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The Gist
- Agentic AI dominates retail conversations. Shoptalk Spring 2026 made one thing clear: AI is no longer experimental—it’s becoming foundational to how retail operates and competes.
- Human emotion still drives customer experience. From nostalgia to happiness, leading brands emphasize that emotional connection—not technology alone—remains the differentiator.
- Execution beats speculation. The most consistent advice: stop debating the future of AI and start testing it now—small experiments today build tomorrow’s advantage.
LAS VEGAS — What would you wait six hours in line for?
Would you wait six hours for Taylor Swift backstage passes? What about $1 million? How about to get through TSA checkpoints to board your flight?
If you’re like me, I’d wait for all of those except the flying part. If you’ve traveled recently, you know that airports aren’t holding the most popular opinion amongst travelers.
As it happened to be, I needed to fly this week to head to the city of sin and Mandalay Bay for Shoptalk spring, and if you know me – I’m ALWAYS an early airport guy – I may even borderline on the stereotypical "airport dad" vibes.
Get there early, get through security, get to the lounge – have some food, drink some wine. You know, the simple things in life.
That being said, with all of the TSA craziness swirling around – I arrived to the airport EXTRA early this week. To my surprise, there weren’t any lines at all; in fact, it took exactly eight minutes for me to get through security and to be on my way towards the lounge sanctuary.
As I sat in the lounge (extremely early I might add) and enjoyed a glass of wine, I couldn’t help but think how the TSA debacle is so relatable to the content and conversations I was likely to have this week at Shoptalk around agentic and the buzz that is AI.
Table of Contents
- Agentic or Bust
- Top Sessions I Heard
- Top Conversations I Had
- Agentic AI Is Everywhere, but Testing Still Matters More Than the Hype
Agentic or Bust
And here’s my big monologue-istic point: Sure, I could have chanced getting to the airport later, and I might have been okay, but being early has its perks. It’s a welcome surprise — and that’s very much how I feel about the state digital.
Remember this: you can’t spell retail without AI.
This week at Shoptalk, the "buzz" was all around "agentic or bust." Should you make the leap, change your entire experience to what’s likely coming in the future?
Or, is all of this just over hyped propaganda?
As I typically do at these events, here are some of my "tops" from Shoptalk Spring which should help answer a lot of the questions around agentic and the future of retail:
Related Article: Retail's Renaissance: Why Shoptalk Was All About Customer Emotion
Top Sessions I Heard
Ed LaBay, EVP at Hot Topic: Nostalgia Still Wins: Why Emotional Memory Matters More Than AI in Retail
You may not be able to spell retail without AI, but you most certainly can’t achieve success without one key ingredient: Nostalgia. If you’ve read my previous work, then you know nostalgia is something I’m big on. As Don Draper once said “It’s delicate, yet potent.”
In Ed’s session, he discussed how brands can win customers through nostalgic experience opportunities. Nostalgia is about surfacing core memories in such a way that it evokes an emotional response. It “takes you back” if you will. As Ed said, “Nostalgia isn’t about convincing customers to care, it’s about reminding them that they already do.”
In this world of agentic, it’s important for brands to remember that at the end of the day, their customers are humans. Sure, we all likely will have personal shopping AI buddies in the future, but those AI assistants are not using and consuming your products; humans are. Being able to blend emotion into the world of AI will become a success metric and a focal point for all brands going forward.
Ed’s session was a perfect reminder for all of us that we can’t lose the human element of what makes customers love our brands; in fact, it’s more important now than ever.
Christine Barone and Tana Davila, Dutch Bros: Emotion Is the Product: Dutch Bros Shows Why CX Scale Starts Long Before AI
Another thing I LOVE about Shoptalk is that the keynotes are at the END of the day, not the start. It’s a great way to pull together all the day has to offer, and inspire folks to be engaged from sunup to sundown.
So when Christine and Tana from Dutch Bros keynoted one of the late-in-the-day sessions, it was a very fitting as most of the room had pre-session caffeine-induced attention levels.
What do coffee and customer experience have in common? Simple: happiness.
Christine and Tana discussed how their brand doesn’t focus on coffee as their core product; they focus on something that can be felt.
“We needed to scale our service, that’s what we do really well. We are focused on making you happy, having fun – emotion is the product, not the coffee,” Christine described.
The continued on another point that is quite relevant to the agentic AI conversations we find ourselves in today, and that’s this.
The companies that are winning today have built and laid the foundation of success years ago. Growth and scale come from what was done last year, not today. As a brand, you must start now to plan for what’s coming down the road. If you’re thinking it’s a good time to experiment with agentic commerce, do it. If you think Gemini will become the new marketplace for customers to shop and you wonder if you should submit your products to their feeds, do it.
Start small, act now – but just, DO IT.
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Top Conversations I Had
Marta Dalton, VP of Commerce, Watts Water: Building Never Stops: Why Execution Mindset Still Separates Winners From Talkers
A quick story: about eight years ago, Marta and I met at an industry event and shared a taxi as we were staying in the same hotel. At the time, I was on the brand side; we exchanged a few ideas, said it was good to meet each other and went our separate ways.
Over the years, we stayed in touch but never saw each other again in person until this Shoptalk this week in Vegas.
And that’s the magic of these events: it brings you together with new and old friends alike.
Oh, speaking of just DOING IT, that might be my friend Marta’s middle name. Marta is one of those industry digital commerce vets that like me, loves to be in the weeds and get Sh*t done. We chatted during a Shoptalk happy hour about the "glory days" of ecommerce, how things have changed, what was to come.
But, most importantly, we discussed our shared vision of working with others who are most inspired when they are building.
The conversation left me with one simple thought: you’re only as good as your last best experience. The building never ends; it’s a progression, not a finish line.
Fiona Tan CTO, Wayfair: From Data to Discovery: How Wayfair Is Turning AI Into Real-World Shopping Experiences
Speaking of laying the foundational work to be successful today, that is personified by Fiona Tan and her vision of what the future will look like for Wayfair digitally.
In a category where emotion is so important in purchasing decisions, Fiona is extremely focused on allowing customers to discover products in a way that feels organic and natural.
“We’re focused on making the shopping experience more conversational and multimodal — that’s where the next step change in customer experience will happen,” Fiona said. “When a customer can visualize what a sofa looks like in their space and understand how it fits their style, that’s where inspiration comes from. Our goal is to make it easier to discover the right items while also giving customers room to explore and create.”
Wayfair has leaned in heavy to the world of agentic. Niraj Shah spoke about Wayfair’s “Stylist” — a new pilot agentic tool that will allow customers to have chat-based conversations with the brand to help them find the products for each use case.
But Wayfair isn’t stopping there. It is pushing BIG into retail storefronts, and the early success they are seeing here isn’t by chance or by accident.
“We started as a digital-first company, and that gives us a strong foundation as we expand into physical retail,” Fiona said. “We’re able to bring the same data, assortment and core systems from our online experience into the store environment, which allows us to deliver a more connected and consistent customer experience.”
YES. This is the type of success we like to hear. Digitally native retailers who are working toward physical experiences, driven by foundations-built years ago.
Fiona continues to discuss that most of their team’s time is spent focusing on what consumers want most. “We are learning so much from our customers — if we know you’re looking for inspiration around couches, then we can help suggest products that will resonate most,” she explains.
But all of this doesn’t happen without the elephant in the room: data. "Data has always been core to how we operate. What’s changing now is that AI allows us to turn that data into more actionable, real-time decisions across the entire customer journey."
Agentic AI Is Everywhere, but Testing Still Matters More Than the Hype
Now, I know what you might be thinking: what about what you saw? The cool stuff? What’s new and exciting?
Well, as you can imagine, it’s all agentic, all the time. Every booth. Every conversation. All focused around agentic AI. And, as mentioned, with a heavy whisper of “is all this hype real or just overblown?”
Here’s what I’ll tell you: When online shopping became a "thing" in the mid 90s, it was the wild west. New tech sprouted up daily, and not a single person knew what the future would hold.
I’m under the impression that we are currently living in very similar times; yes, agentic and AI are everywhere, you can’t escape it. Cutting through the noise is often so challenging.
But here’s the realization that not many want to say, and even less want to think about. There is no right answer. The only answer is what’s best for your customers. You must try, you must fail, you must experiment with the possibilities of the future — today. You must DO IT.
Innovation feeds on failure, and the only way that you’ll truly know if something will work for your brand and customers is if you try, fail, try, fail, try; then succeed.
As Willy Shakespeare once so eloquently wrote, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” Have the courage to take a chance, try that thing, build a POC. Let’s stop talking about it, and start testing.
JUST. DO. IT.