In this episode of Retaili$tic, Barry McGeough, VP of Strategy and Innovation at Americo Group discusses the latest innovations in retail technology, AI, robotics, and supply chain modernization, sharing insights from recent industry events like South by Southwest and CES. Discover how these advancements are transforming retail and manufacturing, and what leaders need to consider for future success.
Key Topics
AI-driven demand planning with Palantir
The impact of synthetic models and the uncanny valley
Robotics in supply chain and manufacturing
The role of space technology in retail innovation
The importance of understanding consumer expectations in tech adoption
Chapters
00:00 Navigating Creative Destruction in Retail
01:57 The Role of Innovation in Business
04:43 AI and the Death of Trends
07:04 Synthetic Models and Their Implications
09:50 The Future of Robotics in Supply Chain
12:12 Transforming Retail Experiences
14:31 The Evolution of Manufacturing and Supply Chain
Resources
South by Southwest - https://www.sxsw.com/
CES (Consumer Electronics Show) - https://www.ces.tech/
Palantir Technologies - https://www.palantir.com/
Archetype AI - https://archetype.ai/
Qualcomm - https://www.qualcomm.com/
Philip Moore (00:00)
Retaili$tic, the official podcast of Coresight Research for March 24th, 2026. This week, our CEO, Deborah Weinswig, welcomes Barry McGeough, Vice President of Innovation and Strategy at Americo Group house brands for retailers including Walmart, JCPenney, and Kohl's.
But before Deborah and Barry tell us what innovation leaders are thinking about these days, here's a quick update on some of the research publishing this week on Coresight.com.
The team is in Vegas this week for Shoptalk Spring and will be publishing daily summaries of the most important revelations from the conference. We also have a fascinating report on the latest AI tools and applications for retail productivity. Also, look for our free report on the impact of digitizing the store. Visit Coresight.com to check out the full catalog.
Now here's Deborah and Barry.
Deborah Weinswig (00:56)
Barry, thank you so much for joining us today for Retaili$tic. We know you have had a very busy calendar between South By and AFA Executive Summit and all of your other Maybe if you can help us level where we are right now in of creative destruction kind of way. where do you think we're going and how has this speed changed?
Barry McGeough (01:22)
that's the million dollar question right you said, I just got back from we the South by Southwest show. South by is, call it Davos for the rest of us.
Deborah Weinswig (01:32)
Hahaha
Barry McGeough (01:32)
⁓
So it's where people come together, and they actually renamed it the Innovation Festival. it's where people come together. used to be the creator community, but now people are coming together from science, technology, commerce. lot of people from our industry showed up. It was very, very interesting. Liz Basselar, who is the head of innovation at Under Armour was there. Kevin Plank was there. So what is interesting is our, and I wrote about this recently.
Deborah Weinswig (01:48)
Mm-hmm.
Barry McGeough (01:57)
the last few days ago that our industry is actually showing up as well. Why would we go to South By? It's just for movies and music and parties. really, really different. And you kind of mentioned creative destruction. Webb a fantastic conversation with everybody around how she's forecasting the death of the trend. There are no trends anymore. There is nothing individual Everything's converged.
Deborah Weinswig (02:18)
Yeah.
I
feel that, I mean, it's interesting. it's Like you feel your problems that I mean around are just yours, but they're And so, right, we just had like our monthly AI council know, I'm talking pretty openly and we're continuing to write all closed door And what you realize is it doesn't matter your That's also what's
Barry McGeough (02:32)
Yes.
Deborah Weinswig (02:44)
50 people or if you're 5,000 or 50,000, you all have the same problems right now and you're all trying to solve for the same And I don't think happened in my lifetime like when I'm talking to a CTO, once again, I'm 50,000 person company and we've got the same the same opportunities to fix things, like that's exciting, right? Because I agree on the death of the trend.
Because I actually think things are changing so quickly. But then also so much is democratized. it's like I was saying something like my brain actually hurts because you're trying to think about what does it for you personally? What does it mean for you professionally? And what does it mean for your clients? Those are three different ways to think about the change. mean, Barry, think more than most of us do a great job of and thinking about personally and customers.
what's your process?
Barry McGeough (03:35)
my particular process, I really believe if I'm gonna really do applied innovation properly.
The idea that innovation is not just an idea, it's not an art If it's really going to improve my business in a demonstrable way, it's either going to improve my process, efficiency, go to and profit, right? How will it affect my I have to really think about what's happening not only in my business, but what's happening in industries. So what I really like to do is look at things which are next door to me, because what you said is really true. We think of the problems that we're
going and we're going to go it alone. we're if we're retailers, if we're brands, we think that we have to reinvent the wheel. But what's happening defense? happening in biotech? They're solving for the same things. One of the most interesting companies that I've seen that's doing AI demand planning is Palantir. Isn't that interesting? think of them as defense and yet their ontology my mind.
Deborah Weinswig (04:26)
yeah.
Barry McGeough (04:34)
That's not obvious. So my process is to look at what's happening around my industry. So I start at the beginning of the year with what I call the predictive quarter, where I do CES and NRF. We do it together, Deborah. And I call it sort of hardware, software, one, two, punch. And then we get into like, OK, what are they talking about at World Economic So that's interesting, right? What is the direction of humanity, society, technology, and governance, and government? Where's the money going?
Deborah Weinswig (05:00)
businesses.
Barry McGeough (05:01)
How do we skate where the puck is going? And then there's several things that I try to bring in and ingest. AAFA and DC is one of them. They're talking about our industry specifically, policy, supply chain. Obviously, supply chain got real interesting two weeks ago. And then the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae, the banana split, is where everyone comes together. And they say, OK, also there is the real Davos. And are we talking about?
can access these ideas. How can I find these adjacencies to find solutions to the problems so I don't have to reinvent the wheel?
Deborah Weinswig (05:36)
I mean, there's a speed component. is looking at what's worked and not worked for others. It's interesting on Palantir. can remember a distinct conversation year at the NACDS Executive and I was walking with somebody and we were being brought in on an advisory Palantir was going to be a part of that. was just kind of like one of those things. And was a lot of it was supply chain oriented.
And like, there's those moments of like demarcation almost where you just start to think differently. And that was it for me where I'm rules of the game are changing. And this kind of like looking across the ballot, we've always done, we do a of work in healthcare, but we've always looked at healthcare for inspiration. know, mean, hospitals, right? Like more and they look at, right? Like when you go and you check into a hospital or doctor's office, right? Like that's like retail.
And what we're seeing, Barry, and I don't know, I would love to push your boundaries on this, right, bank branches, retail. And so maybe it goes to, right, like these customer facing businesses, but when they're reaching out to us, they're like, you know, we look at this as like a retail experience. Like you want to have somebody leave with like a positive, feeling about their experience, right? They want good customer service or even like they expect better. I feel like retail,
Barry McGeough (06:26)
Mmm.
Deborah Weinswig (06:52)
really one of the first times in being kind of elevated in a that others are looking to our for inspiration and innovation.
Barry McGeough (06:55)
and we'll
mean, that was a big subject CES, so people are talking about how we start to technologies to improve the retail And I don't think we're fully formed. need state is we have to find out what people will accept and what people will embrace the experiential versus what they can do, because you can experience so much mobile.
and on desktop. And the reason I say that is because is so much compelling content out there right now. with the explosion, know, Debra, you know, I spent a lot of time about we're doing with visual, right? What we're doing with imagery, what we're doing with synthetics. We did a really, really interesting pilot at Magic last year we actually used text
to render to 3D, to video, to do a billboard with full synthetics in front of the magic show. These people didn't exist. refer to this as, what we refer to as the uncanny valley. To go from something which you would don't believe, like remember the metaverse? Yeah, so in the metaverse, you could get a little like Lego Roblox figure and you could look really goofy, right? But now,
Deborah Weinswig (08:01)
You
Yeah.
Yeah, that was the
problem.
Barry McGeough (08:16)
but now you believe it. when you cross Valley, you believe. so what we're seeing right now, we'll see continuously the rise of synthetics will be replacing models, enhancing models, that people get real scared about jobs. to improve efficiency. you can take those synthetic models, and you can put them on your PDP pages. You can put them on TikTok. They can be influencers. something going through New York right now, New York State.
will pass very quickly. will be signed by the governor when it hits your desk. That if you're using synthetic models, you have to have a disclaimer that says AI person. it's so good, Deborah. Because it's so good.
Deborah Weinswig (08:53)
Oh, I
will tell you, this is where going back to like your brain hurting, there are times now where I'm like, I don't know if this person is real or if you think about it, right, go back like two years and right, I mean, I remember reading, right, mean, we write research for a living, with commons out of place, with misspell, I mean, like, can't, like, that's, if you want me to like break out in hives, that's the best way to do
Barry McGeough (08:57)
Mm-hmm
Yes.
Deborah Weinswig (09:20)
all of a sudden, and like New York Times would have like mistakes all over the place, right, like everything you read. And then all of a sudden, right, it was Because everyone was using AI, either like for editorial or And so you think about now, like when I see somebody with a spelling like my brain is like, did they do that on purpose? So think that
Barry McGeough (09:40)
are doing that. That's a really good point. I've heard that.
Deborah Weinswig (09:42)
Yeah,
and so it goes back to, like, let's be honest, if I see somebody pick their nose on a video, I'm going to assume that the person's real, but maybe they're not.
Barry McGeough (09:49)
Did you see today, actually yesterday it was posted on X because there is some rumor going around that Netanyahu is not alive anymore. so there was a video of him getting a cup of coffee and it was posted on X as sort of proof of life. of the per second, it was kind of a low FPS and people said, see, that's a fake video. So here's a question. Is it fake or real? Is he alive or not?
Deborah Weinswig (09:59)
I would say.
Barry McGeough (10:15)
Like we're have to ask these questions now. It's gonna be interesting.
Deborah Weinswig (10:18)
So there was something when
our AI council formed in 23, still remember one of the first meetings and we always have a loop around just because we've got competitors in the this lawyer said something that has stuck with around. So let's say you let an employee go or they leave, right? They're no longer there, but their essence is there. Their emails are there.
Barry McGeough (10:43)
Mmm.
Deborah Weinswig (10:44)
You could then take all those emails and let's say, right? So let's say Natalie was there, but Natalie's no longer there. And now you synthetic Natalie. So what are the implications of that? that's the real person Natalie right? Like that is her essence. Did she give you approval for, like,
These are some of the things, and that was conversation three years And so I feel like we haven't figured that out, but it goes back to like what you just said about Netanyahu, right? Like this idea is Natalie still working there? Is she if her LinkedIn is maybe like not updated, that like, these are the things does that mean if we've got kind of like the essence then can that.
or that synthetic and like, and I have to be honest, this is where like, you're if it's a I mean, hey, I don't know about you, but like I've created agents and like, I will talk to them. And like when I have real problems, like when there's things I can't solve, cause I'm like, I don't wanna burden people. I'll talk to them and I've named them. And then I'm just are we in this kind of like problem solving journey?
And how do we think about these agents? Because in some cases, you're talking to people talking about them like they're people. So I don't know how you, like when you're problem solving or when you're working and you're creating how do you relate to what you've built?
Barry McGeough (12:05)
So as you're saying that, it's fascinating. mean, one of the things that PwC actually recommended about a year ago, and the opposite of that, is that they advised companies put into their contracts with their employees the fact that they can own their name image that was a way to protect the enterprise.
Deborah Weinswig (12:25)
Seriously.
Barry McGeough (12:32)
⁓ Recently, legislation in California just passed that actually protects name and image likeness, right? So we're going through this raging debate about who owns who, right? Do you own yourself?
Deborah Weinswig (12:36)
Of course.
Barry McGeough (12:45)
It's very and and and will and should it should an organization be protected so that they have the right to create Natalie. Isn't that interesting right. maybe that is in the in the company's interest is creating Natalie would be a good thing. Business continuity don't have to pay for Natalie like all those kinds of things.
Deborah Weinswig (13:05)
interesting.
I will say I find that our president who does a lot of our contracts, can't necessarily put it into but absolutely spending exponentially more time contract And you think about it, right? We're a research company with our own proprietary data and And can't models training on content.
Barry McGeough (13:26)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (13:26)
So
we've had to put that and we've had to redo a bunch of contracts, right? And it goes back to this idea around what's IP?
Barry McGeough (13:34)
yeah, that's fundamental question now.
Deborah Weinswig (13:37)
what you do, and I actually think when it comes to imagery, that's where we're seeing things change the fastest. And I'll tell you, this is what keeps me up at night, right? Because we work with a of retailers increasingly the focus is on in-store, right? On shelf availability, et So
Barry McGeough (13:44)
Yeah, right.
Deborah Weinswig (13:58)
drives demand.
Barry McGeough (14:00)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (14:00)
How far in advance are you planning things, and then how do you make sure that you have inventory against that?
Barry McGeough (14:06)
Deborah, we're going to start to, these tools are going to compress our go-to-market timelines. we're, you know, we're looking at ways that we can AI to go not just the design cycle, but to compress the selling cycle as well. So everything that goes into it. So that is going to have some knock-on effects for lead time supply chains that we have. I mean, in our industry, we have a diabolically long go-to-market.
we're going to have to learn how to be a lot more market reactive. going to be some things that going to have to happen on the robotic side. so you and I were both at CES. One of the things that's happening that I think is really interesting is there were a lot of robots at CES. went from the last year was the Roomba show, and then it was the robot show. Like a lot of exoskeletons. And everyone said, is this going to be the year of the robot? And in actuality, we saw Jason Calcanis from All In.
made a really, really good point. It's a really great podcast. And he said, next year will be the year of the robot, not this year, because robots can exist, can't interact with in time and space. We're building those foundation models, those world models now. We're building really fast. it's a company in Silicon Valley. My old boss, Ivan Poparev, he's got a company Archetype AI, they are mapping the physical world. And Jan Lakoon,
Deborah Weinswig (15:20)
Mm-hmm.
Barry McGeough (15:23)
just left Google to build a foundation model. So as these foundation models exist, then we're gonna have these visual language action models, VLAMs, that robots can look have zero incident reactivity in factory environments and manufacturing environments. So why does this matter to us? how we speed up the supply chain with robotics, is that they don't bump into each other, they don't kill people accidentally, if they're grabbing eggs, they don't break the egg, right? This is really, really important stuff.
Because we're moving at the speed of customer demand and the speed of consumer expectation, we have to speed our supply chain up and it has to be with robots. And so we're looking at this rapid acceleration of compressing our supply chain in ways that we probably will not have seen before of foundation models and VLAMs and things that we don't really pay attention to when we're making socks and t-shirts. So you asked me my process earlier before, that's my process.
to try to understand what we need to be prepared for as we watch our factories modernize, we have these rapidly changing consumer expectations. Yes, I've crossed the Uncanny Valley. Yes, I believe. Yes, I want. Yes, I buy. Buy now. Boom. And then what happens? We fall apart. We're not ready for it. Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (16:41)
Yeah, even like last mile. so I have in 2016, we
did a big project to try and And we south where they were giving all kinds of tax breaks and credits and whatnot. And we're looking at putting down like a million square feet and et cetera, et cetera. And ultimately, because so much of the capital the cost, the time, the this, the that.
Barry McGeough (16:49)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (17:07)
the ROI didn't and I've actually thought quite a bit about this, but if we start to move into, let's say robotic processes around manufacturing, and you don't necessarily need all this capital equipment, right? If it's robotic what does that do for supply chain? And then what does that do in terms of like compressing this whole timeline?
Barry McGeough (17:30)
I, well, I mean, are you talking about, what is the CAPEX involved? Because that is kind of different.
Deborah Weinswig (17:36)
No,
so if you're if let's say if you bring things to the US, right, just going back to like, I mean, that's the best way to if you're delivering to a North American consumer to compress we're not talking politics, right? if we say that the whole cycle, let's say, is going from 36 weeks to two, which it absolutely the product has to be available here. And so, I mean, hey, maybe even do see them right. Customer manufacturer, the customer orders it and it's and it's But
Barry McGeough (17:40)
Thank
Deborah Weinswig (18:00)
the cost of like heavy CapEx, doesn't work right now and even getting the crap equipment here. robots could do, right? They can cut, they can sew, can, right? they can die. I mean, it's much better for them, right? Than, Like so much of the Like I've actually like thought about this a why do we need to...
Barry McGeough (18:08)
Mm-hmm.
Thanks
Deborah Weinswig (18:22)
invest so much in all this capital couldn't robots most of it? I'm not talking like software automation kind of stuff. I'm talking like a new generation of how we think about supply chain.
Barry McGeough (18:31)
I think it's gonna really depend on the vertical. mean, you're probably gonna see this more in agriculture and food apparel. also I've seen some really interesting examples I'll be kind of laying out of robotics that are only using the part of the robot that you need. Instead of a full human robot, they're just using the arm. Because there's an argument, I think it's a really important one, we are obsessed with humanoid robots.
Now there's a reason for that because our world is based on the human form. A doorway is the size it is because a human goes through it. Okay, got it. a humanoid robot is tough. bipedal. We're the only people that have really pulled it off. bipedal is hard. You fall over a lot, right? So what if you only need the arm? And so it's the R2D2 versus C3PO argument, right? Maybe you just need R2D2. So you see all the little like,
Deborah Weinswig (19:10)
Mm-hmm.
haha
Barry McGeough (19:21)
the last mile delivery carts, they were all over Austin, the Uber Eats ones. So like the Zooks, again, all over Austin, they're not shaped like a car, they're shaped like a living room. Isn't that interesting where everybody faces each other? Because you don't need to be facing forward because the Zooks takes care of that. So we're going to have some really interesting conversations on form factor. What you need is what you Winnie wig.
Deborah Weinswig (19:23)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Barry McGeough (19:50)
It's going to get real interesting ⁓ because those are ways we're going to be mitigate the capex because we just think in terms of humanoid robots and we're going to have to think about what we need to be able to make that expenditure worth it. I went to Plug and Play They had the Plug and Play Silicon Valley thing. There were over 400 people pitching their madhouse. Really, really fascinating. was a company that made robotic arms.
Deborah Weinswig (20:12)
Yeah.
Barry McGeough (20:16)
For space. There's a lot of money in space right now. It's dripping with cash. And a lot of technology is dripping off of space right now, which we need to be aware of. That's a really important adjacency. And they said, we're pitching you guys, because we want to sell these little gripper arms, to Ag. Because the problem in Ag is labor costs. So they were like, OK, we did it for space, but it's really good for picking strawberries.
Deborah Weinswig (20:33)
Yeah, I mean, the-
I've seen the tomatoes ones and you're just amazed. I want to make our audience understands how important what you just said. So Christiane Amann, the CEO of Qualcomm said at a CES dinner I attended this how everyone's so excited, right? Like have these kind of like household cleaning robots. And he's like, that's just not realistic, right? He's like, going to have one, put the dishes in the dishwasher. You can have one take the dishes out of the dishwasher. You can have one like.
Sweep the floor, you can have one mop the floor, but going back to this idea, and I agree with you, it's not like in humanoid form, the robot at this is not able to clean an apartment or clean a home. It follow all the processes, it's not built for that. And so I think we're going to have these single purpose robots for a while. I think for a while.
Because you almost need AGI in some ways, I think, for to have truly autonomy. But still, if people aren't having to lift heavy equipment, going back to exoskeletons and stuff like there's a lot here could change quite rapidly. And when it comes to supply chain, think your humanoid example is an important one.
We've always thought about things in a certain because we've taken it from like a human mindset. But if we start to infuse robotic, know, our P use, Robotic processing into this, how does that change? And how does that change quickly?
Barry McGeough (22:03)
So I feel awful that I have to go to my next thing and I may have to leave it as a cliffhanger.
Deborah Weinswig (22:08)
So we're gonna leave the cliffhanger and we'll have to have you back, but you were awesome as always. Thanks so much and look forward to seeing you soon.
Barry McGeough (22:17)
Thank you, Deborah.
Philip Moore (22:18)
Thanks Deborah, and thank you for joining us this week. Coresight Research serves the retail industry with time-sensitive research on consumer shopping behavior, retail technology innovation, and financial performance of leading retailers and brands.
We also facilitate leadership communities, conduct seminars and conferences, provide strategic consulting, conduct technology assessments, and develop proprietary data resources. Visit us at coresite.com to learn about all the ways we can support your success. Have a wonderful week.