Feel-good Mood Prevails at NRF Big Show

Considering the world is in turmoil, economic uncertainties persist, and Saks Global has gone bankrupt, this week’s NRF Big Show at Manhattan’s Javits Center was a surprisingly reassuring place to be.

Resilient consumer spending, the rise of AI, waning fear over tariffs, and expectations for retail gains in the year ahead following a decent 2025 holiday season set a promising tone at the convention/trade show, considered the industry’s biggest.

Adding to the upbeat atmosphere were the keynoters recounting personal and professional success stories and the record turnout — 40,000-plus retailers, vendors, suppliers, media, industry analysts and consultants — creating crowds at the doughnut and coffee stands and competition for seats close to the speaker stages.

Still, concerns were not in short supply. They centered on inflation persisting; lower-income families struggling to get by amid high grocery, housing and health costs, and the potential impact of AI on the labor force.

Holiday and the Outlook

“It was a good holiday season overall, up 4.7 percent from October through December. It looked to us that people shopped early, were picky and selective. The wealth effect is a huge part of the story, kind of masking the weakness in lower incomes,” said David Tinsley, senior economist at Bank of America Institute, during a economic outlook session. “You can have a relatively weak lower-income consumer but still have a robust outcome. There’s a tenuous relationship between consumer sentiment and what people actually do. I suspect you have pretty depressed consumers along with pretty robust consumption.”

For 2026, “It’s not all pessimism for the lower-income consumer,” Tinsley said. “The One Big Beautiful Bill could be quite significant, with an increase in tax refunds between $60 billion and $80 billion. We could see quite large increases in spending on discretionary goods, travel and leisure, but it’s hard to know how it falls out in terms of who will benefit. There is some hope this K-shape economy narrows a bit. One area that gives me concern is the housing market. You need housing transactions to generate demand for all sorts of goods and services.”

Michael Pearce, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said, “The stock market was a powerful stimulus in the back half of the year. The overall economy is growing strongly. We forecast that to continue this year.” Though he’s concerned about slow job growth, on the positive side, “The impact of tariffs will be fading in 2026 in terms of change. There’s support coming from fiscal policy, interest rate cuts, lowering mortgage rates, and add in tailwinds from AI,” for productivity gains. He also said the bigger tax cuts will be going to higher income households, but with that, he sees wage growth and inflation falling back.

“it’s the worst labor market in over a decade, layoffs remain low and that should continue this year,” said Pearce. “If you are employed you are still seeing wage gains and the risk of a layoff is relatively low. But young people of all ages are struggling in this slow labor market. If you are out of the labor market, it’s difficult to get back in.”

On AI, Pearce said, “We are still in the relative early stages of this AI boom. The adoption rate across the economy continues to pick up. It’s mostly being financed out of earnings rather than using debt.”

Ask Ralph

“What my father started 60 years ago was a brand based on his own philosophy of design — that products were created and designed with an idea of timelessness, things that get better with age,” said David Lauren, who focused on Ask Ralph, the virtual shopping and styling assistant on the Ralph Lauren app. Lauren, the son of Ralph Lauren and the company’s chief branding and innovation officer, said, “Technology has been the most incredible tool for us to take that philosophy and make it relevant for a new generation. The idea that clothes could be worn and passed down from generation to generation has to be shared with the new generation in a way that comes in their language.”

Lauren said that Ralph Lauren was the first luxury fashion brand to sell on the internet. “No one had ever sold a $500 cashmere sweater online. No one had ever sold a suit online. We just thought this would be an interesting way to tell our story.” The company turned to Microsoft to bring the experience of the Ralph Lauren flagship on 72^nd Street to the internet. Microsoft staffers spent three hours immersing themselves in the store to understand the culture, to create Ask Ralph.

“Nobody needs a tie. Nobody needs a flannel shirt. Nobody needs another pair of jeans,” he said. But that can change when customers are “enveloped in the magic of Ralph Lauren. We feel that the technology helps us to fulfill that.”

Shelley Bransten, corporate vice president, worldwide industry solutions for Microsoft, said that the Ask Ralph technology is “like having Ralph Lauren in your pocket advising you.” Lauren agreed, adding: “When a customer starts to feel confident about putting a look together, that’s a win.”

Although the tool is only available for the Polo brand right now, Lauren said he expects it will be expanded to the company’s other offerings in the future. “As we expand it globally and bring our other brands to it, I think we’re going to get a much richer read on it.”

In a “future proofing retail in 2028” session, Ashley Kechter, global president of athletic apparel brand Vuori, said “Integration between retail and digital is imperative” and stressed the importance of the customer experience. Vuori’s Regent Street store in London, which opened last year, is different from its L.A. store, Kechter said, because the company evaluates what’s right for the local customer and builds an experience unique to that store site.

Dayna Quanbeck, president of shoe brand Rothy’s, stressed “the balance of both and how you build that model” of digital and physical stores is where the focus should be. Another focus for Rothy’s is on “testing and learning” to spot trends and determine “green shoots” for growth. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rothy’s launched bags and men’s shoes, but ultimately decided to keep its focus on innovating in women’s footwear. She said the company saw a huge opportunity in bags and men’s shoes, but it wasn’t the right time. For Rothy’s, the non-negotiable is sustainability — last fall the brand innovated a more sustainable way to manufacture velvet — while the biggest challenge is intellectual property. “We have a roster of patents that are often knocked off,” she said.

Erin Chaney, senior vice president of e-commerce, Adidas NA, and Peter Larsen, vice president of multichannel commerce and fulfillment at Amazon, discussed their collaboration and how it’s setting new fulfillment standards for the footwear industry.

“We’re getting faster every single year,” Larsen said of the marketplace platform’s delivery improvements. The collaboration with Adidas meant Amazon had to think differently about the supply chain because “Adidas has many products that turn over frequently,” Larsen said.

Chaney said one challenge involved supply and how the two had to “synchronize” their respective inventory feeds. Some early marketplace orders saw cancellations because the German athletic brand wasn’t as fast on their end with inventory information and what was available for shipment. Once that was figured out, Adidas began seeing the revenue uplift it had expected and higher conversion rates.

Chaney also said a pain point was callers to customer service asking where packages were and when they would be delivered. But with the collaboration, Amazon Prime-enabled deliveries are now within two to three days. The reduction of those service calls were a “big win” for Adidas, Chaney said.

For LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, incorporating AI isn’t about removing the human touch in luxury — from handcrafted handbags and hand-sewn couture to white-glove customer service. It’s about heightening personal experiences and helping the company deliver on its “human values,” namely creativity and innovation, excellence and entrepreneurship. That message came from Gonzague de Pirey, chief omnichannel and data officer at LVMH, who said, “Human is a core value of luxury, and if we want to successfully develop technology, it needs to be everywhere, but visible nowhere.” He said the company calls this concept “quiet tech.”

AI Priorities

Many companies use AI as a means toward efficiency, but for LVMH, the goal was primarily business development and supporting the group’s values. After piloting and scaling a few use cases over the last couple years, LVMH embarked on a group-wide AI transformation plan. Recognizing that each of its more than 75 houses is unique, the conglomerate is enabling each business unit to develop its own plan that fits its DNA. Although brand specific, these strategies address a few common priorities: commerce, marketing and operations.

Within Louis Vuitton, AI investments are focused on four key areas: enhancing creativity, reaching the right clients, elevating the customer experience and operational efficiencies, such as demand planning. “It’s a way to dream boldly, execute, invest on the topics and initiatives that really prove we can move the needle impacting our business and our client experience,” said Soumia Hadjali, Louis Vuitton’s global senior vice president, client development and digital.

Using AI for creative purposes comes with risks, so LVMH is testing the combination of AI and creativity at some houses. For instance, at Louis Vuitton, AI is being used to help designers visualize materials and colors faster, providing more time to focus on craftsmanship and the narrative behind the products. AI is also being leveraged to generate e-commerce assets.

In customer engagement, the use of AI is about “augmentation, not automation,” providing client advisers with consumer insights to support engagement, explained Hadjali. “AI really opened the capabilities, and the signature remains really human and distinctive,” she said.

Louis Vuitton’s use of agentic commerce goes beyond the transactional. Hadjali described it as “orchestrating that entire ecosystem around one client,” creating a personalized experience and journey based on insights about the customer. With millions of clients, AI is about delivering experience and relevance at the right time, at scale. “It’s mainly about anticipating, understanding, integrating, responding to our clients’ intents, and building at the same time, trust, legitimacy,” she said.

Two years into the future of AI at LVMH, de Pirey said a marker of success would be to involve everyone in the company with a culture very open to AI. “That would translate into, of course, greater business, greater market share, greater performance, greater financial performance. If we are able to, thanks to AI, increase the desire for our brands, that would be the absolute key for success.”

Emma Grede, cofounder of the Good American and Skims brand, and Ben Francis, CEO and founder of Gymshark, outlined what made their companies successful and how agentic AI is part of it.

Grede said that because customers are already exploring AI, it behooved her businesses to do the same. “We’re in the midst of a really seismic change,” she said. “To be where our customer is, we have no other choice than to be in it.”

She views AI as a “second executive brain” that can take on tasks done by staffers. “We built these incredible businesses based on what the data is telling us, by being obsessed with our customer and obsessed with the product. But there’s a whole other side of what we do — market research and obsessing over the competition that, quite frankly, AI can do at a speed no human would ever find manageable. So for me, it’s not about taking anything human out of what we do, it’s actually leaving ourselves the time to do the stuff only we can do.”

Francis said that when he founded Gymshark in 2012, it was strictly online. Gymshark has since opened stores, though digital still represents the bulk of the business. But his goal remains the same: “to build the greatest gym apparel brand in the world, in a market that is so saturated by sports, athleisure and fashion.”

Although tempted, he’s resisted expanding the offering beyond his core product to boost sales, and it’s paid off. “We found that as we narrowed our product base, we’ve narrowed our focus…And the business has grown far more quickly than when we were trying to appeal to everyone,” he said. Gymshark has built a $1 billion business with just eight physical stores and a big online business. With brick-and-mortar, “It’s so easy to over-expand and alienate that core customer, but the second [you] do that, it’s very difficult to recover.”

When Good American launched a decade ago, it offered product up to size 15, breaking the conventional rules of fashion. But because she was an “outsider,” Grede said she didn’t feel compelled to follow the rules. “You can no sooner launch a cosmetics brand with 10 shades of foundation than you can launch a clothing brand with this very narrow idea of what size people’s butts should be.” She followed the same playbook with Skims, which also paid dividends. “For me, it was just about taking out all of the preconceived notions…We’re not very referential. I think that’s our superpower. We don’t forecast trend, we create trend.”

Breakthrough Moments

Stefani Fleurant, executive vice president of lifestyle marketing at Authentic Brands Group, said among the brand management and entertainment platform’s biggest hits have been Lucky Brand’s back-to-school campaign with Addison Rae, Aeropostale’s collaboration with Demetra Dias, and Reebok’s deal with WNBA star Angel Reece. These breakthrough consumer moments are part of Authentic’s mission to “acquire, protect and grow” its 50-plus brands through a “digital-first strategy.”

Fleurant said the company early on worked with creatives to get its message out. But in recent years, consumers have gotten more selective. “Product has to earn its place,” she said. Creators have to “drive credibility,” she said, and help develop storytelling for each brand. Fleurant said Aeropostale actually brought Diaz on board as an intern last summer, where she co-created her collection with the company. When it dropped, Aeropostale skyrocketed to number three on the shopping section of the app store for that weekend.

While JD Sports Fashion plc is an early adopter of agentic commerce evolution, it’s not losing sight of a fundamental point of retail: delivering on promises across channels. “As a retailer, the main goal is to serve your clients in the best way in every single place they want to be served,” said Olivier Nachba, deputy chief technology officer at JD Sports, in a conversation with Fluent Commerce’s chief strategy officer Nicola Kinsella.

Around 20 percent of JD Group’s sales come from online channels; 80 percent is stores. Roughly 50 percent of its customer base is young, including teenagers who are early tech adopters.

Nachba sees agentic commerce as another channel and opportunity for JD Sports to reach customers. Preparing for agentic commerce, JD Sports is getting its communications ready with generative engine optimization. Like search engine optimization before it, GEO is about sharing product data in a way that enables information to be gleaned by large language models such as ChatGPT or Gemini. Through GEO, JD Sports is gearing up for a global presence across every LLM. And to populate GEO, the company needs good data and content. 

“Our challenge is how we are going to be able to generate enough valid content targeted for our customer at scale level,” said Nachba. “We are leveraging a lot of AI to give superpower to our teams.”

With agentic commerce, much like online searches linking to e-commerce sites, there is the risk that comes with being on the same platform as competitors. Nachba pointed to delivery as a competitive asset, and this is where order management systems come into play.

Order Management Systems Key

“Order management system is a backbone of your operation (and) how you are going to serve your clients, and it’s a backbone of your delivery promise of your customer and your stock optimization,” said Nachba. “But what is really important is to understand how you are going to make people work around the order management system.”

Without cross-organization alignment, Nachba explained a company’s brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce department could have competing priorities for order fulfillment, since they each want to move inventory out of their channel to protect their bottom lines. Order management systems like Fluent Commerce start with what the consumer wants to order and use rules — such as choosing the fulfillment method with the least emissions or the option that provides the best margins — to determine how to get the customer their desired product. The OMS also allows retailers to show customers expected delivery timelines.

Given the significant portion of company sales that are via brick-and-mortar locations, Nachba said the in-store experience needs to provide the “best service.” This includes arming associates with training and tools so they can get product to the customer even if it is not in stock at that particular door.

JD Group has linked up with CommerceTools and Stripe, becoming the first retailer to use their agentic commerce suite. This will enable it to sell on platforms like ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot in the U.S., a market that accounts for roughly 40 percent of the group’s $15 billion global business.

“You need to have a clean house,” he said. “You can’t build something if the ground floor is not solid, so we are doing the job with all the team to have a structured data, an exposition of our data, the…source of truth of every single aspect of our business, to be sure that we will be able to leverage it.”

Marco Benasedo, chief information officer at Boggi, the Milan menswear brand that hosted a breakfast at its store on Columbus Circle with tech partner Hekanize, cautioned that while Boggi is open to using AI, it is not at the expense of humans. He stressed that any action centered around creativity is still being performed by people since the human touch cannot be underestimated. By embracing technology, cumbersome tasks previously handled by headquarters and store staff can be reallocated, including inventory control and connecting frontline workers with back-office details needed to do jobs effectively.

Brooklinen CEO Billy May and Steve Madden direct-to-consumer president Josh Krepon hammered down on today’s retail realities. Krepon acknowledged the impact AI is having on the world but he believes the retail industry will move a bit slower to adopt the technology. “I don’t have a lot of concern for jobs on the brand side,” Krepon said. “We’re still on the augment phase, and I do think AI will actually create new jobs over the next 10 to 20 years.”

May concurred, saying, “If it’s a rote process that can certainly be automated, then that individual can move elsewhere in the company. Is there going to be mass layoffs? No. Will it be a redistribution of talent, 100 percent. And I think that organizations or functions that aren’t thinking about how to incorporate AI right now are the ones that are going to end up being most affected. The only way to predict the future is to be a part of it. You’ve got to be actively engaged and adopting and thinking about how to integrate AI into your organization, out of opportunity, as opposed to out of fear.”

– With contributions from Sarah Jones, Vicki M. Young and Stephen Garner