In this episode of Retaili$tic, we chat with the Coresight Research UK team about the current state of retail and preparations for the holiday season. We explore consumer sentiment, holiday shopping trends, and the impact of supply chain challenges on retail strategies. The conversation also highlights upcoming reports and innovations in retail, particularly the use of AI tools in enhancing productivity and creativity in the industry.
Video version of this episode is here
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00Introduction to Isla Meldon and Her Journey
03:31The Role of AI in Graphic Design
06:37Upcoming Reports and Innovations in Retail
10:28Introduction to Holiday Retail Trends
12:10Consumer Sentiment and Spending Expectations
14:44Supply Chain Dynamics and Product Availability
17:48CoreSight Research Insights and Reporting
Philip Moore (00:00)
Welcome to Retaili$tic, the official podcast of Coresight Research for September 30th, 2025. This week, Deborah and the team are in Las Vegas for the grocery shop conference, so we have an opportunity to chat with folks from our UK team.
First, we'll spend a few minutes and learn a little more about Isla Meldon, who pops on every week to tell us about upcoming reports.
Then we'll chat with John Mercer, the head of global research and data. So let's get started.
Isla Meldon (00:31)
It's not ominous.
Philip Moore(00:33)
Well, we are excited this week to introduce Isla Meldon. Isla is responsible for production at Coresight Research, and she joins us every week. You'll recognize her face and voice from the weekly update where she tells us about what is coming out. So Isla, how did you end up at Coresight?
Isla Meldon (00:59)
That's a good question. Well, it's quite a bit of a long story actually. So I started doing graphic design when I was about 16. ⁓ So about 12 years ago now, nearly 13 years ago. And I started doing it just small bits and pieces. And I worked for a company in Shrewsbury in my hometown of England.
and I got along quite well with the owner and he asked me if I could do some of his graphic design stuff and I said fantastic you know I've been doing this you know bits and pieces on Fiverr so I started working for him doing his graphic design stuff and yeah a career just snowballed for me so I yeah
Philip Moore (01:47)
That's exciting. So did you go straight to work? Did you go to university or have you just been working?
Isla Meldon (01:53)
No. Well, sort of. I did a year's university course in Leeds College of Art. So I have some claim of university experience, but not the full thing. Yeah. So I've been working since, yeah, working since I was 14, uh, in, and then doing graphic design since I was 16. So it's been a long time.
Philip Moore (02:04)
Sure. Interesting. OK, great.
And Shrewsbury, how far outside of London is Shrewsbury?
Isla Meldon (02:18)
gosh, about four hours, ⁓ which yeah, is quite far for anybody who lives in the UK. We don't really travel much, so four hours is quite a way. ⁓ Yeah, I used to live in London with my dad ⁓ when I was 10 or 11, so I spent some time in London, but yeah, Shrewsbury is a very small, quaint, Tudor sort of town. yeah, quite far removed from London.
Philip Moore (02:44)
What's it famous for?
Is it what Shrewsbury
famous for other than you?
Isla Meldon (02:50)
well, Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, so there you go.
Philip Moore (02:53)
There you go. That's exciting. Very good. Very good.
Okay. That's very interesting. in terms of organizing all of our production and getting the reports out, ⁓ they've kind of taken on that important role working with John, who we'll talk to here in a few minutes. do you get to enter your work remotely? ⁓
and John is in London. And so what's that working relationship like? How does that work?
Isla Meldon (03:31)
It's great. mean, John's fantastic and he's great to work with and work for. I mean, it's quite strange to work with somebody so closely that you've never met in person. So we don't have regular catch-ups or meet-ups, but we do catch up just in regards of what's going on in the week. But yeah, it's, mean, working with CoreSight team in general is fantastic. Everybody communicates well and...
it's enjoyable to talk to so that's what I've been here so long.
Philip Moore (04:02)
That's great.
That's, I didn't realize you had never met John in person. actually vacationed in England a couple of years ago and got the chance to sit down with him at a pub. So I've met John in person from across the Atlantic and you haven't met him. You're four hours by car. Okay.
Isla Meldon (04:17)
Oh wow, yeah, I'll have it.
I mean, yeah, it's a testament to how little the British like to travel, to be honest. My sister's an hour away and I visit her every three or four months.
Philip Moore (04:27)
Interesting.
That's interesting. Yeah, my only ⁓ understanding of travel in England is from ⁓ Jeremy Clarkson. What was his show? Jeremy Clarkson's show was Top Gear. Yeah. So that's fun. Very good. So what are you most excited about ⁓ in terms of
Isla Meldon (04:49)
top gear.
Philip Moore (05:01)
new AI tools and things that are coming on the scene that help you do your job.
Isla Meldon (05:09)
Sure, so for me particularly, I work a lot with Adobe tools. So I work a lot within generative AI and ⁓ fill tools, which are phenomenal in my job. for an example, say I've got an image and I need to add more to the side so it frames it better or increases more background or whatever. I can just select.
and I can right click and Generative Fill and it fills the picture perfectly. And it's quite frightening. It's as if the picture was just taken further back. And it makes my job so much easier. But yeah, I've been recently experimenting more with tools in Illustrator, which is more of a drawing sort of than an editing tool. So with that, you can just enter a prompt and say, want... ⁓
two people shaking hands and it will draw a little vector, a little image for you of two people shaking hands, which is just frightening. So it used to take me six or seven hours to draw something and now with a prompt, I can get something that is at least workable. Yeah, I mean, like organizationally wise, I often use ChatGPT, it's open quite regularly. And I just say, can you...
organise this alphabetically because I'm lazy and it takes two seconds to do. So I've got a big list of 200 companies and it just sorts it and I'm just like, ⁓ makes my life so much easier. Yeah.
Philip Moore (06:48)
Hmm.
That's
the increase in productivity that everybody is hoping to capitalize on as we move forward. So it's good to know that you're staying on top of that. And it clearly shows in the quality of output since you took over, the reports themselves have been much more visually appealing and organized and easier to understand. So congratulations on that.
Isla Meldon (07:12)
you
Thank you. Thank
you.
Philip Moore (07:22)
glad we're using the tools that we recommend to our clients. We're eating our own dog food, I guess is what they say. So I don't want to put you on the spot, but do you have, do you know what reports are coming out next week?
Isla Meldon (07:28)
Absolutely.
Do you know what? I do, one second. I have to cut around this a little bit. Yeah, yeah, next week we've got some grocery shop reports coming out as grocery shop occurs. So that's very exciting. I've been doing all of the innovator profiles this week. yeah, fantastic companies.
Philip Moore (08:00)
That's right.
So Debra hosts the Shark Reef competition at Grocery Shop where all the new disruptor companies ⁓ are introduced to the market. And it's a big competition. so we preview those companies. ⁓ And so is that available to anyone to read or is that only for our members?
Isla Meldon (08:32)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's available for anyone to read, the Innovator Profiles. ⁓ Got some really fantastic companies this year, and I'm looking forward to seeing who wins. ⁓ I love ⁓ every year doing the Innovator Profiles and just seeing what new companies are coming up with and how they're dealing with certain things. And I just think it's fascinating and it's, yeah, it's fantastic. It's so exciting to see.
Philip Moore (08:58)
So that's coming out and again, the team will be at grocery shops. So we'll have live reporting ⁓ similar to what we had for Shop Talk Fall from Chicago. So the team's out in Vegas for a grocery shop. And ⁓ what else is coming down the pike?
Isla Meldon (09:18)
Well, we've got StoreTracker Extra is coming out. So our StoreTracker reports are always quite popular. Really great look at what's going on in the US specifically. So that's coming out next week as well. And then we've got...
Philip Moore (09:36)
And that's kind of an early read on retail real estate. What stores are opening, what stores are closing.
Isla Meldon (09:41)
Yes.
Yes, yeah exactly.
And then we've got a grocery retailing report coming out on September 29th, so that will be Monday.
Philip Moore (09:57)
Yeah, that's well timed. Exactly. So next week is all about groceries. That's great. Awesome. Well, like it's been wonderful to have you to spend a few minutes with you and learn a little bit about your background rather than just hearing your voice each week and giving us the update about what's coming out. So we we look forward to seeing you again next week.
Isla Meldon (09:59)
So yeah, to come inside the grocery shop. that's exciting. Yeah, exactly. All about groceries. Yeah.
It's been a pleasure.
lovely can't
Philip Moore (10:27)
Thanks.
Philip Moore (10:28)
this week, Deborah is live at grocery shop in Las Vegas. And so we are honored to have filling in for her, John Mercer, our head of global research and data. John, you've been on the podcast before, but for folks new on the audience, can you give us a little background about what you do and what you're responsible for?
John M. (10:52)
Yeah. Hi, Philip. Hello everybody. So I'm head of our research team. So I head up our research and data teams that produce the reports that go on core site.com. The research that goes into the decks that people like Deborah and Core Site present and the data that goes into various products, including our store intelligence platform, our retailer dashboards, and a new CPG product, as well as our data banks on core site.com.
Philip Moore (11:18)
And I'm sure people have noticed, you have an accent. You are English, you work in the London office.
John M. (11:25)
Yep, that's right. I'm UK based.
Philip Moore (11:27)
Very exciting.
All right, this week, ⁓ the topic on top of everyone's mind, I guess, is holiday, since we're entering into that season and it's the busiest time of year for retailers. Can you tell us what we're thinking about what's going on with holiday?
John M. (11:43)
So we think there's going to be a few themes in holiday this year. So at a kind of top line level, we think total retail will grow about three to three and a half percent. ⁓ Our ML model is coming out about three and a half percent growth year over year for the fourth quarter. Our kind of analyst prediction is it could be a little bit softer than that. You know, there are headwinds for retail that, you know, a lot of people will know about. of tariffs, raising inflation.
are proving somewhat cautious. Consumer sentiment is very choppy. Prices are going to go up. Consumers are anticipating rises. They have been for a while. Real growth in retail seems to be weakening. We think it will weaken in the fourth quarter. also, however, think high earners will continue to support retail growth as they have been for much of this year. we think consumers...
are and will be shopping early, in the fourth quarter we think quite a lot of sales will be pulled forward to October.
Philip Moore (12:41)
Interesting. Now there was some supply chain disruption, I guess, back when the president Trump first announced his tariffs. Have those worked through the system? there going to be any issues with availability this holiday season?
John M. (12:58)
I think what we've seen this year is what we keep calling a slump and surge sourcing cycle. So you saw a surge in imports ahead of the April tariffs Then you saw a slump. Then when there were delays and deferrals of tariffs, you saw retailers and brands ⁓ scramble to use that as a window to get more products in. think, well, we know a lot of retailers pulled in products early get ahead of any tariffs.
think that will and has been mitigating price rises or price rise ⁓ upward effects from because they pulled a lot of products in early. However, if you pull products in very early, means you're likely to be less responsive to trends to what you see later in the year that consumers will want. there is a potential for a mismatch in some parts of kind consumer demand and supply.
I think it will be more so if consumer demand holds up quite solidly. You could end up with pockets weak supply where there's solid or strong consumer demand.
Philip Moore (14:01)
So it sounds like if you were giving advice to consumers, it would be if you see something in a store that you like, buy it.
John M. (14:09)
Yep,
we have cautioned so far this year that there could be some resemblance to the 2021 holiday season where consumers encountered quite a lot of bare shelves and because there was a shortage of supply in that year, retailers marked down less, they sold more at full price.
That was obviously great for retail and margins. It was less good for consumers who had to pay a little bit more if they could find the product to get it. And if strong demand matches slightly more limited supply this year, we could see some kind of recurrence of some of that anyway.
Philip Moore (14:44)
Very good. So how is Core Site Research sort of ⁓ keeping track of all of this? And for our members, what kind of information do we publish for them on holiday?
John M. (14:56)
So in many ways, ⁓ Coresight is unique in surveying US consumers weekly. And we've been using those weekly surveys to gauge sentiment toward the holiday season through the year. And that, like our regular sentiment metric, which we also track weekly, has proved volatile. We've been surveying consumers on their expectations on holiday every 12 weeks. And we ask them questions such as whether they expect to spend more or less versus last year, and whether they think their finances will be better.
or worse for the holiday 2025 season than last year. And really it's been up and down through much of the year. Expectations to spend more have been somewhat negative for much of the year. However, our most recent survey found quite a sizable chunk of consumers net. So once we net off the spend less against the spend more, quite a sizable chunk expect to spend more this holiday season. However, we think that's because consumers are expecting higher prices this holiday season.
and a fair chunk of those consumers seem prepared, willing or accepting that they're going to have to pay up for higher prices this
Philip Moore (16:04)
And in terms of our reporting going forward through the rest of the year, what kind of things are we planning on?
John M. (16:04)
In terms
So we're going to leverage our weekly survey capabilities to track week by week ⁓ how much of ⁓ their holiday shopping continues have done, whether they've started, how much they've done, which retailers they're purchasing from, which categories they're purchasing. So we'll have really a weekly holiday tracker through the fourth quarter. We did this last year we'll do it again this year. So that'll give us some interesting, hopefully interesting year over year comparisons.
including to see how much demand is pulled forward into October. looking forward to that. Not just consumer, of course, we're tracking retailers and sectors. you know, amongst a number of products, we do monthly retail sales projections for the U.S. retail market. Our latest sales projection, which was done after we got the most recent monthly retail sales, that's where our three and a half percent came from. We crunched the numbers every month, our ML model.
causing the inputs and spits out our projection, which was three and half percent for the fourth quarter most recently. of course we're looking at what retailers do and have been reporting. And been looking particularly at the reported tariff impacts that retailers have reported. lot of them in the most recent quarter were reporting negative impacts on their gross margins going forward. Some of them reporting retrospectively, but most of this is guidance.
⁓ particularly amongst apparel companies, apparel brands and retailers, they were guiding for gross margins to be down somewhere between basis points and 100 plus basis points. It really varied by retailer. So yeah, we're looking at the whole kind of dimension of holiday.
Philip Moore (17:48)
And so our member members have access to all of this. If someone wasn't a member but wanted to get one of our holiday reports, can they buy one off reports? Are those going to be available?
John M. (18:00)
They can
buy one of reports. We have a report store which lists a selection of reports. And if readers see a report on course.com that isn't on the report store, they can contact us directly and we will discuss that with them.
Philip Moore (18:14)
Okay, very good. Well, thank you for joining us this week. It's very informative and keep up the great work.
John M. (18:23)
Thanks for that good to see.
Philip Moore (18:24)
Thanks, John, and thank you for joining us. CoreSight Research serves our members with data resources, consumer trends, retail tech reports, and consulting services that create global competitive advantage. Visit us at coresight.com to learn how CoreSight Research can support your success. Have a wonderful day, and we'll see you next week.