#ric18

The 2018 Retail Innovation Conference has come and gone, but not without showcasing its fair share of content and insights from some of today’s greatest industry minds. C-level execs from Walmart, 1-800-Flowers.com, TechStyle Fashion Group, 99 Cents Only, Sleep Number, Boxed, West Elm, Overstock and Adore Me peeled back the curtain of their retail strategies to reveal how to meet the customer at every turn.

The RTP editorial team shares their biggest takeaways from RIC18 keynotes, breakout sessions, Retail Innovator Award Winners and even mystery shopping studies.

Debbie Hauss, Editor-in-Chief: The Retail Innovation Conference confirms the importance of bringing together retail executives with different titles and responsibilities, representing different types of retail segments. It’s become clearer every year that retailers must continue to break down their internal silos and work together — across Merchandising, Marketing, IT, Finance, Store Operations — in order to deliver the cohesive brand experience today's digitally demanding shoppers are looking for. Every RIC18 session featured influential retail leaders sharing their insights with an audience of decision-makers across business roles. That's the key takeaway that RIC promises and delivers every year.

Adam Blair, Executive Editor: My biggest takeaway from RIC 2018 came during the Store Tours, specifically the Williams Sonoma flagship at the Shops at Columbus Circle. It was about all the elements, visible and hidden, that go into creating a really inviting retail experience. Williams Sonoma isn’t content to just show you great products. The store stimulates all your senses: taste, with a food or drink sample offered right at the entrance; smells that are literally curated for each season; touch (in our case, how to properly use a knife to chop vegetables, which apparently I’ve been doing incorrectly for decades); and sounds (such as those coming from the frequent cooking demonstrations in the back of the store). The planning involved in calibrating these stimuli, and executing on them on a daily basis, shows that there’s no such thing as a small detail in retail.

Marie Griffin, Managing Editor: To me, the best thing about RIC was the ability of the speakers and panelists to take concepts we write about regularly and drive them home in new ways. Take personalization. As Ernan Roman, President of ERDM Corp., explained, consumers expect retailers to know them from their buying habits and other behaviors, and they are willing to trade data for more personalized experiences — but they rarely get them. Even online-first retailers, most notably Amazon, haven’t evolved in this area. “Customers who viewed this item also viewed” and “Customers who bought this item also bought” seemed helpful in 2002, but they waste too much precious time in 2018. In contrast, Traci Inglis, President of JustFab and Shoedazzle (divisions of the TechStyle Fashion Group) said that her company produces emails that are unique to each of its 2.5 million members based on their clicks, purchases and fashion preference info they provide on their first site visit. With AI and machine learning, one-to-one marketing at scale in possible, and consumers are coming to expect it. If you’re not there — or not willing to partner with a company that can get you there rapidly — you are more vulnerable than you probably realize.

Glenn Taylor, Senior Editor: The theme that stood out to me throughout RIC was the need for retailers to continue to seek out ways to adapt. Look no further than the story of 1-800-Flowers.com. Once most known for its toll-free phone number and delivery service, the retailer always has managed to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to disruption within the industry. 1-800-Flowers.com actually partnered with AOL in 1994 to have a presence on the platform. This was well before the Internet blew up in the late 1990s, giving the company one of the first mainstream e-Commerce presences. More than a decade later, the retailer began making investments in mobile even as most companies were losing money on the channel. CEO Chris McCann noted during his closing keynote that even though the company took a near-term hit, it was much more prepared for the proliferation of mobile shopping than just about everyone else: more than half of 1-800-Flowers.com consumers purchase on mobile devices today. Retailers can definitely take notes from what the leaders are doing to meet the consumer where they shop, but it’s going to take an investment and a risk.

With the 2018 Retail Innovation Conference less than three weeks away, retailers from all over the country (and globe) will have the opportunity to hear how the industry’s most disruptive brands and innovative thinkers are raising the bar for all merchants.

The event’s keynote speeches, breakout sessions and hands-on workshops will give attendees insights, best practices and ideas that they can apply to their own retail business.

The RTP team reveals which sessions and speakers they are anticipating the most.

Debbie Hauss, Editor-in-Chief: I need to address this question on a high level. #RIC18 is offering a phenomenal two days of content that will inspire and motivate retailers to collaborate across business units and reach out to industry peers, colleagues and experts, to think differently in order to bring positive change to their organizations. What I look forward to most is enabling retailers to learn from each other in a collegial and productive environment. This year we are honored to have many C-level executives on the stage — including Rafeh Masood, Chief Digital Officer of BJ's Wholesale Club, Miki Berardelli, CEO of KIDBOX, and Romain Liot, COO of Adore Me. We'll hear from the 2018 Retail Innovator Award winners as well throughout the event. Pack up your laptops and plan to join #RIC18 for all three days, including the pre-show Store Tours on Monday, April 30. 

Adam Blair, Executive Editor: I’m looking forward to Walmart CIO Clay Johnson’s keynote presentation, Digital Transformation: Empowering Walmart Associates With Consumer-Grade Technology. I’ve been covering this industry long enough to remember just how dramatic the mindset shift was when we all realized that consumers’ technology had leapfrogged far ahead of retailer-supplied technology. Now, of course, it’s retailers’ technology that strives to be consumer-grade. It’s commonplace today to say customers come into stores with far more information about products, prices and promotions than in-store associates, but that’s a relatively recent inversion of the classic retailer-customer relationship. I’m also interested to hear how Walmart is dealing with this challenge/opportunity. The company certainly has its faults, but it’s shown a consistent desire to take risks and stay on the cutting edge of technological change — behavior that is not always typical of an enormous corporation.

Marie Griffin, Managing Editor: I can't settle on just one session! Instead, I'll point out some of the speakers that stand out to me. Danielle DiMaiolo Rendini, Senior Director of Product Management for Barneys New York, will tell us how the 95-year-old retailer continues to thrive through unique in-store events, associate empowerment and personalized customer service (Tuesday, May 1 at 12:45 pm). Jeff Gamsey, VP of Private Brands for warehouse club disruptor Boxed.com, will outline how the proprietary Prince & Spring line helped Boxed.com become a $100M+ business in just three years (Tuesday at 2:20 pm). Aaron Nilsson, Manager of Digital Experience for 128-year-old Carhartt, will talk about the brand’s move to real-time personalization and the organizational shift that went along with it (Tuesday at 3:25 pm). And Erica Yamamoto, Director of Lifecycle Marketing & Customer Experience for zulily, will let us know how the e-Commerce enterprise melded data-driven personalization with the entertainment of discovery-based shopping to get 91% of shoppers to make a repeat purchase (Wednesday, May 2 at 3:00 pm).

Glenn Taylor, Senior Editor: While he doesn’t represent a specific retailer, shopper behaviouralist Ken Hughes is sure to deliver an exceptional blueprint for handling retail’s youngest clientele, Gen Z. With conversational commerce becoming such a large part of the retail upheaval, I’m very interested in hearing Hughes discuss the steps retailers must take to move away from marketing as we know it and build further on true customer conversations. As retailers seek the elusive goal of becoming entirely customer-centric, attendees will surely benefit from Hughes’ analysis of shopper expectations. This isn’t a shot in the dark assumption either. Two years ago, Hughes spoke at #RIC16 identifying four principles retailers need to follow in order to effectively reach the disruptive “Blue Dot” consumers — Personalization, Authenticity, Contextual and Experiential (PACE) — and the keynote was a fan favorite. Hughes captivated audiences in 2016 with his touches of humor and emotion all at once, and I have no doubt that he’ll be able to do the same at #RIC18.

Klaudia Tirico, Features Editor: The Retail Innovation Conference is always such a great time and learning experience. I personally always look forward to the Store Tours, which will kick off the event this year at the Shops at Columbus Circle. Attendees will have an opportunity to learn how retailers deliver unique marketing strategies and leverage innovative technologies to make the in-store experience a memorable one for every consumer. This year, the tour will visit Amazon Books, Sugarfina, TUMI, New York Running Company by JackRabbit and Williams Sonoma. Plus, an executive from each retailer will host their respective visit. In addition to the Store Tours, I’m also looking forward to the panel titled: Influencing With Influencers: How To Win At Retail’s Hottest Marketing Trend. The session will feature influencer marketing experts such as Kamiu Lee of Activate and Patricia Hong of A.T. Kearney, as well as retail execs from Lovesac, Astral Heathy & Beauty and Love Your Melon, who will share best practices, trends, faux-pas to avoid and predictions for the future of influencer marketing. 

Bryan Wassel, Associate Editor: My pick for the must-see presentation is Digital Strategies Session: Best Practices for Building A Private Brand In The Digital Era, presented by Jeff Gamsey, VP of Private Brands at Boxed.com, Miki Berardelli, CEO at KIDBOX and Kelly Sayre, Retail/CPG Analyst at IHL Group. Private labels are still sales drivers online, as seen by the success of Brandless, but getting these brands noticed by consumers is a completely different game when you can’t take advantage of shelving and store displays to draw the customers’ eye. Price is the single most important factor for 61% of e-Commerce shoppers, and making sure a retailer’s products stand out among the endless options available across the web can improve both sales and loyalty.