Just a few weeks ago on March 25th-27th we held Shoptalk Spring 2025 in Las Vegas. Our Vegas Spring show is the ‘original’ and largest Shoptalk, attracting over 10,000 delegates to join us in the desert.
It’s a whirlwind of content, conversations, meetings and networking. Our agenda content programme alone features over 225 speakers, in 80+ curated content sessions, with 40+ hours of content to choose from.
It’s a lot to digest.
But now I’ve taken stock, and here’s my five learnings from Shoptalk Spring 2025, five reflections that we’re necessarily what was expected going into the show.
- The tariff scale was unexpected. Shoptalk was exactly one week before the Rose Garden press conference, and in Vegas retailers felt ready for what lay ahead. We discussed the importance of pricing agility and using AI to better understand margin impacts across the store. We discussed supply chain resilience and diversification away from China. We discussed leadership approaches. But the range of countries now impacted is wider than most seemed to be anticipating.
- Marketplaces are having a moment. Driven by three factors. Firstly, helping retailers appear in a wider range of search results. Secondly, the latest tools and platforms are making Marketplace development easier for retailers. And thirdly, retail media. The wider one’s range, the more important sponsoring search returns becomes.
- Everyone be cool about online and offline. The days of hyperbole like “physical retail is dead” seem to be a thing of the past. There’s a common acceptance now that purchasing will remain majority physical for many categories, meanwhile demand creation and influencing is now overwhelmingly digital for most products. Social, search, media and commerce are thoroughly intertwined.
- Agents are here to stay. AgenticAI was the talk of town, focused on two key use cases. Firstly, retail autopilot, creating new operational efficiencies through the automation of scheduling tasks. And secondly, Agent-to-consumer commerce, which experienced a 1,300% growth during the 2024 US Holidays.
- “Perspective has an expiration date”. My quote of the show, from Walmart’s EVP Store Operations Cedric Clarke. It speaks to the need to keep learning, not relying on old experience and old ways of working, and really captured the spirit of Shoptalk this year.
It’s less than two months now until we reconvene for our one European show, Shoptalk Europe in Barcelona, June 2nd-4th, to continue these conversations from a dedicated European stand point. I hope to see you there.
Get you tickets here: https://shoptalkeurope.com/community/tickets
365 Retail will be attending Shoptalk Europe—if you’d like to arrange a meeting to discuss opportunities with 365 Retail or the Creative Retail Awards, please email [email protected].
