In this episode of Retaili$tic, Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, previews the upcoming NextGen 2025 conference, highlighting its agenda and the retail context. With a focus on the evolving landscape of retail, real estate and consumer behavior, Weinswig touches on the integration of technology in retail strategies and emphasizes the importance of adapting to consumer needs and leveraging data for better decision-making. Listen now for insights on economic trends, the impacts of AI (artificial intelligence) and the challenges faced by retailers and landlords in the current market—and join Coresight Research at NextGen 2025 to participate in thought-leading discussion on these topics!
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 This Week in Research: New Reports and Data
02:30 Exploring the Coresight Research NextGen 2025 Conference Agenda and Key Themes
03:23 The Importance of Retail and Real Estate Integration
06:37 Challenges in Retail: Crime, Data and AI
09:52 Innovations in Retail Real Estate and Last-Mile Delivery
Register now for NextGen 2025: Retail, Real Estate & the New Consumer!
Welcome to Retaili$tic, the official podcast of Coresight Research for June 10th, 2025. This week, our CEO Deborah Weinswig joins us from Asia to discuss the upcoming Coresight Research conference: NextGen 2025, Retail, Real Estate and the New Consumer.
But before we get the details on this exciting event, let's check in with our Head of Editorial, Georgina Smith, in the London office to hear about some of the exciting research publishing this week on Coresight.com. Hi Georgina.
Hi, Philip. This week, alongside our data-driven weekly analysis of store openings and closures and consumer sentiment and shopping behaviour, we have a number of major reports publishing that listeners should look out for. First, what will demand and inventories look like ahead of a high stakes holiday season? We have just released our forward-looking analysis for the rest of 2025, outlining core economic dynamics that are set to reshape the retail sector. We discuss the qualities and strategies that will set retailers and brands apart and present 10 predictions for the remainder of the year.
From stagflation to private label to deal seeking, we offer critical insights on economic indicators, market trends and evolving consumer behaviour to help you get a step ahead. We will follow this report later in the week with our comprehensive outlook for US retail and the consumer economy, leveraging proprietary consumer data and analyzing metrics such as retail sales growth and inflation. We will also continue our coverage of the fluctuating tariff situation, offering our take on the impacts of tariffs on the back-to-school and end-of-year holiday seasons in the US.
Turning to the evolving world of retail technology, our new retail tech landscape will explore the latest trends in retail media and identify more than 50 emerging and disruptive tech companies that offer innovative retail media solutions. Plus, we will dive into the use cases and value of artificial intelligence in the beauty industry. AI is transforming the beauty industry from a trend-based reactive sector into a proactive sector.
We believe that the convergence of beauty technology, including AI and advanced data capabilities, is reshaping product innovation, manufacturing, marketing strategies, and loyalty building. In a new free deep dive sponsored by CEW, we explore the applications and benefits of AI across the beauty retail value chain, from innovation to personalization. Finally, don't miss the next Core Site Research Head-to-Head Report, Spotlighting Luxury Retail we will examine the performance and strategies of Kerring versus LVMH.
Thanks Georgina. Now let's head to Singapore to check in with Deborah.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Retaili$tic. We are very excited to be discussing our upcoming NextGen Conference. It is on June 23rd in New York City from 12:30 to 8pm. We will be hosting this in the amazing space at One Madison, which is IBM's latest and greatest; great acoustics, great space. We'll be starting off with lunch at 1230.
We're going to have several panels and keynotes and then we will conclude at about six o'clock with cocktails, hopefully outside if the weather's great and networking. So it should be a great event to get caught up with people you know and meet some that you don't. That week in New York we chose because there are so many events happening that week, we're hoping it's really easy for people to attend. I know it's a Monday, which is not how we would normally schedule these things. But once again, we really wanted to be able to enhance other people's events and make it easy for everybody to join us.
So I would say that one of the biggest differences for us versus past events is we are expanding beyond just retail and we're looking at retail and real estate. So we're like leaning into, we can call it unified commerce, but really the end to end. these days we see there's a huge amount of focus and of course it is growing faster on digital. But we, especially with the love of the data that we have on Gen Z, we do see that stores are incredibly important for them and we want to make sure that we do lean into that. So that is a key piece of this whole event.
We have some amazing speakers and friends like Billy Taubman, will be joining me in a fireside chat, which I'm really excited about. We have got some of the brand aggregators like Prosper, who will be there as well. We've got Ben Thompson joining us all the way from Australia, and he leads digital and transformation for Devour Group. We also have Baz from Antler, who's also traveling all the way from London to join us. And we've got just an overall, really, I would say a broad group.
And that's also, think, a difference than in the past where everybody pretty much had a retailer or brand only background. We've got Jillian who leads CX for Samsung. We have Millay who really is kind of an innovator at L'Oreal and many others. We're also leaning, I'd say, much more broadly across retail. beyond, we've definitely got fashion and luxury and beauty. I'd say beauty is probably one of the fastest growing areas of this conference, but we also are focusing on the drug store sector, et cetera. And that's also very exciting for us.
We've also got some of our long-term partners like FMI, NACDS, also Shop Talk, who's joining. And we have Christina Gustafson, who's recently at Retail Club. And so that's also quite exciting for us. So it's a great group. We hope that you can join us. And I think that some of the main areas of focus for us. We'll be looking at new ways to integrate between tech and retail and real estate and really building a lot of these partnerships.
During the pandemic, I think we saw some more challenging relationships, especially as retailers were closed and not bringing any revenue, but they still had to pay rent. I think that further dug into the challenges facing landlord and retailer relationships. I also think that organized retail crime In addition to some of the challenges during the pandemic has also further challenged those relationships. And they are really, really important, even especially in organized retail crime, where if we see kind of the landlords and the tenants work together, they really can have much better outcomes.
And, you know, we're also leaning into the whole focus on data and how important that is for everything happening now with AI, the ability to identify it, you know, what you can do with unstructured data and how you truly can be ready for what's next. We do know and rightfully so that retailers and brands are being cautious and careful at the same time when it comes to leaning into AI. And I think that this conference, the idea of it is let's see what can be done in the time that we have. in, mean, in 2025, so let's see kind of what can be done this year. What's realistic?
And we don't want people only sharing the good stories, right? We also want to know some of the challenges that people have faced. think that's what's exciting here too is for a lot of these companies to talk about what's worked and what hasn't and what they're excited about and what they're not excited about. And then even just kind of like who owns AI.
And so I think that's also a big focus on what's happening. so as we look ahead to 2026, which most of our clients are right now as they're building out their budgets and whatnot. We think that there's a lot more excitement around demand forecasting and the ability to do a better job of predicting inventory and inventory levels. And we also think that the interest in personalization, marketing, loyalty, that's also coming together in different way.
And we're absolutely seeing that as it relates to retail real estate. And so I think these companies are starting to look themselves more as platforms. And so as a platform, kind of like, what are some of the services that you can offer to your tenants, right? They're already paying for rent. And so, you know, some of these rent structures are starting to change, especially as we're seeing a lot of the anchors turn over. And I think that is giving the landlords a lot more opportunity to think differently about what lies ahead.
And, you know, we really want to encourage all of your questions as well. At this event, we will leave time for Q and A in a recession and there are a lot of topics that we're covering in a short period of time. And I would say one of the other areas that also is changing is really having our research at Coresight, much more a part of this event. And so we will be sharing some of our recent work, not only in a presentation style, but also as it relates to kind of the fundamentals for some of these events and that is going to be really interesting because we've got hot off the press data as it relates to the consumer.
So better understanding foot traffic, where they shop, why they shop, what kind of drives them into the physical world, how they kind of connect that back to their digital experience. And I will say right now we're getting a lot of questions on payments. And that's also quite interesting in terms of buy now, pay later and some of the concerns there and why those exist.
The other areas that we're seeing as challenges, would say payments, would say marketing, and it's all areas of marketing. And it's just because it's consuming a lot of dollars or a lot of SG &A, and it's really hurting margins. Retail media, right? That's kind of the other side of it. That's the positive. And I think data monetization, retailers as a service. Those are some of the topics that get me excited because I love to see what we can do to drive retailers' top lines, especially in a challenging environment.
And then this idea of how can retail real estate be used for last mile? And what are some of the ideas that some of these companies have around last mile delivery? It's interesting, I've been over in Asia for about two weeks. I was at NRF APAC and one of the big areas of focus was truly around some of the quick commerce aspects in India around like whether it was Big Basket or Swiggy and I that really just helped me start thinking about Last Mile, but as it relates to them all.
And then, you know, I was talking to some people from Europe and they were saying how Click and Collect is still a very big thing. And, you know, I just think in the U.S. we have a lot of, I don't know if it's really capital per se, human capital for sure on Last Mile delivery. And especially with some of the migration that's happened and this percentage of people who live in urban, suburban and rural, that's also continuing to evolve.
So, I think that the opportunity to also start to brand retail real estate centers and as mixed use continues to grow. this idea around, I always call it work, live, play, right? It was kind of, think what we had hoped to see at Hudson Yards. And we've seen a hybrid of that, but we haven't really seen the work part, right? We haven't really seen work, like coworking come into a lot of the malls. There is office, but I always thought when we saw the move of the Brookfield CEO to WeWork that we would see this. I assume that that was part of his thought process, but at least at this point, either the consumer doesn't want it, it doesn't make sense. It's not practical. It doesn't drive enough revenue.
And then we are seeing the gyms as a new tenant or as a used to be tenants, then weren't tenants and now are tenants again. So maybe we can call it, you know, kind of crossing the chasm or whatnot, but we are seeing a change in how much time people are spending in the mall, what they're using it for, right? Food courts are doing incredibly well and you know, they offer relatively less expensive. Oftentimes they have some healthy choices and we are seeing that really being a significant boost to the landlords in terms of rents.
And one other aspect that I think is also super interesting is around how the landlords, how the REITs are thinking about D2C and how they can help them really be the first stop for many of these retailers and brands.
Thanks Deborah, that is quite the agenda. NextGen 2025 is June 23rd in Manhattan and we would be delighted to see you there. For more details on the conference and all the ways Coresight Research supports the retail industry, visit us at coresight.com and follow Coresight Research on LinkedIn. Have a wonderful day and we'll see you next week.