Snippets From NRF 2025
NRF’s Big Show in New York this month gathered tens of thousands of global attendees from every corner of the retail and consumer goods landscape.
Sessions and exhibitions proved that collaboration across the space between technologists and retail and CPG leaders is driving innovation, from emerging AI technologies like agentic AI to democratizing creativity and reshaping consumer experiences.
Take a look as experts set the stage for what’s to come.
Tech and Tears
NRF began its unofficial annual start with the RetailROI SuperSaturday event, often known as “Tech and Tears.” The retailer-led group, helmed by IHL Group president Greg Buzek, raises funds for initiatives that seek to help vulnerable children around the world.
The full-day event, now in its 16th year, featured a variety of content and networking sessions, including a panel with Jon Harding, Conair Global CIO; Glenn Allison, vice president, Tractor Supply Company; and Jose Luis Ortiz, head of sales, Microsoft. The group discussed some of the AI trends reverberating throughout the consumer goods and retail industry, including the emerging agentic AI.
Allison detailed how Tractor Supply is developing agentic AI models to explore automating some manual organizational processes, such as help desk calls and repetitive processes in accounting. Harding agreed that there are many possible use cases in consumer products, noting that they are following the technology — ”not fast following but following.”
The event also featured an inspiring session with Alexis Russell, founder and CEO of Alexis Russell Jewelry, who shared a window into the extreme challenges of growing up in the U.S. foster care system. Russell urged attendees to understand the power of believing in someone, including the life-changing ability to recognize someone’s value.
B2B Commerce Transformation Insights From Colgate
When looking to overhaul its B2B commerce landscape, Colgate looked at developing its own core on top of VTEX platforms to provide flexibility around adapting to local market needs, changing regulations, etc.
“We're not saying we've built Frankenstein over here because we've got to be thinking always where we're going,” said Helen Murray, SVP of IT at Colgate Palmolive. The company has left room for leaning into its internal expertise with employees who have been around the Colgate model for a while so they can understand the experience side of the integration as well.
The company has also been focused on automation, implementing AI-powered quality assurance testing.
“If we think about the brands and the products we have out there, we feel very proud about how scientifically driven they are and the quality of those products. We want our systems and digital solutions that we're putting out there to customers to match that same level of quality. And so we're unlocking the momentum around that tech strategy to continuously deliver new features and functionality.”
Creating a Win-Win With Data-Sharing
C&S Wholesale Grocers was looking for a way to streamline operations with its thousands of suppliers. To do so, it began collecting data from customers and sharing it with suppliers to optimize the supply chain process.
“Beyond just sharing data, we're really talking about how do we do business differently together because we're sharing data: how do we utilize the functionality of systems that we have to drive better supply chain outcomes?” posed Andrew Connell, senior vice president of procurement. “And so sharing data is a great step, although we have to actually utilize it to do business differently together; to deploy inventory to storage differently, to plan holidays or seasonal shifts differently to respond to storms or other challenges in the supply chain differently because we're utilizing data.”
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For Family Dollar, data sharing with CPG vendors has created alignment in inventory processes. The initial challenge was around the company and its supply chain partners using different forecasts to predict inventory needs and ensure supply was on track.
“This year we invested in a vendor collaboration with our supplier … the analysts have dashboards and they're able to work through the same forecast,” said Kim Ramsey, VP of inventory management at Family Dollar. “So we're aligned on making sure that we're using that same data to measure our inventory levels and days of supply.”
Troubleshooting With Technology
Technology providers in the CPG and retail industries are on the front lines when it comes to understanding the challenges plaguing the C-suite. They have a deep understanding of how capabilities that integrate analytics, artificial intelligence, automation, and more can not only optimize efforts, but reduce their manual strain. Learn what they’re hearing from customers today.
The Challenge: Reducing manual efforts
“When generative AI came along, we saw an opportunity to add a conversational experience to workforce management, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it because almost all of our users are desk-less workers. They're not in front of a computer all day long. So the best way for them to engage with workforce management software and get complex things executed is by having a conversation and saying, 'I need this shift to change and AI will do it for you,' or 'I need this timesheet to be approved and AI will do it for you.'” — Sanish Mondkar, CEO, Legion Technologies
The Challenge: Opening up the data floodgates
“It’s a very contentious relationship [between retailers and CPGs]. You talk to the retailer and they point the finger at the CPG. You talk to the CPG, they do the same thing. At the end of the day, the retailer has the same goals as the CPG and vice versa: they want the right product in the right store at the right price and at the right volume. The sharing of data back and forth allows for effective promotions to take place to identify that performance. We're seeing more of a breakthrough in that market to be able to better align, whether it's through promo planning or other ways, to be able to hone in on specific products that impact business performance to the bottom line.” — Cohen Roberts, Director, Vendor Collaboration Team, DemandTech
The Challenge: Understanding the identity of your customers
“We're in an era now where personalization is one-to-one. Personalization is possible in a way that it never has been before. However, that doesn't really matter if you don't know who your customers are. So for example, if you want to personalize based off of customers' interests or the purchases they've made or how they've interacted on your website, that really starts with this understanding of customer identity and how they've interacted with you across all of these different touchpoints. If you don't have the underlying data, they're just going to fall flat.” — Joyce Gordon, Head of Generative AI, Amperity
The Challenge: Maintaining consumer loyalty
“This year we identified something called silent loyalty, which means you just quietly purchase the same things over and over again and keep coming back. That's gone down. It’s just kind of not a thing anymore. … We don't do anything quietly anymore as a consumer. Consumers feel very, very empowered. They feel very comfortable speaking either for a brand or against a brand and all of the channels that are available to them. They also realize that they can make an impact on that brand. And so they are taking advantage of that.” — Meghann York, Global Head of Product Marketing, SAP CX
The Challenge: Getting your arms around inventory
“I think we're finally to that tipping point where RFID tags have become cheap enough, ubiquitous enough. Most retailers have a bunch of stuff in their store already, wood tags … they don't even know it. So once that happens, just getting the readers makes it so you can know where your things are, down to a very close location, which helps for things like SKU counting, picking up an order for curbside pickup, etc.” — Matthew Guiste, Global Retail Technology Strategist, Zebra
The Challenge: Expediting digital transformations
“When decision-makers make a decision, they're ready to move. Before in retail, we would see a decision-maker want to implement a new technology, and they were okay with a 12- to 18-month rollout, especially major nationwide, large retailers. Now when those CIOs are making that decision and they want to bring in the latest AI technology, they want it implemented tomorrow and they're ready to invest and they're ready to grow.” — Joe Austin, VP of Solutions Architecture, Comcast Business
The Challenge: Powering in-store CPG retail execution
“AI can significantly enhance retail execution in-store by improving efficiency, accuracy, and customer engagement. It can not only enable management of inventory levels by predicting sales trends, seasonal demand, and potential supply chain disruptions, but it can power dynamic planograms by location vs. region and also planogram compliance using image recognition. Look for it to power price optimization based on data inputs, as well as serve up cross-sell, up-sell, equipment service and planogram data to a field seller or merchandiser.” — Justin Honaman, Head, Worldwide Retail, Restaurants & Consumer Goods Business Development, AWS
The Challenge: Improving consumer experiences through employee experiences
“There’s a lot of work going around new user experiences for the store associate on the basis that if the store associate gets a great experience, they deliver a great experience to their customer. It is all about equipping the associate in the store with the right data, the right analytics, and the right AI outcomes to be able to help the shopper. By that, I mean the associate can start to understand much more about the customer. They might know what segments that customer is in, what their interests are, and artificial intelligence helps us make those segments smaller. And because we know the customer really well, we can then make offers to that customer that are really relevant to the customer.” — Antony Wildey, VP, Global Sales Consulting, Oracle
The Challenge: Building sustainable AI strategies
“I can't emphasize enough how important [governance and ethics around AI] is and will continue to be. There needs to be a very solid foundation that all companies have set and implemented and continue to think about and iterate, because the pace of technological change is moving so fast, the governance model that you put in 18 months ago may not still be sufficient for what's required going forward.” — Ali Furman, Consumer Markets Lead, PwC
The Challenge: Recognizing the double-edged sword of customizable technology
“A lot of companies get into the trap of doing customization. ‘This customer wanted this thing, and they were the biggest customer ever.’ Then the next biggest customer comes along, and you get a huge octopus of technical debt inside of R&D. I think a lot of modern providers are moving to that space where they realize that we don't need to get on that path again.” — Dan Mitchell, SVP Platform Strategy, Digital Wave Technology
The Challenge: Creating a cohesive commerce experience
“We're still on this hunt for the holy grail of unified commerce. CPG has to go B2B, but also, most of them are going B2C. How do you orchestrate your whole process, your technology infrastructure, to accommodate both? Unified commerce continues to be the challenge because your consumers are shopping and our behaviors are changing. So you’ve got to have a way to address them when they're shopping in stores, either through a partner or directly with you, shopping through your online e-commerce site, shopping through your mobile app, shopping through even pop-ups, honestly. One thing that we notice is a lot of people, including CPG, are going for social channels as well.” — Ann Sung Ruckstuhl, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Manhattan Associates
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How Autonomous AI Will Transform Retail Experiences
Consumer goods companies continue to eye artificial intelligence agents to automate processes that can drive revenue growth. Two brands, SharkNinja and Pandora, are already underway with their use cases, using autonomous AI to transform consumer experiences.
“It’s an opportunity to really bring products to life from an experience perspective. So how do we compliment the amazing products we create by creating the right journey for those consumers?” asked Velia Carboni, CIO of SharkNinja. “It is leveraging all the data that we have with these products and being able to do that at scale.”
Technology Is Democratizing Creativity at Scale
Creativity at scale has been democratized thanks to the introduction of new technologies, which are enabling retailers and brands to leverage their creative work at scale, according to David Hartman, vice president of creative at Walmart.
With a state-of-the-art production studio and internal agency, Walmart Creative Studio has become the heart of Walmart’s operations.
“It’s an exciting time to have these tools available to us, but you don’t have to have these facilities to be creative with that size and scale,” he said. “In many ways, the access to technology has democratized the creativity process, so no matter what the size of the retailer, we all have the opportunity to meet the customer where they are.”
The Benefits of Enterprise Automation
Time is money, according to PepsiCo’s data automation manager Mark Thylstrup, and it’s precisely why agentic AI-driven automations are set to disrupt CPG business operations, further reducing manual efforts by relying more on AI agents and cutting back on human validation.
At PepsiCo, Thylstrup said automation has helped streamline onboarding efforts for contractors. “They had no ability to do anything, and our companies were paying money for them to sit on the bench,” he said.
Analytics at the Heart of Modern Merchandise Planning
Planning for weather-driven demand, weather sensitivity, and weather volatility have become crucial for retailers in not only meeting consumer demand but also providing retail and brand inventory teams with confidence.
“We can, for example, use historical data and analytics to more accurately predict demand for specific items, helping us to better prepare in advance, which is important,” said Randy Bermea, senior product manager for inventory management at Texan grocer H-E-B. “It also means we can inform our supply chain teams so that they can prepare for spikes.”
