In this episode, Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, speaks with Rocquan Lucas, Vice President of Content at Shoptalk, about the upcoming Shoptalk Spring conference and the evolving landscape of retail. They discuss the importance of customer centricity, the role of technology and AI (artificial intelligence) in retail transformation, and the innovative startups that will participate in the "Shark Reef" Startup Pitch competition. Listen now to discover their tips for maximizing your experience at Shoptalk Spring, and dive into insights on the future of retail.
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 This Week in Research: New Reports and Data
02:14 Shoptalk Spring Conference Overview
03:55 Roquan Lucas: Background and Role at Shoptalk
06:38 Consumer Behavior and Content Evolution in Retail
09:09 Customer Centricity: A Key Theme for Shoptalk Spring
11:41 Startup Pitch: Innovations in Retail Technology
15:34 Balancing Customer Experience and Operational Efficiency
19:26 The Role of AI in Retail Transformation
23:21 Maximizing Your Experience at Shoptalk
26:37 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
More on Shoptalk Spring 2025:
Welcome to Retaili$tic, the official podcast of Coresight Research for March 18th, 2025. This week, CEO Deborah Weinswig welcomes Rocquan Lucas, Shop Talk's Vice President of Content, to discuss the startup pitch competition and how to get the most out of the conference. But first, Georgina Smith is here from the London office to share the latest research publishing this week on coresight.com.
Big news in retail recently has been the acquisition of Walgreens Boots Alliance by private equity firm Sycamore Partners in the US. This move serves as a reminder of the challenges faced by drugstore and pharmacy retailers, namely shifts in consumer shopping behavior, high expenses and issues around reimbursement rates. Walgreens decision to go private does present opportunities for other industry players. We will offer our detailed perspective on the implications of the $23.7 billion deal in an upcoming report.
Turning to the US convenience store sector, our new market outlook will explore the size and trajectory of the market, key factors impacting its growth, the competitive landscape, and themes we are watching. We discuss developments and impacts related to M&A activity, food service, quick commerce, and much more.
Elsewhere in research, our weekly US Consumer Survey Insights reports with associated weekly US Consumer Sentiment Infographic and accompanying video dive into economic and financial optimism among US consumers, offering new proprietary data on trends as they unfold, analyzing sentiment in the context of shifts in the macroeconomic landscape, including new US tariffs. Premium subscribers can also access data from our weekly surveys in our US Consumer Survey Insights Data Bank.
You can also find new data on US retail sales growth trends and performance by sector in our new report and US Retail Sales Data Bank. Also this week, we will publish the latest installment of our monthly US retail sales outlook series, which tracks several major macroeconomic indicators and their likely effect on US retail sales.
Finally, our regular listeners will have heard us mention and discuss the upcoming Shoptalk Spring Conference a few times recently, and I'm sure you're looking forward to hearing more in this episode from Deborah and the Shoptalk team. Coresight Research is a research partner of the event and now with one week to go, we've just published our free preview of the much anticipated Shark Reef Startup pitch. Meet the 12 innovative retail tech providers set to compete for the Judges' Choice and Audience Choice Awards. With a $100,000 investment on offer for the Judges' Choice winner, this will be a transformative moment for one lucky startup and we can't wait to see how the competition plays out. Good luck to all of the participants.
As a reminder, please visit www.coresight.com to check out our coverage of and participation in Shoptalk Spring and to book a meeting with the team. We look forward to seeing you there.
I'm so excited to be here today at Retaili$tic with Rocquan from Shoptalk. We've worked together on many a startup pitch and topics. Rocquan, can you give us your background and what you do at Shoptalk?
Deborah, it's so great to be chatting with you as well as a part of the Retaili$tic podcast, really looking forward to the conversation. So I'm a VP of content here at Shoptalk, where I'm a part of a larger team that consists of about nine folks who are thinking about globally all of the themes and topics that we're addressing at our different Shoptalk events, which also includes our event that's dedicated to grocery CPG Groceryshop as well.
So my role is to assist with building out themes, building out topics, identifying the right executives to speak at our shows. So I'm really excited about Shoptalk Spring, which is taking place on March 25th through the 27th, because there I've been leading the technology track that we're hosting at the show, which includes our, our startup pitch program, as well as our technology spotlight, where we highlight executives and CEOs from tech companies that are a bit more later stage as well.
And then in terms of background as well, I've been in the kind of event business for quite a bit over 10 plus years, working on events and serving in a content capacity as well for events related to healthcare, also fintech, and then additionally marketing and digital marketing conferences.
Well, thank you for that explanation. It's really interesting because if you look at your background, right, in terms of FinTech and healthcare and the consumer facing aspect of that, which is obviously going through a complete evolution revolution. How are you seeing the consumer of the content change? And how does that then inform who you get on stage and what they talk about?
I would say that I've been fortunate enough throughout my career to have worked on events that are all about the intersection of technology and digital transformation and how that's impacting industries. So a part of why I was so excited to join Shoptalk about four years ago is because I recognized that retail was in a similar moment where you can leverage kind of new technologies and think about new strategies that are impacting the future of retail.
So as we think about the consumer and who's attending our shows, we're seeing a lot of people who are kind of leading that charge at the organizations and championing change. I think one thing that's interesting in retail as well is that while traditionally the kind of change that might impact the future of retail kind of lived in departments like e-commerce or digital, we're starting to see more and more of different job functions take ownership of driving digital transformation as well.
And that's being reflected in the types of attendees that we have at our events and the types of content that we address at the show as well. So, you know, this isn't a show that only talks about the rise of online shopping. We're talking about bridging online and in-store shopping experiences a lot. And one of the main pillars of content at the show this year at Shoptalk Spring is about creating these welcoming retail experiences, which alludes to in-store, but also online. So I think that we're seeing our attendees morph to be more inclusive for sure of the entire retail world and folks across different job functions.
It's really interesting you say that I had a call yesterday with a dear friend. He and I had been on stage together probably over a decade ago. And at the time he had been the chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola. And the whole conversation was around how dollars were moving from the CIO's budget into the CMO's budget.
And if you think about where we are right now, we're starting to see, and I was just out at HumanX, which is an AI across all industries and who we're seeing in a lot of organizations to your point is like the head of data and analytics is often the one who's increasingly responsible for AI in an organization. So you're starting to bring in more people around the virtual and physical table at companies, which I think is having a really positive outcome in terms of what they're doing today, how they're thinking about tomorrow, and then what the lifespan of the company is really growing because of this much more intentional focus.
How do you think about the content informing and what in your ideal world, if you could wish upon a star, what would people walk away with from their time in the tech track and especially at Shoptalk startup pitch? What do they walk away with and then how do they put that into action?
That's a really good question. I would say that we obviously very early on as a very content led and content driven show, try to have conversations with those in the community around kind of topics that we believe are going to be top of mind for them. And that did lead us to focusing this year's show, Shoptalk Spring, around how do you put the customer at the center of your organization? And so with that kind of mindset of addressing customer centricity, we also saw that as an opportunity to really highlight content across our different sessions that speak to that and address that.
So when we talk about the tech track specifically and kind of its appeal to those in the retailer and brand community, we're thinking about different sessions and different solutions that could assist retailers and brands with addressing that larger theme of putting customers at the center of your organization.
So it speaks to a specific category that we're introducing into our startup pitch program. But then also for our tech spotlight track, where we feature later stage companies, we're hosting sessions around building, welcoming shopping experiences, building more digital and engaging shopping experiences, post purchase loyalty, and all of those we think by having our audience listen to technology companies talk about their strategies and solutions to address those topics that will help inform them to improve their businesses and will lead to them getting some real insights and takeaways to bring back to their respective organizations.
So first of all, when you started a lot of your research and work for the content for Spring 25, what did you learn along the way and what was your biggest surprise?
Good question. So I would say that we really identify just again through conversations with retailers and brands that this was an ideal moment to really revisit something that we hear people talk about all the time in the industry, which is customer centricity. But we recognize that there was technology out there, there's strategies out there, and consumer behavior is evolving in a way that requires us to revisit how you deliver on customer centricity.
I mean, it also started to feel a little bit like this was starting to become a bit of a cliche, if you will, know, something that just folks say and toss out there all the time without really thinking about strongly about how do you apply that to your business and truly live and breathe it. And so that kind of reassured us that this is kind of the direction that we should go down. And I think through some of the conversations along the way, I think we kind of realized just how important technology's role can play in delivering on that.
So whether it be through technologies like generative AI and how that's impacting search, I think we started to realize as we got closer and closer to the show, just how prevalent and how important that kind of part of the shopping journey is and how you can use generative AI to create these really compelling search experiences. So much so that it led us to building out a specific track that's dedicated to exploring what the next generation of search is going to be like. So that was kind of that one surprising moment where we kind of knew a little bit that this would be an important topic, but more and more we kept getting confirmations that this is something that we should lean into a bit more.
That's so interesting and so relevant to what we're doing at Coresight right now. Obviously when you do research, so much of it is about discovery. We've started to work with four new clients in the past two months who've all found us through, it goes back to like the whole idea of Dr. Google, right? A lot of doctors were worried, but instead, right, more people came to them because they were looking at all these different ailments.
What we found, because there's so much content available right now that there's this desire to condense. And we've had four people find us like literally out of the blue through search, and in a large language model, right? Like, I this is like, and so I couldn't agree with you more that that is such an interesting topic. think the timing is perfect because it also goes back to if I hadn't seen it myself, I'd be like, eh, you can wait till the end of the year. You can wait till 26. But I think that it's more important than we ourselves realize, which I think is always the right way. You can experiment on yourselves, right? It's a really interesting. So I think that that's such a great call out.
I always think the content at Shoptalk is amazing, but there are some real insights I think people can walk away with and are like, I'm going to look at that tomorrow, right? And that's what I think is so interesting about the tracks you put together this year. So with all those topics around technology, how did you narrow it down to the topics to focus on for startup pitch?
What would be great to also share is that Shark Reef Startup Pitch had a long tenure here as part of the Shoptalk program. And it's been super exciting just to see the new crop of startups that we introduce to the program each year. And we have been thinking about just different ways on top of just having amazing new companies that are early stage having yet raised a series A, different ways to kind of freshen up the content that we're offering.
And so there's been a variety of different ways that we're approaching that this year that we think helps to create that newness in addition to the new startups that we're featuring. So of course, that would mean that while previous startup pitches have all existed, the program in its entirety existed on one day. We thought that this year was a great opportunity to spread it across the event to just keep that engagement and excitement continuing throughout the show but then also to candidly give folks like you, Deborah, and some of the startups a bit of a breather in between round one and round two.
I think that whole idea of kind of it's so much content all at once that sometimes even you're like, I'm taking notes furiously, but there are is each startup, right? They've come to market with an idea based on a problem they saw in the market. And when you're starting to aggregate those across what I think is really interesting in this idea of having two themes super focused and dedicated, but going back to you had so many topics to choose from. That's a big opportunity to really help either retailers and brands think about this is an opportunity for us or this is a challenge for us.
Okay, right. Now we've got six early stage companies. So how do you think about kind of taking all those topics and also what was important six months ago may or may not be important six days from now?
Yeah, yeah, so that was something else that we were introducing to Startup Pitch that would be considered new this year as well. So as part of round one of Startup Pitch, we've decided to break it into two specific categories. And so the reason for that is that we thought that this was a great opportunity to give our audience a bit more specificity around the solutions that they would hear from at a given time. And so this year, the first six out of the 12 Startup Pitch participants we'll all kind of have solutions that are dedicated to leveling up the customer experience.
And then the final six that participate in the first round of starter pitch will be thinking about streamlining and automating business operations. So we took a long look at what would be the most important things and challenges that technology could help solve for retailers and brands to help us inform which categories we would want to lean into as a part of this year's show. And we have this balance where we wanted it to be broad enough so that we could feature a bunch of different solutions that weren't very similar to each other and that could complement each other, but still, again, addressing that specificity.
And so as I referred to our theme this year being so focused on putting the customer at the center, it felt as an obvious category for us to lean into solutions that are helping to level up the customer experience. How do you deliver better shopping experiences? So we have different companies that are thinking about personalization and just offering better customer service.
And then on the automated and streamlining business operations front, that felt like an important topic to us because we think that just generally retail is having also a moment where they're looking at kind of like their core business and trying to figure out different ways to unlock efficiencies, deliver productivity in a climate that can be a bit challenging to navigate. So again, we think that technology is that perfect opportunity to address that to deliver some cost savings to help with different efficiencies and productivity. And we felt that that was broad enough to allow for us to feature a variety of different solutions that are unlocking efficiencies across the organization, whether it be in the supply chain, all the way to e-commerce, to marketing, you name it. It was that balance of being able to identify categories that spoke to the theme of the show, that spoke to investment that we're seeing and retailers and brands are telling us they're paying attention to and then just thinking about what is going to resonate best with the audience.
What I found was really interesting is that obviously it's an investment into customer experience, which I think is top of everyone's list. But then pairing that with this idea that we're going to look at ways to automate, streamline, et cetera. You're saving money on one side and then you have that to invest on the other. And it's a really interesting, right? This like tension almost in terms of chicken egg, right? Should I focus on, I mean, I think there's unbelievable opportunities around streamlining and automating. And then It allows retailers and brands to invest to improve.
I think it's the employee experience, shareholder experience, customer experience, where they're all customers. And that's a really interesting way to look at it. As you think about where from a startup world, the journey that they're on and the problems that they're solving, as you did a deep dive into this, did you feel that they were meeting like the needs today, six to 12 months out what may be a challenge and what do you need to do today? Or as we always say to like our clients, like, do you want us to be like really out there? Because from an innovation mindset, I love to think about what can be and then you can kind of walk it back to the practical. But what are you seeing in terms of the companies that are there today and the problems they're solving? Are those today's problems tomorrow's or like in?
No, that's a great question. I feel like it aligns with how we think about Shoptalk Spring at large, which is like this is meant to be an event where we are very forward looking and thinking about where retail is going next. But we understand that in order to do that, in order to highlight where the industry is going, it's also important to reflect on what are its needs today and what can you be doing today and implementing into your business that could then set you up for a success in the future.
So that's also a different way or kind of the ways that we approach startup pitch as well. Where we will have some solutions that are maybe a bit forward looking and might be considered like a horizon three, maybe for a retailer or brand, but also balancing that with solutions that can be implemented immediately. I would imagine that all of the startups that are presented believe that they have something that can be leveraged by retailers in brands today in this very moment.
And then it serves as something that sets these companies up for being successful in the future. So that's something that we think about, know, how do you balance companies that may be a bit more long-term vision for a retailer and brand and those that are a bit more practical that can really fit and meet some of those short-term needs for retailers and brands. And then in terms of like the appetite, I think we sometimes the climate that we're in today does lend itself to having technology companies that are invested in more short-term solutions.
But I think what we've found through our research is that there were companies that crossed that horizon really interesting. And one of the things that I've thought about a lot is that, and we really started to focus on this about a year and half ago, where we saw retail media, data monetization, retail as a service. mean, there's certain retailers.
Walmart's a great example. We've talked about this quite a bit on their earnings calls and through the media. This idea that you can start to fund your investments through money-making endeavors is a really, it's one of those things that you hear once, you hear it twice, you hear it three times, and then you go back and you really think about it. The ability for retailers today to, yes, you obviously need to make some kind of margin on what you sell, but there's a whole other path to profitability and also to earnings. When you think about these two, customer experience and kind of streamlining, how do you see this fitting into this enormous opportunity for retail? And where do think we are on the journey?
I would think that a lot of the solutions that are about kind of streamlining business operations, I think that would relate a lot to the core business of retail. again, I think we're going to be featuring a lot of startups that are addressing efficiencies and agentic AI is popping up a lot across the technology track, but also we have some startups that are thinking about and using that technology as well. And so we see that as being kind of a way to drive efficiencies right now and to impact the core business.
And then I would say that across the board though, as we think about different technology companies that are speaking across Shoptalk, there's certainly some that are helping retailers in a more B2B fashion and beyond the core. So there's certainly different companies that assist with helping retailers with their retail media infrastructure. And we're certainly seeing a lot of companies invest and think about different B2B services where they're serving retailers themselves are being seen as technology companies, right? So there's a lot of trends that we're seeing about how retailers are balancing what they're doing as a part of their core retail experience while simultaneously looking at these like new growth opportunities that are out there. And there's certainly technology companies that can support both of those.
And you bring up a really important point where we're starting to see, and I remember it was like a decade ago, I think it was well, a little over 2014 when Walmart at their shareholders meeting actually talked about, I still remember being in the room, talked about how they were on a path to become a technology company. And all of us in the room are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've heard that before. And you look at where they are today and right there. They're selling services to other retailers, right? You know, they're doing like through go local last mile for some other very large home improvement retailers and more. And that is a really, that's kind of one of those huge opportunities where, you see it in front of you, but you also see kind of what's beyond.
You brought up something very important on this whole idea of agentic or agentish, right? Like, cause we're kind of, we're kind of there. We hired or promoted, have you want to look at it recently someone to manage our agentic workforce. And we're right now using it more to clean up contacts, to organize a lot of our data to kind of more like back of house operations. And what we find is it's like the oil, right? Like they always talked about like AI is oil, but it's for us. It's like you have all those things every day, you're like, if I had more time or more money, endless resources, I would do this, this and this. And for us at least, I'm like, you know, we can do that now, right? As long as you're very specific about what you want the end goal to be.
So I think as leaders, that's really important for us to kind of think about that aspect. But I do think that the timing of Shoptalk is perfect and critical for companies to see not only what others are doing, but the technology that's out there to drive it. And then go back and think about, okay, right. How can I apply this to us? And now I've met a few of these people. can, I can reach out to them and we've thought about a bit more for our company, we can now get some guidance along the way.
Where do you think, and I'll leave this as our last question on this topic and I'll have one after, where do you believe companies are on this agentic journey? And how do you think about the size of the prize around that? Because I do think it's going to, I think this event is going to be one where we've heard a lot and I think now we're going to see a lot.
Yeah, yeah. So I would say in terms of where retailers and brands are in this journey, I think that varies depending on, know, frankly, you know, if if the retailer themselves tends to be kind of a laggard or a wait and see kind of approach or the retailers that we think are kind of diving in and recognizing the moment that agentic AI is providing. And I think that opportunities in my opinion do seem to be very, very sizable because what I love about this technology enables is it's essentially like a co-pilot for all of your employees, allowing them to not necessarily be data analytics gurus or need to know code. And there's a conversational element to it that provides that ease of use and then it allows for like data access across the entire organization. So you can just type in things and it'll be able to provide that information for you.
So we've had so many different conversations around how do you like leverage data around the organization. And this technology is not necessarily something that we've addressed at previous Shoptalks in extensive way, but it's surely here and it's creating opportunities for that to happen. So I think the opportunities are a ton. And I think that there's so many different ways you can leverage it depending on kind of what your role is.
So again, as I mentioned earlier, you we're going to have startup pitch companies who are leveraging this for just strictly to help out with inventory management and supply chain and then others who are doing it on a whole different side of the building, if you will, folks that are thinking about like marketing and e-commerce. So when you add up like all of that, it feels like it's just, it's creating this sizable opportunity. So I do see us getting to a point where a lot of the work that's being done in retail and maybe across other industries is being supplemented by some type of agentic AI just to assist with that work.
And I think to your larger point that we made earlier, it's kind of like by being able to enable that and unlock that. We think that it ultimately ends up impacting the customer experience in a great way. And I would argue that it's a bit more direct than indirect because it allows your employees, whether they're store associates or at that corporate level to be able to serve your customer in a better way.
Yeah, you touched on one of my favorite themes in retail, which is everyone outside of the industry thinks it's so easy, but ultimately you think about what is done, right? You mentioned supply chain and logistics, right? So you're designing, making, getting product to the consumer or merchandising that product. then, right, you may have to factor. So there's like a financial aspect to it. Then you're thinking about customer service online and offline. And so you start to think about how complex, right? Because I think that the industry and yes, can you outsource a lot of it and focus in a more narrow way?
Absolutely. But to make sure that things are true to kind of your company DNA, that that can be difficult. So, all right, so last question and the one that everyone's going to want to the answer to. What are your tips and tricks to have the best shop talk that everybody can have?
So that's question we get a ton where people would just wanna kind of maximize their time at the show. We offer a three day agenda and we have a lot of things happening at the show. So one of my recommendations is always to just make sure you've downloaded the app and have had a chance to kind of dig through our agenda and all of the different things that are happening at Shoptalk to allow you to pick and choose the sessions and content that is gonna be most relevant for you. That's what we've tried to design always our content around is making sure that we're addressing all of the needs of the folks that will be coming at the show and leaving that opportunity to you to kind of figure out like, hey, this is where I feel I can get the most value and the most insights out of. So I definitely need to attend this session.
But I understand that we, you know, we can sometimes make it a little hard on people where they have to debate on which content that they'll want to see as a part of our track sessions. But we try to obviously provide detailed descriptions on what the content is going to be about, what the speakers are going to be addressing so that you can help to make those decisions. So that would be kind of that's typically the one major thing that I pitch is just making sure that you have the opportunity to check out that agenda and see all the amazing things that we're offering and then deciding from there what makes most sense for you.
Yeah, I think that's great advice because there's so much amazing content. so having that as the building blocks of your schedule, I've always found that if you can schedule out half your time and then leave half of it for those kismet moments, right? I have to say sometimes it's like the walk in the hall that, you know, leads to something amazing. And so I think that it's absolutely critical to plan see who's going to be there and who you want to meet with, but also leave some time, like almost some head space, because if there's a topic you hear on stage you want to learn more about, and there are companies on the exhibit floor that do that, right? Like use that time, right? To do that when you get back will take you weeks, and everyone is there right now. And so, and I think of course the most important thing is to have fun, because it truly is a wonderful event with great content and content that you can take back to everyone else in your organization to help you make some real decisions.
So, Rocquan, thank you so much for joining us. I can't wait to see you. I can't believe it's like a week away. I know, right?
Yeah, no, definitely can't wait to see you either. Deborah, again, always appreciate having the opportunity to chat with you. It'll be virtually now, but it'll be in person very soon. So it's been great.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.