A lot has happened in the first half of 2025, so for to kick off the new season of the Retail Remix podcast, we decided to bring in one of the most broad-reaching, analytical retail minds in the business — Melissa Minkow, Global Director of Retail Strategy at CI&T. We asked her about everything from tariffs and recent bankruptcies to resale, retail media and agentic AI, and as you can imagine she had ample insights to share on all of it.
Here we share a small segment of that interview, focused on tariff and supply chain strategies to mitigate the uncertainty that has clouded this year, but you can listen to the whole episode at the bottom of this article or wherever you get your podcasts, anytime.
Retail Remix: What has been most striking to you about all the recent push and pull with tariffs and how you’ve seen retailers responding?
Melissa Minkow: During COVID consumers kind of became supply chain experts, and now consumers are kind of becoming armchair economists — I don’t think anyone knew what a tariff meant until the past couple of months other than us.
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But what’s been most surprising about all of this is just how destabilizing it’s been for the retail industry. You never really know how resilient a category is until it experiences some turmoil and you see how it handles that, how it bounces back. How many retailers have made statements and then gone back on them in terms of the degree to which they feel they’ll be impacted by these tariffs, or these non-tariffs, or whatever happens? There’s just been so much change on a daily basis from these retailers in their stances and what they’re saying, and I think it shows you who was prepared for something like this from the jump versus who wasn’t.
I just don’t think it’s healthy or normal for an industry to ever be in such a constant state of limbo. And you have all these retailers kind of holding their breath, awaiting the news every day. We as an industry should never be in that position. We should be so resilient that when this type of news comes in and it changes on the daily, we’re prepared for it.
Retail Remix: To be fair, the actual reality of what the tariffs are going to be is also changing. And I think more than the tariffs themselves, it’s the uncertainty around it that has been so destabilizing so far, because a lot of it hasn’t even taken effect. How do you think retailers could have prepared for something like this, especially because some of it is so unpredictable?
Minkow: Yeah, that’s a great point. How they could have prepared is still how they can prepare now. I definitely don’t think it’s too late, but I do think retailers have been so far navigating this all wrong.
You hear a lot of retailers saying, in a reactive way, “We’re trying to overhaul our supply chains, we’re trying to reevaluate, we’re trying to revisit and see where we can bring it back domestically so that we’re avoiding as much of these tariffs as possible,” and I don’t think that should be the response. I think that whatever ends up happening, changing the supply chain so dramatically is not an overnight occurrence. It’s not something you can do even within the next four years and, to be honest, I don’t see these tariffs lasting more than four years, so to overhaul your whole supply chain for something so temporary that is not going to benefit your business in the long term [doesn’t seem like the way to go.]
There’s a reason that the supply chains have been established the way they have, and these networks have become so international and reliant upon countries such as China that I think to question all of that, to flip the tables completely for short-term margin protection, is just the wrong way to do it.
Instead, what retailers really need to be doing is focusing on cost reductions where they can, getting the technology that supports their pricing strategies absolutely flawless and their demand forecasting pristine. And I think those are things that they should have been doing all along.
They probably felt previously that some of those priorities didn’t have to be priorities, because they were building out these supply chains and these extensive networks and they were becoming really efficient in those ways. Also they relied upon what they were achieving and as a result didn’t focus on data modernization as much as they could have, or they didn’t focus on things like traceability with products. You know, RFID got introduced so long ago and then it just kind of screeched to a halt. This is a prime time for retailers to embrace RFID once again and really be digitizing your supply chain and getting all that data collected so you can make real-time decisions.
So how retailers should have been prepared for it in the past is how they should now mobilize to prepare for it. Instead of trying to completely disrupt and change their supply chain, just tighten everything else in the meantime so you become extremely resilient. If you have all this data at your fingertips, you can make real-time decisions better, but you’re not necessarily changing all your vendors.
Retail Remix: Give us just a quick peek into the rest of the year. Who or what are you going to be keeping an eye on? What topics do you think are going to dominate? Where are you looking now in the second half of 2025?
Minkow: I’m an eternal optimist, so I think the one word I would use for the next half of 2025 is “pragmatism.” I do not think this is a time for retailers to get crazy and risky. I think it’s a time to think about innovation in the sense of being practical, being pragmatic, becoming resilient.
That’s not to say stop investing. I think a lot of retailers maybe heard “tariffs” and started to want to pull back their budgets — not [a good idea] at all. The government is going to do what the government is going to do. The economy is going to do what the economy is going to do. And I think you still have to be smart and be resilient and prepare and plan and get your house in order. So pragmatism and smart investing is really important for retailers in the back half of the year. Look for cost reductions wherever possible. Use technology to help you find those.
I’m also really excited about the second look that resale is getting. I think Ebay has been doing some really clever stuff, they’ve been really clever at making resale trendy and fun. So I’m excited to see what more sustainable brands and retailers do because this is a chance for consumers to care about sustainability in a different way. There’s actually a reason to motivate them.
RFID, traceability data, all that needs to be paid attention to again. And lastly, I think subscription and member services like Costco, for example — they’ve been doing really well right now. It’s a great way to accurately help you predict demand, to maintain customer loyalty, to save the customers some money. It kind of works really well with agentic AI too. You can just kind of put purchasing on autopilot.
There’s so much more where that came from! Listen to the whole episode with Melissa — where she also delves into the most exciting experiential retail outings of the year so far, and why she thinks retail media might be the answer to the impulse purchase gap online — here or wherever you get your podcasts.
