Reimagining Retail in the Age of AI
You Don't Need More AI Pilots—You Need a Strategic Vision
This session is for retail executives who see AI everywhere but struggle to prioritize where it matters most. We'll skip the buzzwords and focus on what leaders actually need: a clear framework for thinking about AI across product creation, operations, and customer relationships—and how to turn that vision into decisive action.
From trend forecasting to dynamic pricing, from store associate empowerment to supply chain intelligence, AI is reshaping what retailers sell, how they operate, and how they build lasting customer loyalty. This executive session is designed for leaders who own growth, margins, and customer experience in omnichannel retail environments.
What You'll Be Able to Do
By the end of this 90-minute session, you'll be able to identify the 3-5 highest-impact AI opportunities across your product, operations, and customer experience value chain. You'll know how to explain to your board and leadership team why AI investment in retail is about business model transformation, not just efficiency. You'll recognize which AI capabilities are table stakes versus true competitive differentiators in modern retail.
You'll build a prioritization framework that balances quick wins with transformational bets as you scale AI adoption. And you'll walk away with practical tools to align your merchandising, store operations, digital, and supply chain teams around a unified AI vision—turning fragmented experiments into strategic advantage.
This Session Is NOT:
❌ A technical deep dive into machine learning algorithms
❌ A vendor showcase or product demo session
❌ A tutorial on how to build AI models from scratch
This Session IS:
✅ A strategic guide for retail executives who need to lead AI transformation without becoming data scientists
✅ Real examples from leading apparel, specialty retail, and DTC brands—and how their leaders made critical AI decisions
✅ Frameworks you can use immediately to evaluate your team's AI roadmap and investment priorities
Perfect For:
Retail executives overwhelmed by AI hype and tired of disconnected pilot projects. Leaders who need to build a cohesive AI strategy but don't know where to start. Business executives who own P&L, customer experience, and brand—not the technology stack. Anyone who's been told "AI will change everything" and thought "but what do I actually do on Monday?"
Specific roles include:
Chief Merchandising Officers and VP/SVP Merchandising
Chief Customer/Experience Officers
VP/SVP Store Operations and Retail Excellence
Chief Supply Chain Officers and VP Planning
General Managers and Brand Presidents at retail businesses
No technical background required.
Core Topics We'll Cover
Designing and Building Smarter Products
How AI mines trends, customer feedback, returns data, and community signals to inform design, sizing, and assortment decisions. Scenario work: using generative AI to accelerate line planning and "what-if" simulations for seasonal collections.
Running an Intelligent, Adaptive Retail Engine
Demand forecasting, allocation, and replenishment that update continuously—reducing stockouts, markdowns, and waste. Dynamic pricing, smarter promotions, and supply chains that react to real-time demand signals and local market conditions.
Creating Living Customer Relationships
AI-driven personalization across all channels (site, app, email, store) that feels human and brand-consistent. Store associates augmented with AI "co-pilots" that surface customer history, preferences, and next-best actions in real time.
Building the AI-Ready Retail Organization
What skills, team structures, data foundations, and governance models are needed before AI can truly scale. How leading retailers are rethinking roles for merchants, planners, store teams, and marketers in an AI-augmented world.
From Strategy to Execution
How to choose your first (or next) 3-5 priority areas, secure executive buy-in, and build momentum across siloed functions. Turning AI from a technology initiative into a business transformation owned by the entire leadership team.
You'll Leave With:
📋 AI Opportunity Map for Retail template (product → operations → customer, with impact/effort scoring)
📋 One-page AI Investment Prioritization Framework for leadership alignment
📋 Sample 90-day AI sprint plan with roles, milestones, and success metrics
📋 Real case studies from Lululemon-style community-driven brands and retail clients
Our Facilitator
With deep expertise in retail strategy and AI transformation, our facilitator has worked with leading apparel, DTC, and specialty retail brands to turn AI experiments into business results. Specializing in translating technical AI capabilities into business value across merchandising, operations, and customer experience—focusing on what retail executives need to make confident, strategic decisions in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Featured Examples & Insights From:
Leading athletic apparel brands using AI for community-driven product innovation
Fashion retailers with 3,500+ stores leveraging smart pricing and dynamic markdown optimization
Retail and CPG case studies: demand forecasting, product recommendations, and supply chain intelligence
Emerging best practices and retail AI thought leaders
What to Bring: Your toughest questions about where AI fits in your retail strategy—and where it doesn't.
Space is limited to ensure meaningful conversation and peer exchange.