When it comes to off-holiday sales events, short and sweet could be the future.

“The days of putting something on sale for a week or longer are going to be behind us,” Michael Brown, partner in Kearney’s consumer products and retail practice, told Retail Brew. “What they’re trying to do right now is keep engaging the consumer with something new, something different.”

Target offered a case in point this spring sales season when instead of running promotions for a full week under the name Target Circle Week, as it had the previous year, sales were concentrated into a three-day period dubbed “Target Circle Deal Days.”

Though rivals Walmart and Amazon stuck to weeklong events this year, Brown said there is increasing pressure on brick-and-mortar retailers to offer more “rapid-fire,” shorter promotions to compete with online retailers that can change their deals on an hourly basis. There is a “new cadence of promotions,” he added, that is more “proactive” and “fast and furious.”

Keep reading here.—AV

Brides-to-be can now ask ChatGPT to find them the dress as wedding retailer David’s Bridal enters conversational commerce. The wedding dress retailer will now sell its dresses and gowns on AI platforms including Open AI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot.

“What we want to do is make sure that we’re showing up in the places that our brides are searching,” Scott Saeger, CTO at David’s Bridal, told Retail Brew. “It’s really the Amazon effect. A lot of people will start their progression in a product or whatever on Amazon. We want to be that for bridal.”

David’s Bridal is the latest entrant to the AI hype train as retailers get on board with artificial intelligence.

Keep reading here.—VC

On Wednesdays, we wear pink spotlight Retail Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

Luis Jesus Garcia is director of business growth at Via Trading, a wholesale supplier of liquidated inventory.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? Ever wonder what happens to the products you return after the holiday season? Or the items that quietly sit on a retailer’s shelves for months—then suddenly vanish? That’s my world. I work in what we call the reverse logistics industry, helping give those products a second life instead of letting them go to waste.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? Sometimes I think I work in retail’s witness protection program.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? Over my career, I’ve seen thousands of trucks and millions of SKUs—but I’ve only encountered this once: figuring out how in the world we were going to give thousands of open-box toilets a second life.

Keep reading here.—EC

On April 16, join Staffing Smarter: How Automation Turns Labor Pain into Revenue Gains to see how retailers are using AI to forecast better, connect systems, and actually make new tools stick. The payoff: stronger teams, smoother ops, and results that look intentional.

As AI agents shop on consumers’ behalf, advertising could shift into the background. Here’s how brands may adapt as ads become part of the algorithm—not the feed.