The real talk happening off-mic at NRF's 'Retail's Big Show'

Good morning.

I’m currently working through recovery mode after a whirlwind few days of speaking gigs, reporting, and private meetings and meals around Retail’s Big Show, hosted by the National Retail Federation, in New York City earlier this week.

The mood this year blended optimism about a new emerging era of retail with palpable trepidation over when, who, and how this disruption hits. Personally, it was great to see a packed room for my panel on Agentic Commerce with top leaders from Wayfair, The Home Depot, and PayPal, with some attendees even listening in from an overflow space outside the main hall. I kept telling myself that the approximately 1,000 or so guests had lined up to watch The Aisle’s NRF debut, but the expertise of my panelists and the overall topic probably had just a liiiittle to do with the interest as well.

Beyond my chat, the real stars of the show were incoming Walmart CEO John Furner and Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who on Sunday announced their new AI shopping collaboration onstage, which I covered briefly over the weekend. Pichai was making his first-ever appearance at NRF’s tentpole event, in a moment that the industry could look back on years from now either as marking a catalyst for an AI-powered commerce revolution or perhaps the peak of AI commerce hype. Of course, either outcome should be preceded by several years of great fodder for a reporter to cover either way. Not sorry.

Now, on to the good stuff…

The not-so-dirty secret of mega trade shows is that they are almost never about what actually happens onstage, even though that’s what gets marketed the most. Big-name speakers can help lend credibility and sell some tickets, but the value for many attendees often comes from the leads, collaborations, and intel on the expo floor; in the windowless, stuffy meeting rooms on the periphery; and at the private dinners and cocktail parties that surround the event.

The same, probably not shockingly, is often true for journalists.

With that in mind, here’s what industry insiders were dishing about when the mics were off over the last few days. If you’re still a free subscriber, I’d argue this is a great time to upgrade to get access to the insights below and all of my future work.