even doing things like price matching and stuff on their behalf next year.

Wow.

All right, so, and, and all in on, all in on a gentic AI from and that's the key takeaway from this show so far.

But producer Ella, I'm curious, like let's bring you in here for one last segment.

What in your mind stood out to you from this show?

Like what was, what was the one thing that you're taking away from this hour?

Plus discussion of who won the 2025 retail year.

Yeah, this might shock you guys, but Chad's take on retailer of the year, Aldi.

I'm so on board with that.

Wow.

Yes.

Because I shop Aldi often.

I'm actually part of the Aldi Isle of Shame Facebook group.

I don't know if you guys are familiar.

This is.

No, please tell us.

This is a very devoted community where Aldi fans can celebrate those limited time middle aisle finds.

I mean what everything from odd seasonal gadgets to a pull up bar, new shoes, the list goes on.

But it's basically a very safe place to share what may have ended up in your cart on your grocery run.

So Anne and Chris, I know you were maybe thinking of more of a retail minded answer, but I don't know much about the numbers but I Do know I love Aldi and Chad.

I really resonated with a lot of what you said today.

So I guess maybe you're my winner.

Thank you, Ella.

Thank you, thank you.

Do I get my own Omni for getting the, you know, the winning the show?

Yes.

100%.

We're gonna make one, ship it to you.

100%.

Fantastic.

Keep it on my trophy or my, my, my wall of shame.

We'll get you your own Omnitok.

Half zip, Chad.

Yes.

All right.

All right.

Well, that closes us up.

That was a great show.

So much fun.

Love doing this every year.

Happy birthday today to Susan Day, Kenneth Brada, and to the man everyone once wished for on their 16th birthday, Michael Schoffling.

And do you know who Michael Shoffling is?

I bet you do.

I don't.

I have no idea.

Sixteen Candles.

I gotta look him up, but I don't know his name by candles.

I know, but you know the bow in Sixteen Candles, right?

Everyone loved him.

Everyone loved him.

I know.

This is what happens is you look these people up and then you're like.

Oh, you maybe dude hasn't aged very well, actually, unfortunately.

But yeah, but remember, if you can only read or listen to one retail blog in the business, Make It Omnitok the only retail media outlet run by two former executives from a current top 10 US retailer.

Our Fast Five podcast is the quickest, fastest rundown of all the week's top news.

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Thanks as always for listening in.

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You can follow us today by simply going to YouTube.com omnitalkretail Chad, if people want to get in touch with you or anyone else at the A and M Consumer and Retail Group, what's the best way for them to do that?

You can reach out to me directly on LinkedIn, Alvarez and Marcel Consumer and Retail Group.

We also are there on LinkedIn or you can find us at alvarezmarsal-crg.com awesome.

Awesome.

And today's podcast was produced, of course, with the help of Ella Sirjord and to everyone out there on behalf of all of us at omnitalk, on behalf of Chad and the Alvarez and Marcel Consumer and retail group, as always, be careful out there.

And most importantly, have a really happy holidays.