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.
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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.
Click to register to attend the Retail Innovation
Conference, held at Convene in
Manhattan from April 30 to May 2.
