Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / The AI Adoption Gap: What Brands Are Actually Struggling With Right Now

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The AI Adoption Gap: What Brands Are Actually Struggling With Right Now · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

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  Shop Talk is one of the largest commerce conferences in the world, bringing together thousands of founders, operators, and retail leaders who are actively building what comes next.
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  Today's episode comes to you from the floor of Shop Talk Spring 2026 in Las Vegas, where I caught up with some of the sharpest operators and founders in retail.
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  Let's get into it.
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  All right, Dave Gulas back here at Shop Talk with Elena Shannon from Archive Digital.
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  Hey, Elena.
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  Hi.
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  How's it going?
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  It's going great.
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  Yes.
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  So you've been here at Shop Talk for three doc.
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  Three days now.
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  Three days now.
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  Going hard.
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  Going hard.
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  So hard you, like, practically lost my voice.
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  Yeah, didn't want to do the interview, but I convinced you.
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  You did.
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  You convinced me.
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  So here we are.
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  So.
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  So let's talk about Shop Talk.
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  You have an agency that helps enterprise fashion brands implement commerce tools, Correct?
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  Commerce platforms, not commerce tools.
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  Not to be confused with commerce tools, the platform platforms.
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  Okay, so why is it important for a company like yours to be at Shop Talk?
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  So I.
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  This is actually my seventh shop talk.
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  So I've come here since 2018 and I've been on, you know, I've always been on the agency side of the ecosystem, but we come because it's one important to be in front of our clients and potential clients, but
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  also it's really important for partnerships.
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  So I personally partner with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, so Salesforce's commerce platform, and then scale commerce engine, which is a newer e commerce platform that is very interesting.
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  And one to watch.
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  But so much of what we do is about being with our partners and being in front of our partners and growing those partnerships so that we can bring our solutions to clients.
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  Okay.
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  And so as we mentioned earlier, you've been on the agency side for a while.
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  You've been through two massive exits before you went on your own.
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  Been doing it about a year.
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  So even in the last year, Right.
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  We've seen wild advancements in AI and how is that, how that has impacted retail?
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  I mean, what.
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  So how do you see it from your standpoint where.
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  Where the industry is heading?
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  Yeah, it's really, really interesting.
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  So I might have a little bit of a controversial take, so bear with me.
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  I personally believe as things get more AI, first we have to become more human.
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  Like, we can't you lose our humanness.
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  So I always say, on the agency side, I'm in the services business.
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  Like, we are a service provider.
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  We have to provide good customer service in everything we do.
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  And that starts with me as the founder, the people I'm bringing onto my team the people that are interacting with our clients every day.
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  We might be enabled by AI, which is great, but we cannot lose that human touch.
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  So the agency side, the way we're thinking about it is how do we develop faster, how do we bring on more senior resources that are really true technical experts that are enabled by AI to go faster and further.
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  But the flip side of that is, and this is the controversial part is there's so much hype about AI, but so many of the brands that we work with and that we see are still just doing the basics.
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  So it feels like the void is between what's being talked about and what's actually being done is still very large.
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  Love that take.
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  Right.
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  First of all, the human.
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  So enabled by AI.
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  Right.
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  Because there's this, I'll call it a myth.
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  That'll be my hot take.
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  Okay.
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  AI is going to take all the jobs and no one's going to have a job anymore.
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  Which really, when you come to a show like this, it sounds ridiculous because all everybody's talking about so many people, and all it's doing is evolving and opening up new possibilities for more things to take place, more business,
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  more companies.
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  Yes.
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  So true.
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  Yeah.
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  Right.
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  So there's not going to be any lack of.
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  And you need people, you need confident people.
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  Yeah.
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  And that's.
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  And that's my whole thing.
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  Like I'm very big on the, you know, personal touch, social emotional intelligence.
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  I came up through sales, so I am just very on that side of things.
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  I'm more of a sales led founder than a technical founder.
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  So I just think the social emotional intelligence is like, AI is never going to be us on that.
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  Like we have to bring that to the business that we run, that we build.
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  Like that's never going away.
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  And I think if you can do those things, like you're always going to have a job.
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  I love that.
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  I love that.
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  Okay, so if enterprise fashion brands are out here listening to this retail and.
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  Fashion, but all retail.
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  All retail.
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  Okay.
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  And why should they work with Archive?
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  Original female founded, founder led deep, deep enterprise experience across most commerce platforms.
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  But also because I feel very strongly about raising the next generation of leaders in E commerce.
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  Personally, with women, there's a lot of women exiting corporate right now.
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  That's a whole kind of separate conversation.
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  But I'm also seeing that there's a lot more female decision makers at brands too.
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  And when we talk about retail and shop talk in this industry, women make 76% of purchasing decisions in households across America.
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  And we are not serving that demographic.
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  Oh, trust me, you don't have to tell the men that.
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  Who drives the buying decisions?
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  Yes, it's our, it's the women of the household for sure.
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  So I feel very strongly about being one of the only female founded enterprise e commerce agencies in the ecosystem.
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  Okay, love that.
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  And Helena, if people want to get in touch and learn more, how can.
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  They reach out to you?
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  Helena Shannon on LinkedIn archivedigital helenaarchivedigital.com and that's a R K H I V.
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  E digital.com okay, Alaina, thanks so much.
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  Thank you.
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  All right.
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  All right.
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  Dave Gulas back here at Shop Talk.
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  I'm with C.J.
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  Pinkham from CJ PC.
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  Hey, C.J.
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  Hey, how are you?
• 5:46
  Fantastic.
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  Fantastic.
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  Okay, so we're here at Shop Talk and AI is everywhere.
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  It's everything, it's, that's all anyone is talking about.
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  And cj, your company is also involved.
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  In AI but in a very different way.
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  So it's interesting.
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  So beyond fulfillment, our audience is all entrepreneurs, small business owners, founders, that type of thing.
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  So can you just talk to the audience about what your company does?
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  Absolutely.
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  So CJPC serves really two very distinct audiences.
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  The traditional larger company side, we work with them, them to audit their tech stacks and help their employees embrace it.
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  We think of AI as employee and people for it.
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  Right.
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  We don't want people to get a lot of clients.
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  So how can we help them use it, adopt it?
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  And then part that really makes my heart sing is the small business side.
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  Right.
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  I really want our small businesses across this country to compete and thrive against the big guys.
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  So how can we help advise them as to what are all the things out there, how can they use them?
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  How can they identify what's right for their business so that they can get rid of the busy work, make sure their employees know what they can get done and focus on selling and growing.
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  We don't want them to be overshadowed or left behind.
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  Okay.
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  And so, you know, AI is really burst on the scene about three years ago now at this point.
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  And it's certainly evolved fast over the past few years.
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  But you're in the industry and you, you work in this every day.
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  How is the, the average small business owner doing in terms of implementing and using AI?
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  Yeah, that's a really great question.
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  And I think it's just, it's all over the map.
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  So I'm going to give you a couple of really good examples.
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  I have somebody who, she likes to joke that she'll Take out your liver with her eyes closed.
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  Absolutely brilliant.
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  She can't do her medical notes electronically, not even a little bit.
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  She's absolutely lost.
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  So she's kind of at the far end of the spectrum.
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  Right.
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  She's a brilliant surgeon, but technology is just born to her.
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  And she's in her early 30s.
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  You think she'd do better than that.
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  Right.
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  And then you have companies who you've got like the grandpa who's owned the pizza shop for all he's out there on Facebook.
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  Also, it's been Tinder, and he's using all the things.
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  He's using ChatGPT to figure out how to better improve his bio so he can get the ladies.
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  Like, it's really.
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  It's really all over the map.
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  But what I think is happening is there is this perception of, it's scary, I don't know how to use it.
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  And what I'm hearing a lot when I talk to small businesses owners is there's this real fear among your employees that if my boss, my manager starts asking me to do this, am I doing this?
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  And I'm going to be out of the jobs.
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  And so we really try to help them get past that.
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  Yeah.
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  And so it's funny, I hear that just in conversations with people just randomly, where maybe they're not using AI or they're not all the way up on it and they think, oh, AI is going to take all the
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  jobs.
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  And it seems nothing could be further from the truth.
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  When you look at.
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  Even the people I know that are.
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  Really sprinting fast with AI now seem to be busier than ever because it's unlocking this whole, whole new level of productivity and what's possible and what else they can do.
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  So for the people that think that AI is coming for all the jobs, what would your message to them be?
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  I would actually tell you to lean in.
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  You're not wrong.
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  Right.
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  I.
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  I don't want people to be scared, but there are definitely companies who make decisions, decisions based on the bottom line and think, ooh, AI might help save money.
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  The companies that I am seeing succeeding and absolutely crushing it are the ones that lean in hard and get their employees to also lean in.
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  Because what they realize is that when they can free up the busy work from their staff, they actually give them time to think more, to innovate, to create new things that drive their business forward, and they're far more
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  successful.
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  So what I say is, if someone's coming to you and you have an opportunity, opportunity, embrace it, learn it, and Become the person who is the expert, because you are going to be valued and you're going to find
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  ways to demonstrate value and really just find some fun again.
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  Yeah, absolutely.
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  Love that.
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  Okay, and so let's talk about Shop Talk here for a minute.
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  Why is it so important, particularly if you're in retail or even in the AI business, serving businesses like you are, why is it so important to come to an event like Shop?
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  First and foremost the people.
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  Right.
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  I don't think I ever would have met you anywhere else.
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  So you're always going to meet somebody different than you, someone with a different experience, different knowledge, and you can just learn an incredible amount.
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  Also, there's just a wealth of new information and things.
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  I'm a lifelong learner.
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  I never want to stop learning.
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  It's Vegas, so there's always something fun.
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  But what I would say is if you get the chance to come Shop Talk, definitely come walk the floor and pick people that you would never think to talk to in a million years.
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  Even if they have nothing to do with what you do, chances are you're actually going to learn more from those people because they have a completely different perspective and they're not biased by what you know, they're not jaded
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  by what you've been exposed to in the industry.
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  So it's a really great way to just expand the way you're thinking.
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  Love that.
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  Okay.
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  And cj, if people want to learn more about your company and how they could potentially utilize your services, what's the best way people can reach out to you online?
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  Thank you.
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  So you can visit cjpc-AI.com we're also on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
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  I'd love to be on the other ones, but you guys don't want to see me there.
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  So.
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  Cj.cjpc.
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  Collective okay.
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  All right, we'll link all that in the show notes.
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  Perfectly.
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  Cj, thanks so much.
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  Thank you.
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  I appreciate it.
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  All right, Dave Gulas back here at Shop Talk, and I'm with John from Teen Voice.
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  Hey, John, how you doing?
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  Fantastic.
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  How about you?
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  Great.
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  So the name on your booth caught my eye.
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  Teen Voice.
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  So can you tell our listeners what your company does?
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  Yeah.
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  Teen Voice is a market research platform specifically focused on helping brands to understand how teens behave, how teens prefer to be spoken to, prefer to be recruited for any sort of campaign that they would be looking to do
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  for a product or service offering.
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  Yeah.
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  Talk about another language that we have to learn is how to speak to teenagers.
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  Right?
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  Well, if you're Trying to learn that language you're already kind of behind.
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  So really what we would advise with most Americans are things not to do.
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  Right.
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  You really don't want to try and speak the language in the same way as a team because it's going to come across as inauthentic.
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  We really try and keep the conversation with teens on a serious, but not too serious level.
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  Okay.
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  And so how does a company do that?
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  So we have a survey platform is a do it yourself tool that anybody could use to configure a short quantitative research program around specific demographics, specific geolocation, specific gender identity, however they want to configure the audience that they
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  want to get to.
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  We also have a managed service program where we will advise them on how to design questions, what types of questions to ask, depending on what their goals are, what they're trying to learn about the teen consumer.
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  Okay.
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  And how big is the teen consumer market?
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  So depends on how you're looking at that.
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  If you're looking at the money teens spend on their own versus the money that they influence in their household, you know, our internal Numbers show over 52% of consumer spending in the US is directly influenced by teens.
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  And that.
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  Number in the.
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  In the trillions of dollars that that are spent every year either on teens, by teens, or at the direction of teens.
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  Wow.
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  That's massive.
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  Bigger than I would have thought.
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  Yeah.
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  Okay.
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  And people want to learn more about your company and how they could potentially work with you.
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  What's the best way people can get in touch?
• 13:14
  Yeah, teamvoice.com go there.
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  There's a talk to sales form you can fill out.
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  Reach anybody on.
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  On our team.
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  We've been at this for about a year and a half.
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  We've learned a lot in that time.
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  And, you know, still have a long way to go to help educate brands and educate ourselves on how to crack the code with teens.
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  And one more question.
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  Why is it so important to come to an event like Shop Talk?
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  Yeah, Shop Talk is interesting because the range of businesses here go from earlier stage.
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  Startups like Team Voice and a few that are surrounding us here in this Spark innovation hub.
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  And the biggest brands in the world are here.
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  And so you get a good cross section of the retail landscape from a producer standpoint, from a deliverable delivery standpoint, and kind of the full gamut of everything retail.
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  Okay.
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  Love it here.
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  All right, John, thanks so much.
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  You got it.
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  Thanks for talking.
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  All right.
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  Back here at Shop Talk, I'm with Stephen from the Food Channel.
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  Hey, Stephen, how are You?
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  Fantastic.
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  How about you?
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  No, I can't complain.
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  Okay, so the Food Channel just launched today, is that right?
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  Well, officially, we have announced our partnership with the Los Angeles Times.
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  The Food Channel was acquired by Amaze, which is a creator commerce platform of 14 million creators.
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  They're the storefront for all the creators.
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  They bought the Food Channel in fall, and then we put together a relaunch.
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  Seeing is our new brand.
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  And we partner with the Los Angeles Times because they're one of the most credible sources for food content in the world.
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  And we are going to market, going to brands and saying, how can we help solve your problems using food content and creators?
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  And who doesn't love food?
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  Everyone.
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  You know why we have to eat it.
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  Yeah.
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  And speaking of food, I mean, you know, I go to a lot of trade shows.
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  I'm telling you, the food here is fantastic.
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  It's not bad.
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  Yeah, it's not bad.
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  I mean, it's actually really good.
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  All right, so this is a really neat concept and how it all came together.
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  So why is this what you're offering?
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  Why is this gonna be different than the typical tools that are that are out there for creators?
• 15:23
  A lot of times brands go to creators and they say, hey, I wanna solve my problem using your audience.
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  But we're gonna go to a brand and say, we wanna solve your problem, create a format, and then invite creators to help us be a part of the solution.
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  Not relying on a creator to do something with their audience directly, we're gonna basically aggregate their audience plus the LA Times audience, audience, put it on a very innovative new platform across all mediums and solve the problem for
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  everyone at exactly where it counts.
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  Whether it's a restaurant driving foot traffic or people buying products in store for retail, all that's going to be part of that.
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  Okay, all right.
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  And why is it so important for you to be at an event like Shop Talk when you launch?
• 16:08
  Shop Talk is an interesting event because people are just walking around interested in how do we see what's coming next, but also, like, they're walking around with a lot of problems.
• 16:19
  To be honest, a lot of people don't know what to do with connecting with humans and driving commerce status.
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  So there's a lot of opportunity to listen to brands understand specifically what they're looking to achieve.
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  And for us, it's very easy because we're talking about food, and food is very important.
• 16:37
  Today's day and age, it's one of the few things in the world that everyone wants to invest in because it's Very safe, not political.
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  You know, it's universal.
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  You like food, I like food.
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  You know, I don't care how, where you land in the political spectrum.
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  We all like food brand.
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  It's a very nice place to.
• 16:57
  I mean, it's fun to be able to put together stuff like that.
• 17:02
  Okay, all right.
• 17:03
  And if people want to learn more and get involved, be a creator or a brand, what's the best way people can reach out?
• 17:08
  Take that QR code there.
• 17:09
  That would be really good.
• 17:10
  If you're a creator of a brand that, that goes to either one of those or they can go to the Food channel dot com.
• 17:19
  It's in the middle of a renovation, but yeah, that's what we're doing.
• 17:22
  And thanks for.
• 17:23
  Thanks for stopping by.
• 17:24
  Okay.
• 17:24
  All right.
• 17:25
  Thanks so much, Steven.
• 17:27
  All right.
• 17:27
  Dave Pool is here at Shop Talk and I am at the booth of Yacht here with Eli.
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  How's it going, Eli?
• 17:34
  Good.
• 17:34
  Good to see you.
• 17:35
  Welcome to the chaos Shop talk.
• 17:37
  Yes, chaos is probably an appropriate term.
• 17:39
  I mean, the floor is crazy.
• 17:41
  We just opened up so many people here.
• 17:44
  So tell us, why do you guys come to Shop Talk?
• 17:46
  Shop Talk is if you're in E commerce, specifically in Shopify world, there is no better conference in terms of the density of people that you want to talk to.
• 17:55
  I feel like I know more people here than my local coffee shop.
• 17:58
  Like everyone with brand side to SaaS side is here every year.
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  So there's no better place.
• 18:03
  If you want, you're an E comm as a brand or a tech vendor.
• 18:07
  Okay.
• 18:07
  This is the place to be.
• 18:08
  And I'm seeing already AI is everything, everything.
• 18:14
  So I mean, what's your take on how AI is really revolutionized E commerce to no class year?
• 18:21
  I think you're seeing like the kind of traditional AI layer where you just throw a chatgpt wrapper on top of something and throw it into all your tooling as bygone.
• 18:29
  I think that's last year already this year you're seeing a lot more agenda stuff.
• 18:33
  You're seeing brands, you're seeing vendors that are starting to think of, can I create agents to help you do the work?
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  Similar to what brands I think are doing with Claude with mcps and all that.
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  You're seeing a lot of lot more MCPS in general, brands that are opening up APIs, letting people kind of like query their data, etc.
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  Etc.
• 18:49
  But I think you're seeing, I mean, the buzzword.
• 18:51
  It's been the buzzword last year.
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  It's everywhere.
• 18:54
  And you can double click and see in each particular vendor how much AI is actually here.
• 18:59
  But it's, it's here, it's there.
• 19:00
  And for someone that's deep in this industry, how do you see this changing or growing E commerce like in the coming, coming years?
• 19:08
  I think the, the phase one was whatever you can do with team of 10, you can now do with of one.
• 19:14
  So it's helping brands get more profitable, which was always a problem in E comm.
• 19:17
  Especially over the last few years, you're seeing a massive adjustment in between the tariffs and cost of shipping and pack costs, you're seeing a massive adjustment in what brands can spend.