Headline of the Year - What Announcement Mattered Most? | Fast Five Shorts

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

What was your headline of the year?

Yeah, okay, this one.

Yeah, Walmart's back at it.

For me it's Walmart and ChatGPT's integration and, and I 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 and 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 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 the, 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, I gonna just tag on to the end of that Chris, because my headline of the year was actually Etsy and open AI teaming up to allow transactions 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, 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.

While Etsy wasn't 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 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.

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 of 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 4x 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 Macmillan 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, 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 Furnace reigns to drive and steer that ship.

So, yeah, it's crazy.