Latest / The Retail Podcast / Five Things USA: Walmart’s AI Leap, Ulta’s Curated Marketplace, Target’s Woolrich Revival, Levi’s Expansion & Amazon’s AI Teammate — with Jill Dvorak (NRF)

Transcript

Five Things USA: Walmart’s AI Leap, Ulta’s Curated Marketplace, Target’s Woolrich Revival, Levi’s Expansion & Amazon’s AI Teammate — with Jill Dvorak (NRF) · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, welcome back to five things USA edition with my
• 0:04
  fabulous Co host Jill Doverick live from actually, it's New
• 0:08
  York, right I've got. I'm in Washington, DC today.
• 0:11
  I didn't have to travel today. Yes, yes.
• 0:14
  Or Alexandria, VA, but you know, it's all all nearby in this area
• 0:18
  of the country. I think, well, with Washington,
• 0:21
  DC, let's roll credits, as they say in the industry.
• 0:36
  Right, for those who've never tuned in before and it's your
• 0:39
  first time, maybe you're 1 of the 70,000 returning retail
• 0:44
  community that we have across all of our platforms.
• 0:47
  Welcome, welcome. My name's Alex.
• 0:49
  I help people who sell to retailers maintain their
• 0:52
  authority in retail and my fabulous Co host.
• 0:56
  Jill, great to be here. Thank you so much, Alex.
• 1:00
  Jill is the SVP of Content at NRF, although she wouldn't want
• 1:03
  to tell you that. She's far too modest and humble
• 1:06
  for that. We've got 5 fabulous stories and
• 1:10
  we're going to start with you, Joe, with Target.
• 1:13
  Awesome. Let's start.
• 1:14
  So Target, you know an incredible retail brand that has
• 1:18
  gone up and down this year and lots and lots of headlines, new
• 1:22
  CEO coming in at the end of February, Michael Fidelke.
• 1:25
  What we see here is Targets going back to some of their
• 1:27
  roots. A lot of you will probably
• 1:29
  remember these incredible fashion collabs that they've had
• 1:33
  through, you know, late 90s, early aughts and into the early
• 1:36
  teens, they kind of petered out and now they're back.
• 1:39
  And this is a really interesting one.
• 1:41
  Woolrich is a brand from the early 1800s, started in the US,
• 1:46
  manufactured in Pennsylvania. And with all the international
• 1:49
  turmoil going on, it's really interesting and honestly great
• 1:53
  to see that there was a really strong American brand.
• 1:57
  It's been around, you know, you do the math 200 plus almost 200
• 2:01
  years and they do a lot of housewares and woollen and woven
• 2:06
  perfect for the season perfect for kind of that cosy feeling
• 2:09
  and you know they're still manufacturing out of the US.
• 2:12
  So it's really, really nice to see their drops had in the past
• 2:16
  pulled their site down there was so much traffic.
• 2:19
  So we'll see come, you know, next week.
• 2:21
  Well, a couple days from now if they're ready to go with this
• 2:25
  one. I'll, I'll, I'll try and hunt
• 2:27
  out. We, we created a, you know, like
• 2:29
  our families do, like their yearly Christmas card and it's
• 2:33
  like a little git. Well, sorry, not everyone does
• 2:34
  it. We do a little GIF.
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  So one year, that little tart, that little red and black thing
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  I bought everyone in the family that shirt.
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  I'm gonna, I'm gonna hunt it out the the video and put it.
• 2:45
  Oh, I'm not. Even gonna be on your list.
• 2:47
  OK, Well, now you know where to buy it.
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  But I mean, this, it's a venerated brand.
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  It has a lot of history. I mean, even when I was a buyer
• 2:55
  at National Geographic, we worked with this company.
• 2:57
  It's it's known for quality. It's known for warmth.
• 3:00
  It's, you know, the materials are located.
• 3:03
  It's a great blurt. You're really excited to see it
• 3:06
  elevated with Target. Yeah. 100% I'm looking forward
• 3:09
  to that staying with well, fashion.
• 3:11
  On the other side, beauty, Ulta Beauty have just released a
• 3:15
  feature within its own app. And I don't know if this is a
• 3:18
  sign of things that come because you are giving so much of your
• 3:22
  data away as a retailer to, you know, the AI providers or the,
• 3:26
  or the social media platforms. And So what can you do to
• 3:30
  maintain that? Ulta's launching a whole bespoke
• 3:34
  curated within their app experience for their users that
• 3:38
  ultimately is limited to the number of marketplace partners
• 3:42
  that can join. So I think they've joined with
• 3:45
  a. 100 with miracle, yeah. And a miracle's the tech brand
• 3:49
  that's helping them achieve this.
• 3:51
  It's only as I was saying, it's invite only.
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  Keep standard PSI, a coherent platform that runs on the ground
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  so it arrives without turning the experience into like a, a
• 4:01
  bazaar or you know, what we've seen in some other online
• 4:05
  platforms where it's just hundreds of products that have
• 4:08
  nothing to do with what you're looking for.
• 4:10
  And it's curated. And you know, when you're buying
• 4:12
  beauty, that's what you want. You want something for you.
• 4:16
  So I think it's a fantastic move and you know, miracles seem to
• 4:20
  be going from strength to strength.
• 4:22
  Yes, laying with partnerships and AI in a sense Walmart, which
• 4:27
  both of us sort of picked this up, which was interesting there.
• 4:31
  And again, not a plug, but you know it.
• 4:33
  In someone's book who was written a couple of years, he
• 4:36
  spoke about talking about myself in the third person.
• 4:40
  This fantastic author named Alex.
• 4:43
  Tell me more. Well, basically what I was
• 4:45
  saying is the fracture of society will go in two parts.
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  We'll have the the rich and, and the people that are affluent
• 4:51
  still there. And then we'll have this massive
• 4:54
  cohort of workers, you know, people that potentially are
• 4:58
  struggling or, or have limitations.
• 5:00
  And then in the middle will be an AI agent.
• 5:02
  And in that agent that will you go there that will help you with
• 5:05
  your weekly menu. It will listen to what you want
• 5:09
  and give you, hey, Walmart have just released that.
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  So three years on, two years on from the book, Walmart have just
• 5:14
  partnered of open AI, which means that if you've got to
• 5:17
  prepare a meal for four and then, you know, two people are
• 5:21
  vegetarians, the API will call out to Walmart will bring that
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  menu to you. And then you can go off to your
• 5:27
  local Walmart and Sam's Club. So have to include Sam's Club.
• 5:31
  Yeah, Yeah. Which is, you know, a sign of
• 5:34
  the future and it's available today.
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  So again, Walmart, this is the type of innovation you would
• 5:40
  expect to see one of the massive tech vendors.
• 5:44
  Walmart's doing it right now for its customers, I think.
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  Phenomenal experience. I know it's it's funny every
• 5:50
  time they Walmart comes out with something like oh, that just
• 5:52
  makes so much sense. How did how did we not have
• 5:54
  that? That may and every time you know
• 5:56
  they are they are big enough to build in house right, as there's
• 5:59
  always the conversation that we have with all all of our members
• 6:03
  of build verse buy or rent almost never is the answer build
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  in house, but for Walmart. But look, they're also not
• 6:09
  recreating open AI. They are partnering with the one
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  that gets the biggest traffic right now.
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  So they're making a bet not only on their customers wanting this,
• 6:18
  they're making a bet on who their partner is.
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  So I it's it's amazing. I can't wait to try it.
• 6:22
  I can get launches in in a couple weeks, but I will be 1 of
• 6:26
  the first ones there and total side note for anyone listening.
• 6:29
  If you have not tried Walmart fashion, please do It is
• 6:33
  honestly Denise thinking. Was against the NRF, was in
• 6:37
  shape. Oh.
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  Yeah, she's coming this January. I just passed.
• 6:40
  Well, talk. She's phenomenal.
• 6:42
  What's the lady's name? Denise in Candela, she have
• 6:46
  truly revolutionised. It's not been overnight, it's a
• 6:48
  couple years but I told them yesterday I said I, I am a
• 6:51
  shopper now, not just because of the price, but because of the
• 6:54
  quality of the price. And you can test into trends,
• 6:57
  which you know, I'm getting on the older side of trying out
• 6:59
  trends. So you can try them for a
• 7:02
  reasonable amount of money, no amount of money.
• 7:04
  So anyway, but. The team right there.
• 7:08
  Team look. Oh, the no boundaries, the
• 7:10
  noble, the free assembly brands are unbelievable.
• 7:14
  Yeah. Staying with fashion and over to
• 7:16
  you. Levi's look at this.
• 7:18
  This was incredible news. Q3 sales numbers just came out
• 7:23
  last week or actually 2 days ago, and their net sales were up
• 7:26
  7%. Yeah, that is huge when you're
• 7:30
  thinking about the environment it's rising in in the US right
• 7:33
  now. Both nails are kind of comping
• 7:35
  if they're lucky right now going into Q4, you know, denim is
• 7:39
  somewhat of a seasonal business, but going into Q4, this really
• 7:43
  strong numbers. The headline of this article
• 7:46
  specifically said Levi's could double its US store count.
• 7:50
  Yes, they go yeah, double. They have.
• 7:52
  Let me find their number right they. 416 Levi locations in
• 7:56
  America. That's incredible.
• 7:58
  And you know, they're quite large internationally, but they
• 8:01
  also own the Docker the they just sold off the Dockers
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  business, but they own beyond, which is, you know, it's about
• 8:08
  14 of those stores much, much smaller.
• 8:10
  But Levis has wholly owned, they have outlet stores obviously
• 8:15
  online and they did an incredible collab earlier this
• 8:18
  spring, summer with none other than the Queen Beyoncé herself.
• 8:22
  So that obviously got them in the headlines.
• 8:26
  But Levi's is doing really well under Michelle Goss's, you know
• 8:30
  leadership and we just look for more comps were up by the way
• 8:34
  across for direct to consumer sales for Levi's across all
• 8:37
  regions, so Americas, Europe, Asia, et cetera.
• 8:40
  OK. Moving on to Amazon developing
• 8:44
  AI, what's all this about? Yeah, you know, I mean, just
• 8:48
  every day there's a new AI headline, of course.
• 8:50
  But Amazon now just rolled out what's called the Quick Suite.
• 8:55
  I think they're calling it quick for sure.
• 8:57
  It's an agentic AI solution that was developed by their AWS team.
• 9:01
  You know, this, it's for employees of Amazon, but it's
• 9:05
  also going to be really kind of AB to B play where you can
• 9:10
  connect into all of their other kind of APIs and it can help
• 9:15
  kind of speed things along. So it's more of the B to B play
• 9:18
  rather than direct to the consumer.
• 9:21
  But look, you know, Amazon and Walmart are constantly jockeying
• 9:25
  for, you know, the number one position.
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  And this is a way that Amazon is trying to make it easier for
• 9:32
  some of their sellers and some of their partners.
• 9:34
  That's fantastic. Just if you did want to read
• 9:37
  more about this, the Levi's story is on Retail Dive and the
• 9:43
  Amazon story is on CSA Business of Retail.
• 9:46
  Just in case you're watching this and you can't read who's
• 9:49
  got the article. So please feel free to go and,
• 9:52
  and, and read on their websites a little bit more about that.
• 9:56
  So we did a phenomenal job, Jill.
• 9:58
  We're getting so good at this. Under 10 minutes almost.
• 10:01
  I love it, I love it. And listeners, thank you so
• 10:04
  much. We hope we educated and
• 10:06
  entertained you. We certainly educated and
• 10:09
  entertained ourselves so. If we've done nothing else.
• 10:13
  And I like, as I love to say on that bombshell, Jill, until we
• 10:17
  meet again. Thank you so much.
• 10:19
  Thank you Alec, this is fun.