Eric Favel

⏰Walmart changed their requirements online 294 times last year alone. If you have 2,500 SKUs, that is 735,000 changes for only one of your retailers.... The in-store planogram changes 2-4 times a year in-store. These numbers showcase the gap in the pace of change from in-store to online. Now factor in the speed of agentic commerce and that gap is getting even wider. 🔍By the numbers (Source Salsify): Amazon changed their requirements 244 times last year Walmart 294 times (up ⬆️848% from 2020) The Home Depot 302 times (up ⬆️150% from 2020) Target 300 times (up ⬆️88% from 2020) 💥 This means that digital shelf managers had to add additional data or content for every single one of their SKUs. It could be a new data field like 'does this contain batteries' to a new standard for title characters. If you sold on Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot & Target with 1,000 SKUs in 2024, you would have made 1,140,000 changes last year alone!!!! 💥 The number of requirements and data fields that retailers and now LLMs will require will continue to exponentially grow as this industry focuses on hyper personalization for consumers. What does this mean for brands: ⚡️ The way you work needs to change! Speed and agility are not a nice to have anymore they are baseline. ⚡️ Slow processes and workflows will not work in this new era. Taking 200 days to create and approve content is not acceptable anymore when another brand can do it in 5 days. ⚡️ Product data is not and never will be a set it and forget it activity. Having a product experience management platform to support changing data needs is a must. ⚡️ The cost of falling behind gets higher every year. Every unmet requirements or missing piece of data pushes you lower in search and doesn't surface your brand to consumers. How to use this graphic? ✅ Share this graphic with your leadership teams so they understand the level of support needed to create accurate PDPs and help you advocate for more resources and technology ✅ Include this in conversations with your in-store teams to help educate them on the data and content needed for the digital shelf ✅ Begin to map out how AI can enable you to make these changes at scale ✅ Start having conversations about how to be a more cross functional cohesive organization that can tackle these changes This is about change in an ecosystem moving faster than legacy organizations were designed for. 👉 How will you setup your organization to compete at this pace? 📩 Do you like this graphic? Subscribe to the 🍪Snackable Commerce Newsletter🍫 for your monthly dose of visual clarity. #SnackableCommerce #digitalshelf #commerce #omnichannel

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Kroger Streamlines Portfolio: Shutters 60 Stores Amid Q1 Momentum 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 • Kroger will close approximately 60 underperforming stores over the next 18 months, with a $100 million impairment charge recorded in Q1 2025. • Q1 identical-store sales (excluding fuel) increased by 3.2% excluding adjustment items, contributing to a revised full‑year outlook of 2.25%–3.25% growth. • Operating profit stood at $1,322  million, with adjusted operating profit reaching $1,518 million; adjusted EPS was $1.49. • E-commerce sales surged +15%, while gross margin improved 23.0%, up 100 basis points from last year. • Kroger plans to reinvest savings from closures into elevating the customer experience, and will offer roles at other stores for displaced associates. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜𝘁 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀 ✅ Strategic Portfolio Optimization: Closing underperforming locations (≈60) demonstrates focus on operational efficiency and profitability. ✅ Accelerated Momentum: Strong Q1 performance—with +3.2% identical‑store sales and +15% digital growth—supports Kroger’s heightened full‑year guidance. ✅ Leveraging Digital and Private Label Strength: E‑commerce and margin gains suggest success from expanded online offerings and private‑label penetration. ✅ Customer-Centric Reinvestment: Redirecting closure savings into experience enhancements signals commitment to long-term growth and innovation. ✅ Workforce Support: Offering employees roles at other stores maintains morale and minimizes community impact. Progressive Grocer | https://lnkd.in/gZvdJKP3 #retail #supermarkets #Grocery #Ecommerce #PrivateLabel #Stores

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Here are some interesting stories from the world of retail for Wednesday, March 11: 🏬 Kohl's signaled improvement in its apparel category in the first quarter, but it warned of another year of declining sales overall. For Q4, total sales fell 3.9% and comparable sales were down by 2.8%. 👖 Fabletics is launching its first denim collection, signaling a shift in consumer preferences away from athleisure. The collection, priced between $79.95 and $174.95, will be available online and in select stores. 🤖 OpenAI has scaled back its plans to turn ChatGPT into a fully integrated shopping destination. The company will now abandon processing purchases inside the chatbot. 🧱 Lego has published its full-year 2025 results, with revenues rising 12% to DKr83.5bn ($12.9bn) and operating profit increasing 18% to DKr22bn, while consumer sales grew 16%. 🧴 Olaplex stock has plummeted nearly 95% since its 2021 IPO due to weakened demand, regulatory challenges, and a lawsuit alleging harmful ingredients. Olaplex is now focusing on product innovation. 🥩 Around 3,800 workers at JBS’s beef processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, plan to strike from March 16th, potentially disrupting production at one of the largest US beef facilities. 💰 Amazon has drawn about $126 billion of peak demand for its US bond sale, one of the largest ever for a corporate offering. The demand underscores how investor appetite for hyperscaler debt remains strong. 👔 Hugo Boss reported an annual operating profit of €391m, surpassing forecasts. It confirmed its 2026 outlook and plans to realign its brand and channels, focusing on high-growth categories. 🍧 Costco Canada has introduced a new dessert to its food court menu, the Caramel Brownie Sundae, expanding its lineup of sweet treats that already includes ice cream cones and various sundaes. 🍫 Shares in Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngli fell yesterday, after the company lowered its 2026 organic sales growth guidance to 4%–6%, down from its previous medium-term target of 6%–8%. 📱 Apple produced about 25% of its global iPhones in India in 2025, assembling around 55m devices, up 53% from 36m in 2024, as it accelerates efforts to reduce reliance on China and avoid US tariffs. 📦 Amazon’s e-commerce business summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting for a deep dive into a spate of outages, including incidents linked to AI coding tools. 🇬🇧 British consumer spending grew slowly in February as households grew more pessimistic about the outlook for the economy with the Middle East conflict raising concerns about a fresh ‌rise in inflation. 🚫 Perplexity AI must for now stop using its Comet web browser agent to make purchases on behalf of shoppers from Amazon's online marketplace, a court has ruled. 🛋️ The Brand House Collective COO, James Schisler, is resigning to pursue other opportunities. Schisler joined the company nine months ago. #retail #retailnews #economy #DailyRetailNews

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Strip away the interfaces and sales decks, and every retail media network runs on the same three subsystems: Identity → Measurement → Activation. Get any one wrong and the others collapse. Identity without hygiene? Garbage measurement. Measurement without standardization? Unprovable ROI. Activation without both? Wasted spend. Every failure is a plumbing failure. The pipes matter more than the platform. Stability comes from better systems, not louder sales decks. Identity, measurement, or activation: which one breaks first under scale?

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“The FTC reported it has received more than 16,000 comments from consumers and federal and state government agencies, consumer groups, and trade associations about subscription marketers’ practices. The number of complaints has risen steadily in the past five years, culminating in nearly 70 consumer complaints per day on average last year, up from 42 per day in 2021.” “Consumers also lose track of how many subscriptions they have and seriously underestimate how much they spend on all of them. A C+R Research study found consumers spend 2.5 times more on their subscriptions than they estimate – actual spending averaged $219 per month compared with an estimated $86 per month among the 1,000 consumers surveyed.” - Pamela Danziger

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𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴. 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵? Ulta Beauty just announced a pilot to launch dedicated wellness spaces across 4 US stores, a clear signal of where the category is heading. From a category POV, the consumer data doesn’t lie, this is absolutely the right direction. Wellness is no longer an adjacent to beauty. The growth proves it. From ingestible supplements to AI-driven wellness tech, demand keeps accelerating, and both brands and retailers need to evolve beyond traditional offers and shelve stocking. There’s also a clear influence from Asian beauty leaders, who have long transformed retailer flagships into more than transactional spaces. That said, based on what’s been released so far, the consumer experience still feels… flat. 🔺A dedicated area. 🔺 A central table for product testing. 🔺 Wellness advisors for education. All good for covering the basics, but not quite wow or delighted beyond the expected. The opportunity is bigger: 🔹Where is hyper-personalisation in-store? 🔹Where is the experience beyond product testing? 🔹 Where does wellness become something you feel, not just learn about? 🔹 How are consumers equipped to extend the experience at home? If wellness is truly about mind, body and long-term behaviour, then retail spaces should reflect that shift, moving from education hubs to experiential ecosystems What is very smart, though, is Ulta being clear that this is a pilot, designed to test, learn and evolve in real time. That openness to iteration might be the most valuable part of the move. Now the real question is how far traditional retailers are willing to push the experience. For more context, the Glossy piece breaks it down well 👇 https://lnkd.in/eHZP4p94

HELPING BRANDS UNLOCK PROFIT AND REDUCE EXCESS STOCK THROUGH SMARTER COMMERCIAL DECISIONS. Most brands don’t need another expensive consultant at arms-length. They need a heavy hitter who can jump into the engine room and drive. That’s why I’ve started The Exec Bench. We provide fractional expertise for brands that need senior leadership without the full-time overhead. Whether you’re scaling, restructuring, or in a total reset, we embed directly into your teams as: - Business Manager - Head of Product - Head of Merchandise - Head of Buying With 20+ years of experience leading Australia’s largest retailers through growth and turnarounds, I know how to reduce inventory stress and protect your margins. If that gap sounds familiar, let’s talk. 📧 vanessa@theexecbench.com.au #TheExecBench #FashionRetail #FractionalLeadership #RetailStrategy

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Store Closures Aren’t A Retail Apocalypse. They’re A Leadership Audit Everyone keeps saying 2026 is the year retail “finally breaks.” That’s lazy thinking. Closures aren’t happening because consumers vanished. They’re happening because tolerance for mediocrity did. Macy’s planning to exit roughly 150 underperforming locations by end of 2026. Walgreens continuing to unwind hundreds of pharmacies tied to expiring leases. Carter’s trimming about 100 stores across 2025–2026. Kroger closing around 60 locations for marginal but necessary margin repair. This isn’t panic. It’s overdue hygiene. USA Today, Jan 2026. Forbes, Dec 2025. Most of those stores were already dead on the P&L. We just kept them alive with excuses. I’ve sat in rooms where everyone knew the store network was broken but no one wanted to own the decision. Traffic erosion masked by promos. Labor flexed past reason. Inventory turns that never recovered. Online didn’t kill these stores. Indecision did. NRF reported in Nov 2025 that over 70% of retail executives now rank store productivity and omnichannel contribution ahead of raw store count. DigitalCommerce360, Oct 2025, shows DTC penetration continuing to climb while physical square footage declines. Those curves aren’t crossing by accident. A store today earns its keep three ways or it doesn’t earn it at all: Profit contribution Customer acquisition Fulfillment leverage If it fails all three, it’s not strategy to keep it open. It’s avoidance. The mirror moment most leaders won’t admit 💵 If you wouldn’t greenlight that store today with fresh capital, you shouldn’t be defending it with legacy pride. Closures aren’t retreat. They’re a capital reallocation signal. Which stores in your fleet survive only because no one wants to say the quiet part out loud? If this hits close to home, you’re not alone. #Retail #Ecommerce #EcommerceNews #Leadership #Innovation #LeadershipMatters #RetailNews 📲 Follow me for more retail and e-commerce insights. More in the comments below.

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CPG brands don’t need more impressions — they need measurable outcomes. This case study with Chomps is a strong example of what happens when offers are deployed at the moment of purchase vs. treated as a disconnected marketing lever. A few takeaways that stand out: • Performance-driven offers can materially increase sales velocity and incremental units — not just shift demand • Promotions aren’t just about discounting — they’re a lever to drive trial and steal share from competitors • The real unlock is closed-loop measurement: understanding exactly what behavior changed and why Across the Ibotta Performance Network, we consistently see this pattern — when offers are embedded natively into the shopping journey, they move from a cost center to a growth engine. The implication is bigger than one brand: Retail media, promotions, and loyalty are converging into a single system — one that connects impression → decision → transaction. That’s where the industry is heading.

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Big consumer brands are increasingly integrating retail media into their core strategies and banking on its ability to unify brand and commerce, even while measurement questions around true incremental impact remain unresolved. But here’s the tension: ✅ Investment is accelerating ✅ Retail networks are scaling ❓ Incrementality remains unclear ❓ Creative quality remains inconsistent In my experience, retail media creative is often the weakest link. It's templated, transactional, and disconnected from broader brand and content strategy. If retail media is becoming a core growth engine, then parallel evolution is required: - Content must become retailer-specific and algorithm-aware - SKU-level assets must be instrumented and continuously optimized - Measurement must move beyond ROAS to creative-level intelligence Otherwise, retail media becomes expensive paid shelf space. Curious how others are thinking about the creative + data side of retail media’s rise.

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Steal this Playbook! Kamanasish Kundu clearly outlines his playbook to deliver 50% growth in digital commerce. His pillars are mobile optimization (contributed half of the growth), personalization (1/3 of growth) and experiential commerce (the remaining growth). This is a must read!

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Simple fact: Retail Media that isn't fully integrated into your total retailer strategy will never be as successful as it could be. Set clear goals, continually monitor & optimize, and tie it to the bigger picture. Anyone can get you a good ROAS. Using Retail Media to drive your total business takes more partnership and integration. Hit me up with questions on this - I love to get nerdy on this stuff! 🤓

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I just analyzed the Top Product Growth Categories from RangeMe (past 30 days). If you’re a brand or a buyer, pay attention to these 3 shifts: 1️⃣ The Creative Explosion: Art supplies are nearly doubling. People want to make things again. 2️⃣ The Seasonal Pivot: Easter and Winter candy are seeing double-digit growth. Agility in seasonal inventory is the ultimate competitive advantage. 3️⃣ Professional Self-Care: Hair care appliances and massagers are leading HBC. The consumer is bringing the spa experience into their living room. Innovation is just another word for "solving a new consumer need." Right now, those needs are Creativity, Celebration, and Wellness. Which of these categories surprises you the most? #BusinessIntelligence #Trends2026 #Retail #GrowthMindset

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Retail Media Is Not a Media Channel. It’s a Business Strategy. Everyone’s treating retail media like another line item on a plan. It’s not. It’s a new profit center disguised as advertising. The smartest CMOs don’t just buy retail media, they negotiate the ecosystem. They use it to influence assortment, pricing, shopper loyalty, and trade budgets. If your retail media strategy lives in the media budget, you’re playing small. The real opportunity is when it lives inside your P&L conversation.

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Instacart just dropped strong Q2 results, stock is up. A few things that stand out to me:  📈 Ad revenue up 12% YoY. A Good signal for Q3.  🤝 40+ new retailers and they’re scaling off-platform with new/expanded partnerships (Pinterest and The Trade Desk). They're getting more retailers on board with same-as-in-store pricing  ✅ AI everywhere! Lots of investment, from advertiser tools to better personalization for shoppers. https://lnkd.in/gXiQerYt

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Walmart has held the top position in physical retail for a long time, and there is little indication that this will change anytime soon. Walmart’s leadership consistently focuses on the future, prioritizing innovations that save customers both time and money. Scale alone does not drive everyday shopping behavior. Opening an enormous retail space does not necessarily appeal to customers who are simply completing their weekly grocery or household runs. When customers enter a store, they want efficiency. They want to know where their merchandise is located and move through the store without feeling as though they are navigating a maze. If a shopper forgets an item, they are far less likely to go back for it if it requires a long, inconvenient walk. While large, open spaces work well in environments like malls—where customers expect to browse multiple stores—warehouse-sized retail buildings can feel intimidating, time-consuming, and impractical for routine shopping trips. As for Amazon and its potential entry into this type of physical retail space, it is difficult to predict long-term success. Initially, such a concept may attract attention as a novelty, but that excitement could fade over time. Additionally, the operational costs associated with running a massive facility are significant and will inevitably impact its sustainability. Ultimately, Walmart’s continued success stems from its understanding of everyday customers—how they shop, what they value, and how important convenience and simplicity are to the in-store experience.

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Most teams talk about FF&E as procurement. But FF&E isn’t really about buying furniture. It’s about where capital gets locked in, and what that means operationally. Every FF&E decision fixes more than design. It sets lead times, maintenance effort, substitution risk, guest experience, and how flexible a project can be when reality changes. When FF&E is treated like procurement, teams optimize for smooth approvals and clean schedules. But capital outcomes depend on early, grounded decisions made with real constraints in mind. At Furnico, we develop pre-defined, modular furniture systems for hotel rooms. Decisions are clarified upfront, not during procurement. Dimensions, modules, installation sequence, and alternatives are defined from the start. Single-source, ready to install systems reduce timelines, limit cost drift, and simplify execution. Furnico isn’t about offering more products. It’s about making hotel room furniture predictable and controllable. #FFE #CapitalRisk #HospitalityDesign #RealEstate #ProjectGovernance #Furnico

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National Retail Federation survival tips - for the upcoming 3 day tradeshow blitz. Though, these also likely work for most trade shows ... 1. No one cares what your shoes look like. So wear comfortable shoes that will easily and happily get you miles and miles of coverage. This is not the time to test out your new heels / pumps. Yes, I've had to go looking for band-aids and towels for bloody feet (not mine). The Javits Center is 3.3 million square feet. That is 137 Sprouts Farmers Market stores. 2. Get a battery for your phone, and turn your phone into "Low Power Mode". I prefer the Anker Innovations LTD batteries, including their PowerCore 10K. Large buildings act as Faraday cages, and your phone will spend all day telling the nearest cell tower "I'm here" - while draining your battery to zero. You'll need that phone at the end of the show day, when you are trying to get to dinner and cocktails. 3. Do not use the first coat check you find. Find your favorite vendor, flash a smile, and ask to store your coat in their booth. I tend to gravitate towards Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions or Accuvia Software Group or Washburn Computer Group or Brink’s Inc , but you may enjoy the company of someone else! Alternatively, go downstairs, where the lines are shorter. 4. The seating for lunch is atrocious. It will not ever get better, nor cheaper. Yes, you would think an entire conference full of retail tech could figure out the lines and payments better. They haven't. Don't complain. Just grab your coat and head downstairs and outside to the food trucks. They will only be there during a short window, so walk briskly. Once you've picked your food, huddle up with some brand new friends and talk shop - or no shop. 5. Any opportunity that you have to stand on raised / padded carpet, do so. Your body is unlikely prepared to be walking / standing on concrete for days straight. When you get back to your hotel, put your feet in an ice bath, to reduce the swelling, or likelihood of swelling, for 10 minutes. ... Stealing a page from David Weinand and his #NRF Survival Tips.

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So here is a skill in AI that will save you time. I recently build a series of prompts, context and QA files in Claude for a project to submit the St Charles Borromeo Cemetery as a National Historic Place for the Saint Charles DAR. This cemetery contains the founder of Chicago, founder of St Charles and 31 Revolutionary War veterans from the Battle of San Carlos in St Louis. Also shown below is a memorial for a wealthy farmer who fell off his mule because he drank too much and the donkey hit him in the head. This type of memorial is very rare and put up by his wife to warn others of the evils of drinking. ( I think I need to re think my bourbon collection!) During that exercise there were times when I needed to correct Claude; especially since AI tools are optimizing and can make overly optimistic claims. This application has now been endorsed by the city council of Saint Charles Missouri and is being reviewed by the State of Missouri Historical Commission before federal submission. The key skill is that I asked Claude to create a Skills.MD file to document all we learned. This same Skill is now applicable to any task where a item needs to be researched and forms filled out (like Grant writing for example). This is a pretty cool way to not lose the experience that the AI gained in one task and apply it to the next. This will also work in GPT Codex if that is what you prefer. I'm sure you have tasks that can be automated and where a Skills.MD file will help (Marketing emails, Content creation...) Contact me here or at www.gateway-commerce.com for help.

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