Inside RetailClub: A Bold New Vision for AI and Retail

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I'm one of your co hosts for today's Spotlight series, Interview and Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

So, Chris, today we have a special kind of spotlight on what I hesitate to call conference.

It's more of a retail retreat and retail organization.

And the perfect person to explain this to us firsthand is a guest and good friend of the Omni Talk Retail Podcast, Christina Gustafson, the Chief Content officer and the co founder of Retail Club.

Christina, welcome to the show.

It's good to have you back on.

It's so wonderful to see you guys.

Thanks for having me.

Yes, it's great to see you again.

I mean, for those, for those that have been with us for a long time, they no doubt know who you are through your work at Shop Talk and also you've been on our, on many of our programs over these past few years as well.

So it's good to have you back.

But for those maybe that aren't as familiar with you, Christina, why don't you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and then also about your other co founders that are involved in the Retail Club.

Yeah, happy to do that.

Well, I like to think of myself first and foremost as a reformed journalist.

I actually started my career as a retail reporter over at CNBC and also spent a couple of years over at wwd, but as you guys mentioned, made the jump over to the Shop Talk ship back in 2017.

I actually attended the show when I was covering it for CNBC and was completely blown away by the event, the community and the founders.

And so was there leading the content team across Shop Talk, Grocery Shop and Shop Talk Europe for several years.

That's where I got synced up with the other founders of Retail Club, Anil And Simran Agarwal.

They actually founded, scaled and sold Shop Talk, Grocery Shop and a couple of other, you know, tiny events.

Money 2020 at FinTech meetups.

Just those?

Yeah.

So they've been around the block.

And Caroline Farley, who is also on the executive team over at Shop Talk and was one of the founders of Grocery Shop and fintech Meetup as well.

So we're really excited to have the band back together.

And hey, we know event, we know retail, and we're ready to dive in.

Awesome.

So what, what is, what is the.

Goal of this, this, this quote unquote retail club?

It's a great question.

So Retail Club really is an entirely new retreats business.

We are going to be launching with our first retreat, which is an AI deep dive retreat in less than 90 days.

We are moving at this.

So our first retreat is actually going to be September 14th to 17th in Huntington Beach, California.

And to your question about goals, I would say really, Chris, it's two.

First is we are really trying to build the retail industry's AI native community.

So if we think back to the early days of Shop Talk, our goal really was to help retail go digital.

Our goal for Retail Club is to help it go AI.

And then our second goal is actually to just kind of reinvent the wheel.

As I mentioned, our founders were true visionaries when it came to building large scale events.

I think there's always going to be a place in the market for those large scale events, but they saw a real need for something that's much more collaborative, a place where people can really come and share.

And so really ripping up the traditional events playbook is probably the long and short of it.

You know, thinking no booths, no expo hall, not much traditional content, and really just kind of focusing on how can we really serve the retail industry at a critical juncture when things are happening fast and furious as it comes to AI innovation.

No booths.

Sign me up.

Oh my God.

No booze.

That's like crazy talk.

At first I thought you said no booze, Christina.

And I was like, that's not, that's even crazier talk.

I don't know if I'm ready for that one.

I know that's the trend, but if I know this group, they, they always show us a very, very good time.

Okay, so Christina, the AI Deep Dive retreat is, it's the first event for Retail Club.

What are some of the kind of key themes that people should expect going into this retreat?

What should they kind of hope to take away?

Yeah, so we really Want people to walk away with a really good understanding of where AI adoption in retail is today, where it's headed.

So that could include everything from, you know, benchmark studies about what applications retailers are actually applying today, you know, what use cases of agentic are real versus, you know, something that's going to be adopted, you know, seven, 10 months down the road, maybe even a year down the road.

And really kind of taking a broad look at just kind of all the various applications that AI is going to have across the organization.

You know, we feel really passionately that we're at this big critical inflection point where AI is going to be the future of the industry.

Right.

It's not just going to be one feature of innovation based.

The entire retail industry is going to at some point become AI first.

And by, at some point with the speed of adoption that we're seeing, it'll be sometime very quickly.

So exploring, you know, the implications that it's going to have across all the different functional roles, whether it's marketing, whether it's supply chain data analytics, E Com, you know, what is this going to mean for the future of search and discovery?

Is the brand site going to completely go away?

You know, how much of this is going to be complete replacement and automation versus just augmenting the work of human workers?

So those are some of the key themes that we want people to be able to dive, dive into.

I think at the end of the day we want people to walk away with really kind of great ideas and, and some tactical things that they can go roll out in their own organizations.

But I think we also need to be honest with ourselves that we're very early innings in what this technology can do.

And so I think no one has the answers.

Right.

And so getting together and having this group, group think and group conversations about all the possibilities, I think is also going to be hugely beneficial for folks.

Yeah, it sounds like Ann, being able to have some other, you know, people in the industry to reach out to after this too, who, you know, you continue the conversation, you get to know each other at the event and, and start to share where, where you, where things are working where they're not working like that real networking opportunity and then, you know, being able to tap people down the road when you're testing things, it sounds like further along, along the journey.

Definitely.

So Christina, to that, to that point that Ann's making, the one thing I'm curious about then is like who, who do you want to attend?

Like who, who's your target audience here?

That's a really great question.

The way I think that we're describing it on our website is that we want everyone who is AI curious all the way to the AI changemakers and champions to attend.

And I think at the end of the day there are a lot of organizations that are just at various stages of their adoption of AI.

We want to make sure that everyone feels welcome at this event.

I think too, even in a lot of the conversations that I had with folks as we were kind of developing the overall concept of Retail Club, there are people who are very passionate about learning about AI for their own personal development, but maybe their organizations aren't quite there yet and enabling them to really kind of bring it to life in a business setting.

So really trying to make sure everyone who wants to be learning about AI applications in retail has a seat at the table.

But I think if we look at this more concretely in terms of just kind of the types of organizations and functional roles who should be joining Retail Club, I think at the end of the day, what's really exciting about what we're seeing here is if we think back to the early days of Shop Talk and sort of this digital innovation and transformation of the industry, it was really limited to some of the more, you know, E Com marketing types of roles.

What we're seeing here with AI is it really is touching every single part of the organization.

And so I feel like everyone from supply chain to data analytics to machine learning to strategy to E Comm to marketing, they all really, really do have a place here.

And so thinking about those functional roles across established retailers and brand VC backed startups on both kind of the tech and consumer side, as well as some of the established tech companies that are really leading the charge in a lot of these spaces as well as VC investors, consultants, etc.

So really kind of trying to bring together this AI native ecosystem and community for, for Retail Club.

Got it.

And that makes sense too, looking at the founders like you described at the beginning, their background and where they've, you know, how they've, they've attacked the industry overall from a lot of different angles.

Now they're trying to consolidate that all in one place.

And with the name Retail Club too.

The one thing I want to ask you, Christina, just to make sure for audience you're.

You're targeting this for retailers as well as brands and CPGs too, right?

Those are the key executives that you want to.

That's exactly right.

And thank you for clarifying that.

We definitely want brands to be at Retail Club.

We Actually have a couple of really exciting names who are already signed on to to join us folks from Haley on, Gallo, Coca Cola, etc.

So definitely want to make sure the brand community is there.

I think Chris, you and I have both seen that a lot of the innovation in AI is happening in the brand space, particularly as it pertains to cpg.

So definitely want to make sure that folks are well represented.

Well Christina, take us through maybe a day in the life at the conference.

Like how, how are people SETT sessions?

What types of sessions can they expect?

Maybe outline or even out activity.

You're on a beach, so what other.

And wants to know if she's doing beach yoga?

Christina, that's what she's getting at here.

Exactly, exactly.

I'm thinking cocktail and hand sunglasses.

No, it's definitely going to be a working retreat.

We don't want the retreat to just you know, denote spa spa sessions all day.

But yes, we definitely want to make sure we're infusing some of that beachside experience, some fun making it a place quite frankly that people want to go and spend four days with their co workers.

You know, maybe attack on a couple days beforehand or after after the event.

But no, I think to to your question really just kind of trying to make sure it's a really well rounded experience for folks.

Again something that's fun but also educational.

So the way that we're thinking about this is yes, we are going to have some traditional stage content really to kind of get the ideas flowing for folks who are attending to really kind of see those conversations that they're going to have throughout the rest of the retreat.

So some of those big idea sessions with folks kind of like the CEO and CDIO over at PacSun who are going to be talking about how to bring a unifor AI strategy to life that doesn't kind of get stuck in in silos.

But then we're also going to have things like beachside yoga like hit activities for those people who like to get their heart pumping.

We'll have our meetings program.

You guys are probably familiar with that from Shop Talk where it's kind of those one to one double opt in meetings between not only tech solution providers and retailers and brands, but basically any attendee who is there.

We'll have peer group discussions, we'll have expert led workshops where we'll really have kind of that thought leader expert leading a dialogue among, let's call it up to 30 participants on some of the key topics.

And then one thing I'm really excited about is Our level up trainings where people can get hands on with things like, you know, how to do vibe coding, how to master prompt engineering, even how to use AI as your personal assistant.

So we're really just kind of creative about the formats and the types of learnings that, that people have.

Well, and Christina, it sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're also hitting on, especially with some of these sessions where it's a max of 30 with speakers like the CDO and the CEO of PacSun.

Like typically at a conference, you're there on stage, they're swarmed with people.

At the end, you don't really get to continue that conversation.

But am I correct in assuming that this might be different in that way where you really do get to have more interaction, whether that's in the meetings or in these, these smaller groups than you would at a traditional conference?

Yeah, it's a really great question.

And actually like we're trying to rethink every part of this experience and so not even just calling them speakers anymore, but calling them speaker discussion leaders.

Right.

Because at the end of the day, that's what we want them to do.

We want them to facilitate the dialogue with the participants in their sessions, you know, ask them questions, challenge their ways of thinking, you know, share their own experiences along the way.

So I think of it much more as an interactive workshop, collaborative learning type of style than just kind of when you're sitting in an audience consuming passive content.

Yeah.

Or on your phone or checking your email.

Right, right.

Yeah.

You said curious before.

That's the word that keeps coming to mind for me.

Like, you want people that are really curious about how things are going to change and want to learn from, from everyone at this conference in terms of how they should be thinking about things.

So that's really interesting.

So on that point, my.

Our last question for you then, Christina, is what are you most excited about and why do you think this is a can't miss event?

So I've worked in content for many, many years.

As I mentioned at the top of our interview, whether it's, you know, a traditional news organization or, or in traditional conference content, and no knock on my profession and how amazingly I did this job, but I think at the end of the day, sometimes the most interesting conversations that even I was having were the ones that were happening offstage.

And so I think what I'm most excited about is we're really flipping the model and making it so that everyone can participate in the conversation and really kind of walk away with real solid takeaways and just quite frankly, real genuine conversations.

So that's what I'm most excited about.

And then in terms of just kind of getting people to the event, I just want to encourage everyone to go to retailclub.com you need to register by August 22nd in order to participate in all of the various meetings and programs and experiences that we've talked about today.

And just a quick shout out that retailers and brands can qualify for free tickets and up to 1250.

So $1250 in travel reimbursement by participating in our hosted program.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

That should be enough to get people out to California in September for sure.

Huntington beach in California, Beachside.

Yeah, I think.

All right.

Well, Christina, thanks for joining us.

It was great to hear about this.

Always excited to see what you all are up to too.

Like you got whenever you got whatever this group of founders gets together and you got to pay attention and see what what they've got cooking here.

So thanks again to Christina Gustafson of Retail Club for sitting down with us and as always, all of our Omny Talk fans out there.

Be careful out there.