[00:00:00] Phillip: Hello, and welcome to Future Commerce, a podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip.

[00:00:04] Brian: I'm Brian.

[00:00:05] Alicia: And I'm Alicia. And I have no voice.

[00:00:07] Brian: You really have no voice.

[00:00:08] Alicia: Sorry. Day three of Shoptalk. We are live here on the Shoptalk show floor. This is our wrap-up show. We're covering all of the things that we saw, we heard, we overheard— the tea that was spilled. We're gonna talk about—

[00:00:22] Brian: Are we gonna talk about the tea?

[00:00:23] Alicia: We're gonna talk about tea, Brian.

[00:00:24] Brian: Oh, man.

[00:00:25] Alicia: You're holding hot tea right now.

[00:00:?] Brian: It's coffee.

[00:00:?] Alicia: We're talking about all of the content, right? Lots of that. The community, the activations. We're gonna talk a little bit about what happened at our after-party, the After Dark.

[00:00:38] Brian: Hope things happened.

[00:00:40] Alicia: Was he? Wasn't he? We'll talk a little bit about that—

[00:00:43] Brian: Was it a team?

[00:00:43] Alicia: But before we do— this is our brand-new book. It's called Strata. If you don't have it yet, that's because it ships on April 14, and this is about the 10 aesthetics of commerce. Go get your copy on the pre-order right now— futurecommerce.com/strata. And I can't wait for this to get into people's hands.

[00:01:02] Alicia: So excited.

[00:01:03] Alicia: The response was incredible.

[00:01:06] Brian: It was.

[00:01:06] Alicia: We love it, of course, but, you know, everybody thinks their baby's pretty. So, like, to have people come up, hold it, and say nice things—

[00:01:12] Brian: Our team was like, "Can we take this back to our office?"

[00:01:15] Alicia: Oh, everyone was trying to steal it. Which I think says something.

[00:01:17] Brian: Some people did steal it.

[00:01:18] Alicia: Yes. Yeah. We should do inventory checks.

[00:01:21] Phillip: Many people saw it. We needed inventory control. We should probably engage a partner here to help us.

[00:01:26] Brian: Live cam, just watching our booth at all times.

[00:01:29] Alicia: Biometrics. We need heat mapping.

[00:01:31] Phillip: We need to track the footfall.

[00:01:33] Brian: But there's plenty of that around here, actually.

[00:01:35] Phillip: One of the better things that we've ever done here at any event ever, we did here at Shoptalk Spring 2026. We partnered with a muralist to bring the themes of this book to life. We had Jeanette Hall, a local artist here in Las Vegas, Nevada, bring all the themes and all of the aesthetics in Strata— the 10 aesthetics of commerce— out and live in the booth, and painted them live over the last three days on a giant eight-by-eight mural for everyone to see. And people were taking pictures, people were videoing her work. And so I would love— if you ever need a muralist, jennethhall.com, and we'll put that up on the screen. But we have some amazing video and pictures, and I have to figure out how to get a 350-pound mural home to Florida.

[00:02:27] Brian: Gonna be tricky, but it's worth it.

[00:02:28] Phillip: Awesome piece of art.

[00:02:29] Brian: It's so cool. It's so cool.

[00:02:31] Phillip: Yeah. Can't wait for people to check that out too. And let's get into it a little bit. Let's talk a bit about Shoptalk as a whole. Ten years of Shoptalk, right?

[00:02:45] Brian: I've been to every single one.

[00:02:47] Alicia: Yeah. I feel like you should be the one to kind of set the tone. Like, how did this event compare to the first one— the timeline?

[00:02:54] Brian: Well, certainly, this is a much bigger production than the first one was. The first one was really, like, an exciting, vibey, new show that was cool. VC had just hit the market. We've got a media session going on behind us— hopefully that's okay.

[00:03:15] Phillip: That's kind of one of the big changes too— in the first Shoptalk, I don't believe that we had content happening right next to commerce.

[00:03:23] Alicia: No. It did not. Everything was very separated, and meetings were separate. Now it's all very, like, together.

[00:03:29] Brian: Everything's sort of all at once. "Everything everywhere all at once."

[00:03:34] Phillip: Yeah— which, I think, has also changed the very nature of how this show has operated this year. Because, effectively, it changes the dynamic of the show— meaning, like, they have to scan you on the way in, because you can't have an expo-only pass anymore, right? Because the content's happening right in the expo show floor. Which, I think, leads to a different dynamic of the way that you're engaging with the vendors. If you're a vendor, you have to be happy that you have this— the theory is, people have to cross through the expo hall to get to the content, right? But I think the other facet of that, though, is— it becomes very apparent when sessions are well attended, and then it becomes very apparent when people are flowing in and out of a well-attended, or not-well-attended, session, as they're trying to get past the vendor booth, or trying to blow in and out of a vendor booth. And then, also, the meetups section of Shoptalk is, like, four times bigger than it has been in years past. That is huge. That is the main attraction, really.

[00:04:40] Brian: Right. For a lot of vendors, those meetups are essential to the success of their time at this show. And I feel like that was another innovation that they brought, that everyone's copying now. So— just really cool to see the evolution from this very hip, vibey show to now sort of the standard in retail shows.

[00:05:05] Alicia: Right. It's where those moments of innovation happen. Like, I feel like people test those things at Shoptalk.

[00:05:10] Brian: That's right.

[00:05:10] Alicia: Like, we were talking to somebody about how, a year or two back, nobody did in-booth content.

[00:05:17] Phillip: That's right.

[00:05:17] Alicia: Now it's the standard. Because that's where the success started. Like, people saw that momentum and that excitement, so everyone wants to cash in on it.

[00:05:25] Brian: So many people walking around like this as well, talking into their cameras.

[00:05:30] Alicia: Everybody's a creator now.

[00:05:31] Brian: Yep. Yep.

[00:05:32] Phillip: Yeah. I saw— it was a Google Photos memory that came up yesterday, Brian, that said, "On this day in 2017, you and I had an in-booth podcast that we did at Shoptalk," with what would be the Adobe folks now. We were doing a podcast in-booth. That was innovative in 2017.

[00:05:56] Brian: It was.

[00:05:56] Phillip: Now you walk around here today, and there is content in every booth, in every major booth. And it's going on the whole time. In fact, it's almost cacophonous, because everybody has a giant speaker that's blasting.

[00:06:10] Brian: True.

[00:06:10] Phillip: So— that used to be a way to stand out. What is the way to stand out now? I mean— I was walking through, and Whatnot is doing live shopping. They bring in their partners. They're burning through stuff. Oh my word— the inventory. And I heard— did you say it?— that someone had to, like, DoorDash the ring light in?

[00:06:30] Alicia: Oh, yes. Our producer, Sarah, I think, mentioned that.

[00:06:33] Brian: Yeah. Just wing it. Just wing it. That's really funny.

[00:06:37] Phillip: Yeah. Like, I heard secondhand that they brought in a lot of their top content creators from Whatnot to actually do their Whatnot stream from the Whatnot booth. I caught a couple videos, so maybe we saw them in here. And the speed and the velocity at which they're selling items, by the way, is fascinating. We had Whatnot on the show— yeah, we should link it up. But just thinking about how it doesn't take a lot to stream on Whatnot, but one thing it does take is a ring light. And, apparently, you can't forget your ring light. We know what it's like when you forget something, or you don't bring it, and you have to get it quickly. DoorDash saved the day for Whatnot here in the booth. But they're not the only ones creating in the booth anymore, and so that's sort of the standard anymore. Standing out, though— Autolane, they're here with their curbside pickup.

[00:07:33] Brian: They had a full-on setup—

[00:07:35] Phillip: Right across from us, where it's, like, gazing off.

[00:07:38] Brian: The robot's waving at somebody right now.

[00:07:42] Phillip: We're kind of on this— I'd say at the threshold of what will be an autonomous-delivery era in the next probably ten years. And so— Autolane—

[00:07:53] Brian: If not sooner?

[00:07:54] Phillip: Yeah. Autolane is at the very beginning of that. And so their booth is, you know, a Tesla that's outfitted with what will probably be an autonomous-delivery future that will bring things to you. And maybe— if DoorDash is human-powered in the present— maybe we'll see Autolane and other software layers that are powering something like that in the future. And that seems to be attracting a lot of attention. I don't see other— like, I don't see humanoid robots roaming around a lot.

[00:08:26] Alicia: No. Not a lot of that.

[00:08:27] Phillip: They might be the one that's doing that here?

[00:08:29] Brian: The only ones. Yeah, I think so. And people have mixed reactions to it, I think. Some people are a little freaked out by it. I heard a lot of people be like, "I just wanna kick it. I just wanna kick it over." That's funny. Alicia, you caught a lot of content. Tell us about some of the key themes that you heard at the show.

[00:08:47] Alicia: Yeah. I mean, no surprise— AI was the underlying force. I know, it's groundbreaking.

[00:08:53] Brian: Literally the name of the theme this year.

[00:08:55] Alicia: But I will say, a lot of the executives on stage tried to redirect or rethink how they talked about their technology. So, for instance, Home Depot was on stage, Macy's was on stage— and it was one speaker talking about tech and digital, right, like a CIO or CDO, and then there was always someone more on, like, the strategy side, or, in Macy's case, in-store— which I think is a really important balance. And I know Zia talked about it when we spoke with her before the show— that there is a human and creative complement to the tech discussion. So that was a nice continuation, I think, of the promise they were trying to make to attendees. So hearing how Home Depot is approaching it, how Macy's is approaching it, was very interesting. And every main-stage speaker had, like, a really nice sizzle reel to kind of hype up their investments. But my personal favorite session was Hillary Super, CEO of Victoria's Secret.

[00:10:03] Phillip: She's on a heater.

[00:10:06] Alicia: Oh, absolutely. And what I really liked is the discussion wasn't just, you know, to puff her up or puff the brand up. It was the "how we got to that point." And the one thing she said was, "Before I even got hired, I had a vision for what the brand could do and should do." And everybody has an opinion about the brand— she made that clear. She was like, "Whether you like Victoria's Secret or don't, you have an opinion of what it should be." So it's like— how do you navigate all of those inputs and really make it aesthetically and inherently true to the founding brand, and make it culturally relevant? So it's a really nice interplay of all the things that we've been talking about, and certainly came up in Strata. And she talked about how they are embracing this evolved definition of, like, what sexy is— for so many different types of women. Even other customers that are coming and buying things for, like, friends, family, significant others, and what that means, and how that shows up across channels, especially in stores. So I really appreciate, like, her transparency and her, in a way, vulnerability— because she was going into a brand that was kind of going in this one direction. They tried to course-correct too much, I think, because there was this definition of, like, "Victoria's Secret is trying to uphold negative standards of beauty, and they're pushing women in the wrong direction." Is it raining asbestos? What's happening?

[00:11:41] Phillip: Yeah. It's like— we had the Mike Pence fly earlier, and now we have this—

[00:11:47] Alicia: Or we're in the Upside Down. What is happening?

[00:11:50] Phillip: The whole thing is—

[00:11:52] Alicia: Yeah. It resonated.

[00:11:54] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:11:54] Alicia: Victoria's Secret—

[00:11:55] Brian: —is bringing the house down.

[00:11:57] Phillip: It started snowing in here. Carry on. Carry on.

[00:11:59] Alicia: But the one thing she didn't talk about— and I'm kind of curious why— they talked about Pink, and how, actually, Pink outbeats standard Victoria's Secret in terms of sales. But she didn't talk about, like, the nostalgia component, necessarily— which, you know, the Y2K trend is really coming back, and I think that's a big opportunity for Pink too. You're seeing little glimmers of that. But, yeah, it was really nice to get her true POV, because I have my understanding of who she is as a leader, and her success with other brands like Savage X Fenty. But to hear her really talk about that transformation process that was rooted in vision, by the way, was really valuable.

[00:12:45] Brian: So cool. Wow.

[00:12:47] Phillip: If I could just talk for a second about my session with FedEx.

[00:12:52] Brian: Yes. Yeah.

[00:12:52] Phillip: I sat with Jason Brenner to open Shoptalk, and that was an awesome session that we had. We talked about building trust at every touchpoint— which, you know, on the logistics side of things, is often overlooked. For many customers, it feels like it's the end of the journey, right? Because it's the last thing you touch. FedEx announced here at Shoptalk that there's a new product that they're delivering in partnership with one of their delivery partners— that they now have a last-mile capability that they're able to deliver same-day now. So we'll link it up— there's this large announcement— but they have so many more capabilities. They have this "tracking plus returns plus" product. FedEx enables merchants and retailers to have so much more of a brand relationship with their customers than FedEx gets credit for. The brand gets all the credit, and they understand their relationship with the brand and how they make the brand better. They also understand that, in the AI future that we have, there's an AI conversation that's being had right now about applying technology for the technology's sake— that may border on, sort of, a technology-centric decision, where we're looking to apply technology, so we wanna buy technology. And FedEx wants to bring it back to, "Well, no—

[00:14:28] Phillip: —we wanna have a customer-centric, experience-centric solution." And Jason had this wonderful POV, coming from his background at Walmart, about what is the essentiality of the customer experience that we need to provide. Sometimes FedEx may even venture into providing too much information to the consumer. Is that the best experience possible? I thought it was a fantastic session. It was, you know, sort of a closed-door session to their customers, but it's a great opportunity for us to have a really authentic chat. And then we spent a little time with him here in the booth and got to know him a little better. One thing he said to me that I had never had the insight into— but it was great to have someone come back and speak with us about it— was about our VISIONS Summit. And he gave, sort of, a little bit of a build on things that we've talked about every year. Alicia, you opened the summit this last year with our, sort of, the typical strategy pyramid, and how a vision sits at the top, right? So you have tactics, you have strategies, you have goals— but none of that makes any difference in your organization if you can't lead with vision. And, obviously, FedEx, for all of its existence, has been led as a founder-led company.

[00:15:51] Brian: Yeah.

[00:15:51] Phillip: And now FedEx— the founder has passed in the last year, year and a half. And now they're stepping into the next era of a business that was led by an extraordinary vision. And so other people have to carry on the vision of the organization. And Jason had this incredible insight: the vision of the organization has to be led into the cultural context of the world that the vision inhabits. And I was like— he's like, "That is what is upstream of vision." And I was like, "Well, that's why we always say commerce is culture." It is that none of the strategy pyramid makes sense unless you understand the cultural context.

[00:16:29] Brian: So true.

[00:16:29] Phillip: He just got that, right? He understood it right away. So, to me, that was just such a great partnership, and we really connected in that.

[00:16:?] Brian: Yeah. It's so rare that you find people at that level— so true— and especially in big transformational organizations— that really get it. It was great.

[00:16:50] Phillip: Yeah. Really, really great. Table Talks were good.

[00:16:56] Brian: Yeah.

[00:16:57] Phillip: I had a lot of meetups. One thing that I always find interesting is that not a single person in this world can show up on time for a Zoom meeting.

[00:17:06] Alicia: It is the one thing that unifies us all.

[00:17:10] Phillip: But a meetup that starts at 12:36 or 4:51—

[00:17:15] Brian: On time. Shocking. That's because they're gonna lose, like, $5,000 if they don't show up. There's a lot of incentive to be there.

[00:17:23] Alicia: And when you have that big countdown in your face.

[00:17:27] Phillip: So— it's, in thirty seconds, get from table 1455 to table 32. Like, people are hustling.

[00:17:35] Brian: '24. Remember the clock on '24?

[00:17:38] Phillip: Boop. Boop. Do you remember 24?

[00:17:?] Brian: Did you watch it?

[00:17:?] Phillip: I didn't watch it.

[00:17:?] Brian: Jack Bauer?

[00:17:?] Phillip: Yeah. Jack Bauer. Oh, man. The best.

[00:17:44] Brian: Man. That's a throwback right there.

[00:17:46] Phillip: Yeah. A special kind of torture is the meetups.

[00:17:49] Brian: Wow. I mean, they're wonderful, and we appreciate them— and they are torture.

[00:17:54] Phillip: They are torture. They're a special kind of torture.

[00:17:56] Brian: Speaking of torture— can I talk about my low point on this?

[00:18:03] Phillip: Was he, or wasn't he?

[00:18:05] Brian: No, no, no, no. That was the rose. We're gonna talk thorns first.

[00:18:10] Phillip: Are we doing highs and lows already?

[00:18:12] Brian: Yep. All right. We're into it, because you said "torture." I was tortured. We all were—

[00:18:18] Phillip: I think I drank asbestos. I just want that to be known.

[00:18:22] Phillip: I forgot, and I think I just drank the asbestos.

[00:18:24] Brian: I was gonna make a joke later about that—

[00:18:26] Phillip: My Function Health profile just went upside down. I was nine years younger, and now I'm nine years older. Just want you to know.

[00:18:32] Brian: You just got cancer, man.

[00:18:34] Alicia: If you had an Oura ring, it'd be like, "Are you okay?" immediately. Carry on.

[00:18:38] Brian: You know— it wasn't asbestos. It was a— oh, the Wing drone that just flew over us. It sprinkled a little bit.

[00:18:45] Phillip: I'm sure they would be happy to know that you think they're dropping pollution everywhere. Cherry dust. This is what it is.

[00:18:50] Alicia: There you go. It's commerce dust. That's it.

[00:18:53] Brian: Okay. My low point was this. We were all very hungry. We had our event to go to.

[00:19:00] Alicia: We had limited time.

[00:19:01] Brian: We had limited time, and we were walking back to the Luxor—

[00:19:05] Phillip: Of all places.

[00:19:06] Brian: Of all places.

[00:19:08] Phillip: Which, by the way, "Lux" should not be in the name of that. I'm just saying.

[00:19:13] Brian: It's a Luxor. "Luxor," or something else—

[00:19:17] Phillip: —being the operative word.

[00:19:19] Brian: And so we were like, "Well, why don't we just grab a burger?" And we decided to stop at Wahlburgers. This is the thing that blew my mind. We are in Las Vegas— the most—

[00:19:31] Phillip: What is a Wahlburgers, for those who do not have the culture?

[00:19:32] Brian: I'm gonna get there.

[00:19:35] Phillip: What is the context of the Wahlburgers?

[00:19:35] Brian: Well, fine, I'll give the context first. Wahlburgers is Mark Wahlberg's burger joint— it's a chain—

[00:19:43] Phillip: Not just Mark Wahlberg's.

[00:19:44] Alicia: The brothers, right?

[00:19:45] Brian: Oh, yeah. Well—

[00:19:46] Alicia: Or is there, like, a random second cousin involved?

[00:19:49] Brian: Paul and Donnie. Yeah. So— Marky Mark.

[00:19:54] Phillip: And one of the members of New Kids on the Block.

[00:19:56] Brian: Hey, Polly Paul.

[00:19:58] Phillip: Donnie Don. Okay. Carry on.

[00:20:03] Brian: They have a burger joint that's got all of their, like, roles and their pictures of them in the movies and so on, on the walls. It's, like, a kitschy thing.

[00:20:?] Alicia: Very.

[00:20:?] Brian: But here's the thing that got me. We were eating fake burgers. It was the worst burger I've ever had—

[00:20:22] Phillip: I wish you didn't have an Impossible Burger.

[00:20:25] Brian: It was the worst— it was an Impossible Burger, a fake burger. In a booth, with a TV that we could not turn off—

[00:20:36] Alicia: They're playing Wii Golf.

[00:20:37] Brian: —watching a golf tournament that included Tiger Woods.

[00:20:?] Alicia: Yes.

[00:20:?] Brian: Playing fake golf, like a golf simulator, for money.

[00:20:44] Phillip: Which is— by the way— like a thing that's happening right now at, like, SoFi. It's, like, a whole thing.

[00:20:49] Brian: It's a whole thing. In a restaurant chain that was created by somebody who plays fake people on TV, in the Luxor— which is a fake pyramid in Las Vegas, which is a fake city. Yeah. I think we've jumped the shark. We are over the edge.

[00:21:11] Alicia: In our defense, we wanted to go to an Irish pub, and they said the wait was a little too long.

[00:21:18] Brian: And we sat down at the Irish pub—

[00:21:21] Alicia: We sat down immediately, a minute later—

[00:21:23] Brian: Irish pub. Right. Where people hang out with fake friends. Like, it just feels like— simulacra is our life—

[00:21:?] Alicia: Simulacra?

[00:21:?] Brian: Simulacra. Thank you. Sorry. Simulacra is our life. We are over the edge, and I died. It was the worst burger I've ever had in my life.

[00:21:41] Alicia: We made up for it, though. We had a good rest of the night.

[00:21:45] Brian: Oh, we got going—

[00:21:46] Phillip: We had so many laughs at the expense of the government cheese.

[00:21:50] Alicia: Oh, the government cheese.

[00:21:51] Brian: We laughed about the fact that there are a lot of puns in that place, but they didn't do the margarita. Come on. There should have been a margarita.

[00:22:00] Phillip: The Marky Margarita. Yeah. The Wahlerita.

[00:22:03] Brian: The Wahlerita. AI could have made a better menu than what was in that. It was that bad. That's just why we— this is why we accept AI. Because slop already exists, and people make it.

[00:22:13] Phillip: Yeah. You don't need AI for slop. We already have the burger.

[00:22:16] Brian: Yeah.

[00:22:16] Phillip: There's the show title. All right. So that was your low point?

[00:22:22] Brian: That was my low point— which was followed by a high.

[00:22:24] Phillip: Immediately followed by a high point.

[00:22:27] Brian: We had— literally a high.

[00:22:27] Alicia: It was a very manipulative night.

[00:22:30] Brian: We were launching Strata in the stratosphere.

[00:22:33] Phillip: Not at the Stratosphere— the—

[00:22:35] Brian: Not at the Stratosphere, but we were in the stratosphere, at the Skyfall Lounge on the 64th floor of the W here at the Midway sp?. And we had a party there, and boy, was it a party.

[00:22:47] Phillip: We shut it down.

[00:22:48] Brian: We shut it down. They shut us down, actually. We had people partying. We had a full room. It was a beautiful turnout—

[00:22:55] Alicia: Yeah. We walked into the space and we're like, "Oh, no."

[00:22:59] Brian: It was crazy.

[00:23:01] Phillip: Yeah. It was killer. Everyone was— the vibes were high. I think so were a lot of people there. I think the thing that kind of kept going around is— somebody showed up with Snoop Dogg.

[00:23:18] Brian: Yeah. We had Snoop.

[00:23:20] Alicia: Question mark? Special guest.

[00:23:21] Brian: We had Snoop. Snoop was there. Double G.

[00:23:26] Phillip: Question mark? I don't know. It was simulacra-ene [unclear].

[00:23:29] Brian: It was. It was. It continued. Let me ask you a question.

[00:23:35] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:23:37] Brian: Do my— what?

[00:23:40] Phillip: Pregnant pause?

[00:23:42] Brian: I just took a sip of Liquid Death.

[00:23:45] Phillip: Okay.

[00:23:45] Brian: Or did I?

[00:23:47] Phillip: It was a very strange night, and all of my group texts were blowing up for, like, the event. Mhmm. And then I saw a lot of Instagram reels.

[00:23:58] Alicia: LinkedIn tags.

[00:23:59] Phillip: LinkedIn tags.

[00:24:00] Brian: Mhmm.

[00:24:00] Phillip: And then I was in a booth the next morning, and I overheard a lot of people at the Klaviyo booth. They were like, "Did you hear that Snoop was at a party last night?" I was like—

[00:24:10] Brian: I mean— was it Dan from Shoptalk who posted about it? Yeah. He was like, "I was at a party with Snoop." Wild. Wild.

[00:24:19] Alicia: That's how lore starts.

[00:24:21] Phillip: That is how lore starts, actually.

[00:24:23] Brian: I mean, Lore started last year.

[00:24:25] Alicia: Bless us.

[00:24:27] Phillip: Well— was it Snoop? Was he? Wasn't he? We will never know.

[00:24:32] Alicia: And does it matter?

[00:24:33] Brian: That's my question.

[00:24:34] Phillip: That's the thing—

[00:24:35] Brian: That's it— did I just take a sip of Liquid Death there, or not? Does it matter to you, Philip?

[00:24:40] Phillip: It doesn't matter.

[00:24:45] Phillip: Strata. Strata.

[00:24:47] Phillip: One of the things that I think made that event so great was— there were some people there that I've known now for, like, fifteen years, who weren't invited and just showed up.

[00:25:02] Brian: Love it.

[00:25:02] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:25:03] Brian: Party on, baby.

[00:25:04] Phillip: And that's sort of the community that I think we've built at Future Commerce now— people just want to be around other folks who are forward-thinking. And we had folks that just sort of waited around to talk at the end of the night, to say, "Hey, we know that you guys see what's coming." And they wanted to ask us what we think about all kinds of things, right? Disruption. Like, it's, like, 1:00 in the morning, 2:00 in the morning, and people are like, "You know, what's happening with OpenClaw?" And I'm like, "Oh my gosh." So— that's the other thing that I think I want to point out: the conversations that are happening right now at the show are so different to what I thought would have been happening at the show. First of all, if you just look on a pure square-footage basis— I took a picture, I'll see if I can put them side by side— but, like, the AI stage has maybe 250 seats. The media and marketing stage has maybe, like, 700 seats. And I'm just shocked— you know, for all of the buzz and the conversation and the amount of priority that we keep giving to AI—

[00:26:25] Alicia: With a little bit of an eye roll—

[00:26:28] Phillip: —the eye roll, like, "Oh, we all have to talk about AI." The thing that everybody wants to talk about with AI is how it can meaningfully improve their work.

[00:26:?] Alicia: Right. Exactly.

[00:26:?] Phillip: Like, their role— not the customer experience. So when they're talking about AI, they're talking about Claude Cowork. They're talking about OpenClaw, or they're talking about— I was talking with Travis Chrisman, who we go back with—

[00:26:58] Brian: —ten-plus years.

[00:27:01] Phillip: Ten-plus years. And he is now the VP of global ecosystem partnerships at Resolve. And he's been there for a week. But he said he's building Cursor apps now. And I'm like, "That's where we are." I was like, "Are you technical? Do you have a background in development?" And he's like, "No." He said marketing wasn't listening, and what they would have taken three weeks to deliver and to be prioritized, he just did it himself. And I said, "I won't quote you on it." He's like, "Please quote me on it. Just drop my name." He said, "At this point— what would have happened in the whole sales ecosystem is, people would have taken decks and bastardized them anyway, and would have changed all our fonts to Times New Roman. And people would have been turning a blind eye and pretending it didn't exist anyway. But everyone's gonna put up a fight and a fuss about, 'We don't want you developing software to do it.' People have just gotta stop that, and we need to move at a faster pace." And that's what's, like— Klaviyo— I don't even know if I'm allowed to say this, but I'll say it anyway— Klaviyo rolled out Claude Cowork to its whole business. Like, we are running full speed into that. That is what it is—

[00:28:22] Brian: You know what else is really interesting?

[00:28:23] Phillip: That's what the AI movement is— it's individual productivity.

[00:28:28] Brian: Yes. And Klaviyo just rolled out an AI tool just last week. They didn't even say "AI" anywhere in the marketing at all. Like, that is just native. That's the point, I think— it's just built into everything we're doing now.

[00:28:43] Alicia: Well— and it's, like, not necessarily the point. It's all about the outcome and the benefits to the user.

[00:28:48] Brian: Yes. I have a story, actually, that I haven't told either of you yet, related to this. I have a friend that works for one of my favorite retailers, and he works in the IT team for the stores. And he had an issue with a piece of technology that was affecting a lot of people— like, all the stores. It was rolled out to every single store, and they had a lot of stores. And it involved, like, this stand with a scanner at the top, and there were reports of all kinds of issues with it. It wasn't working. And he had a hypothesis about what was wrong. And so he kept going back to the manufacturer of the stand, saying, "I'm pretty sure that something is wrong with the actual, like, bar that goes up to the scanner, and that's why they're failing. It's not anything else." And they swore up and down that they QA'd the whole thing, and it was fine, blah blah blah. So he— being a really inquisitive person, curious person— was like, "Forget this," broke it down, took his work-approved Google Gemini in there, started snapping pictures and asking questions.

[00:30:10] Phillip: Right.

[00:30:11] Brian: He found a problem where a wire was flipped the wrong way, and brought it back to the manufacturer and said, "This is the problem." And they said, "Oh my gosh, you're right."

[00:30:21] Alicia: That's unbelievable.

[00:30:23] Brian: He didn't know anything about the circuitry. He was just a guy who's smart, willing to use AI in the moment— it affected thousands of stores. And, like— yeah. This is the kind of thing people wanna do with AI.

[00:30:38] Phillip: Yeah. I mean, that's gonna be the most commonplace type of example. That's the kind of person, though— I have to believe— I don't know that this is true, but I have to believe that that's the kind of person who would have been the person to say, "Let me Google that for you" in a prior life and era anyway. They were hip to the tools. They figured things out in a prior life anyway. Now they are able to do even more, because the tools enable it, right? They would have gone deep and probably clicked 30 blue links to begin with, in another world. Now they have even more capabilities to solve more problems.

[00:31:23] Brian: So much faster. It actually probably would have taken so long that he would have given up on it in the past. Like, now— and it wasn't even, like, proprietary data that was fed into Gemini. It was actually just general, like, technical knowledge that Gemini had available, from, like, larger context. And that's the future.

[00:31:43] Alicia: Well— and I think this ties back to one of the debates that they had. This was a new format for Shoptalk— a series of debates on different topics. And one of them was around, "Will AI be a benefit to employees or workers, or will it destroy them?", basically. And I think that ties to the cultural aspect of all of this. What you said— if you're inherently curious and someone who likes to problem-solve and explore and dig into things directly, AI is gonna help you—

[00:32:17] Brian: Totally.

[00:32:18] Alicia: —without a doubt. But if you don't have those inherent traits, or at least nurture yourself to acquire those traits— that's gonna be your downfall. Because you have to have the time, energy, and passion to really poke at it and figure it out so it works for you. That's the one thing that I found, at least. Like, there was a time where I was just doing basic, high-level, "Let me just see what this thing is all about," but you have to work at it. And I think people underestimate that.

[00:32:46] Brian: At the same time, I was able to build a browser extension— I'm not technical, just like Travis. I built a browser extension I was able to install in my browser, and it did exactly what I wanted it to. And, again— curious people will find a way— but it wasn't that hard if I just followed my instincts on what tools to use to get there, and I had Claude instruct me all the way through. And, like, use the tools to learn the tools. That's where we're at.

[00:33:17] Phillip: I'll just make a— I'm gonna tell you where my fascinations are, just with this one prediction. So I'm happy to be wrong on this one, but I spent the last week and a half deep in, like, OpenClaw— which, by the way, the creator of OpenClaw went to work for Meta. And— what was the thing— OpenClaw, like, the "Facebook for OpenClaw," recently?

[00:33:50] Brian: Moltbook. Moltbook.

[00:33:52] Phillip: Moltbook. The creators of Moltbook, by the way, are from the ecommerce ecosystem.

[00:33:56] Brian: Ben Parr and Matt Schlicht.

[00:33:58] Phillip: And Ben Parr. Yep. They got acquired by Meta's Reality Labs. So— this is not nothing, right? I think this technology is probably the most prolific agentic thing that is available right now.

[00:34:15] Brian: Right.

[00:34:17] Phillip: I spent the last week and a half going deep with that. And I know what's possible with it. And I wanna make an educated guess that, in the next year— maybe by this time next year— we will see OpenClaw-specific agencies on the show floor.

[00:34:39] Brian: I would agree.

[00:34:39] Phillip: People that are gonna say, like, "We will make your OpenClaw work for your business." And the reason being— if you look at the way that software is structured right now, every single one of these software vendors is building a middleware layer that requires all of these partnership-specific connections. When I ask OpenClaw to do something— or when I say I want to do something that is fairly abstract— it wants to build something specific that's bespoke to me, and it asks me if it can do it, right? "I want you to check my Gmail." And it says, "Well, you can do that with this connector, or I can just build that for you in Python real quick." Every retailer who puts this in place, every brand that puts this in place, has a developer that's ready to build them a custom integration today, and it will be done within the next two hours. And you don't need to go and buy a ton of SaaS to do that. You need OpenClaw. And, by the way, running that thing is a nightmare. It's too expensive. You need to have managed IT to do it. The thing crashes all the time. So you need a totally different managed-service model to make that happen, and that's why you need a different sort of solution.

[00:35:53] Brian: Well, I would actually argue that there are agencies on this floor right now that are, effectively, like— their whole go-forward plan is already what you've described. It's not with OpenClaw— it's with other tools. But I think that there are already agencies that are tooling up to become an agency— or AI-first agencies— and they're going to— the good ones will evolve fast. And, to your point, you do need some level of, like, know-how to set up the infrastructure. And they're there. There are a couple agencies— I mean, I'm just gonna call them out. Digital Native blew me away. They blew me away with what they're doing.

[00:36:32] Phillip: Yeah. I've seen some of their workouts. That's been great—

[00:36:35] Brian: Yeah. Incredible.

[00:36:35] Phillip: Yep. Should we just sort of run down a little bit? I know we have a lot of content that we're putting out in the main feed and on video for the show. What are other things that we should cover before we wrap up? Alicia?

[00:36:50] Alicia: Let's see. Well, we have a lot of great conversations that we had on the floor— I think the most we've had, question mark. So we have David's Bridal back on the show. That was really nice, because last year we had Kelly Cook, the new CEO of David's Bridal— she's about a year into her tenure— and we had Lisa, the head of communications, and she's driving content strategy, affiliate strategy, media. So it was nice to do, like, a gut check of how shaping the vision has gone and implementing the turnaround has gone, but through the lens of content and creative. Like, they're doing a high-programmed, like, show that they're doing. Like, it's not just micro-content— they're doing full-blown entertainment. So I'm really excited to share that with everybody. And also, Wing— you know? Yes. Like, we've been doing more in delivery and logistics, and I think it's really exciting for us as we talk about the future of commerce. We were just at Manifest, and talking with Wing kind of allows us to dig a little bit deeper into a very new and emerging sector of fulfillment that— you know, they're expanding into new markets pretty rapidly, honestly. So— looking at the adoption curve, and how people are using it, what the reception is, and which markets are really prime for that level of autonomous delivery is gonna be really interesting.

[00:38:14] Brian: I'll say that that's probably my favorite thing of this whole show— was actually that interview.

[00:38:18] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:38:19] Brian: I think Wing is so cool.

[00:38:21] Alicia: And not just the Wing puns, right?

[00:38:23] Brian: Yeah, I thought that was good.

[00:38:24] Phillip: We'll need a pun counter. What should we look forward to on Insiders— on, like, long-form written content? What are some things that we'll be cooking up?

[00:38:34] Alicia: Yeah. So we'll definitely do some sort of show recap. I do think that there's something worthwhile to explore— the tug-of-war of sorts that's happening between, like, the AI hubbub and, like, "Is that real? To what level? And how does it actually apply?"— in all these conversations in the sessions. Because I think we can all agree that, even though that was the underlying theme, I feel like the humanity aspect was so much stronger, and actually made people more excited. So that was an interesting turn that I wasn't quite expecting, but I liked it. And then, also, I think the creator economy was actually more present than promoted— I think, probably to their detriment, because I think it's such an exciting facet of how marketing is evolving and how it's integrating into retail media, how it's integrating into paid programming, and product development— which we talk about in Strata with our "meaning-to-market" concept. So looking at all of these different inputs that brands are looking towards to really connect with their consumers differently— I think that that's gonna be the key. Like, what are brands trying to do to differentiate themselves?

[00:39:50] Phillip: Wow. We have a ton of content— probably the most that we've ever created, and the most we've ever put out. I think the next week or so is gonna be pretty packed from what we've covered here at the show. Thanks to Shoptalk for all the partnership, and a lot more to come. And stay tuned. If you don't have a pre-order already for Strata— we only have 500 copies. After that, it's done. Go get it right now: Strata, futurecommerce.com/strata. It's the 10 aesthetics of commerce, and things that are gonna shape what the future of commerce is. And, again— Strata, futurecommerce.com/strata. Thanks again for joining us for this episode from our time here at Shoptalk Spring 2026, and we will see you on our next episode of Future Commerce.