Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.

Retail Brew

Katishi Maake

retailbrew.com

Gen Zers are more resistant to ‘doom spending’ than you’d think

80% say doom spending and soft saving don’t reflect their financial habits: survey.

Gen Zers are more resistant to ‘doom spending’ than you’d think 

Resale is growing increasingly popular online: report 

45% of younger shoppers would prefer to buy secondhand online.

Alex Vuocolo

Shoppers’ pickier habits are spreading to essentials

Consumer spending reveals priorities.

Shoppers’ pickier habits are spreading to essentials, data shows  

E-Commerce

Vidhi Choudhary

Ahead of the holiday season, Retail Brew made a trip to Chicago where retail executives spoke candidly about AI search, tariffs, and assortment overhauls at Shoptalk Fall. However, the Windy City’s crisp September weather made retail’s moment of networking gold even better—although not without a jacket.

During the show, we learned that retailers and brands of all sizes have to be invested in testing and being dynamic about AI. Despite the speed of change, prioritizing a smooth customer experience is crucial, top retail executives said during keynote sessions.

The “best metric” for winning within AI-driven search is when “search becomes invisible”—a sign of a seamless customer experience, Ranjeet Bhosale, VP of digital product management at Target, said at Shoptalk.

“The future for us is, at Target, we believe in guest experience,” Bhosale added. “And guest experience is not just about bringing relevant results. It’s also to reduce friction within finding the assortment.”

Bhosale said Target is modernizing its search platform to support longer queries because of the advent of generative AI. “The power and the rate at which GenAI is evolving is exciting, but at the same time relentless,” Bhosale said. Target has also noticed consumers are leaning into longer queries because of the advent of generative AI, he added.

Over the last year, the big box retailer has doubled down on its investments in GEO and modernizing its search platform.

“What this has enabled us to do is make sure that we are supporting the guests with their longer queries,” Bhosale said, “and be able to iterate on that while not impacting our core search experience, making sure that our core product data is right.”

“We are getting ready for a world where the guest may not be directly coming to Target.com but they may be using a shopping assistant externally to browse Target on their behalf,” Bhosale added.

Target is also preparing for agent-to-agent interactions.

 In fashion, AI tools are quickly operating as fashion stylists. For fashion giant H&M, celebrating a quarter century in the US, adapting to this new AI and data-driven world order has meant making pivots to its website, stores, and product offering.

“I’ve really been focused over the past year on how we can elevate the fashion authorization of the brand and really make that experience come to light for our customers, not only with product but also the full shopping experience,” Nicole Parry, head of merchandising of Americas at H&M, said at Shoptalk.

Within fashion, trend cycles are moving “much faster than they ever did before” prompting bigger changes across all consumer touchpoints, Parry added.

“Maybe you would have had a trend that could last you for a whole season [or] six months. Now, you might need to manage 10 different trends within that period,” she said. “It’s really just not enough to be relevant with your product offer, you need to make sure that you continue that experience through all of the touchpoints that you have with your customer—whether that might be your website, your store, TikTok, Instagram, email.”

 Moving on to fashion for your furniture. For online furniture retailer Wayfair, moving from online to physical retail came in response to what shoppers wanted.

“We really got into physical retail because in the furniture category, the majority of the shopping is still done offline,” Kate Gulliver, CFO and chief administrative officer at Wayfair, said during a keynote at Shoptalk. “Our view was that we wanted to be where our customers are, whether that was online, on the phone, or in the store, we wanted to be present there.”

Gulliver said it was “surprising” to learn that more than 50% of the customers who shopped at Wayfair stores were actually new to its customer file, meaning they had never previously shopped with the retailer, which she said has an active base of 19 million customers.

“There’s definitely a consumer out there who prefers that store experience and needs to have that access point. We’re also finding that some categories that are maybe a little bit more challenging for the shopper to digest online do quite well in the store,” Gulliver added.

When Wayfair planned to go omnichannel, it first tested smaller, 10,000-sq-ft specialty stores featuring curated selections. The company’s moves into the physical store space has led to new learnings like faster delivery speed matters and seasonal merchandise boosts in-store sales.

Retail execs talk AI, assortment overhauls, and getting back to in-store retail at Shoptalk Fall

Target, Wayfair, and H&M execs discuss retail strategies driving their respective businesses.

Amazon is investing more than $1 billion in the wages and benefits of transportation and fulfillment employees.

The e-commerce giant said it’s increasing average pay to more than $23 per hour and average total compensation to $30 per hour with a new benefits package that includes a reduced-cost healthcare plan at $5 per week and $5 copays.

“A lot of the changes we’re sharing today are based on what our employees say matters to them, and they’re just one example of how we listen and respond to feedback,” Udit Madan, SVP of Amazon Worldwide Operations, wrote in a 

Over the past three years, fulfillment and transportation workers have seen their pay increase 35% on average, per Amazon.

The company is offering lower healthcare costs on its entry-level plan and raising the annual progression of wage increase, known as a step plan, which means “the longer people stay, the more their pay increases year over year,” Madan wrote.

However, wages and benefits are not the only things that matter to workers: Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley last week 

 to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos expressing their concerns about the company’s scheduling practices.

The letter cited a “new Harvard study” finding that 41% of Amazon employees are notified about their schedule less than two weeks ahead of time. This practice is known as just-in-time scheduling, and the senators contend that is “unworkable” for employees trying to balance responsibilities outside of their job such as education and caregiving.

“Amazon is running its years-old playbook: squeezing workers while raking in sky-high profits. We’re fighting back to make sure Amazon’s employees are treated fairly, not thrown under the bus so Amazon and its wealthy executives can get even richer,” Warren wrote.Rachael Lighty, policy communications and economic impact public relations lead at Amazon, told 

 (which Bezos owns) that the letter asserted inaccurate information, and that “the vast majority” of full- and part-time workers “have consistent schedules.”

Amazon invests $1 billion in transportation and fulfillment workers 

The e-commerce giant is putting money behind higher wages and higher-valued benefit packages.

Jeena Sharma

From Alexander Wang and Collina Strada to Calvin Klein and LaQuan Smith, a lot of familiar names returned to New York Fashion Week this year. Among them was eBay, which was back with another iteration of its endless runway show in partnership with CFDA and designers such as Altuzarra, Eckhaus Latta, Kallmeyer, and Luar. The secondhand platform will also be hosting a show in London.

In New York, models strode a dimly lit runway just steps from Madison Square Park with attendees including top influencers like Wisdom Kaye and celebrities like Katie Holmes and Hari Nef.

Ebay displayed archival looks sourced from participating designers all available for purchase through eBay Live. But while eBay has established itself as a top secondhand destination, the question for many was: What was it doing at Fashion Week?

Nora Kleinewillinghoefer, partner in the consumer practice at Kearney—where she leads apparel, lifestyle brands, and luxury—told Retail Brew it helps the brand provide more reach and reposition itself.

“You’re writing about it because it’s a big deal and because it’s something unique and different,” she said. “It gives them an opportunity to really change the narrative and start a new conversation.”

Citing Kearney’s 2025 Annual Circular Fashion Index Report, which she co-authored, Kleinewillinghoefer said resale is underleveraged at the moment despite high demand. According to the report, the circular fashion market is forecast to grow ~12% CAGR by 2028 for secondhand fashion, but about 70% of brands still score in the “limited” range for resale.

While consumers have given resale a big thumbs up, a feature at New York Fashion Week adds a layer of legitimacy.

“Some of the platforms that are out there and some of the solutions that have done resale have in some ways eroded at the value of the product, or have had really high fees,” Kleinewillinghoefer said, adding that as an established platform for the “commercial model,” eBay helps give consumers “another avenue” to address some of the “issues with current resale models that are available.”

“Partnering with designers gives that credibility, and takes what eBay does well and brings it into a new forum and creates that splash and shows consumers that opportunity,” she said.

And for designers? For starters, it offers emerging and mid-tier brands a way to stand out and differentiate themselves. Plus, it’s always good to have an element of “sustainability signaling,” Kleinewillinghoefer said.

“It’s showing that you think about the longevity and life of your product and that you design for the long run,” she said. “Of course, it’s another revenue and resale channel, which already has credibility as a platform, but now can gain credibility more broadly speaking.”

But whether it’s the designers at Fashion Week or companies like eBay, expect to see more of this on the runways in the coming seasons, not just from eBay but other platforms that have already thrown their hat in the ring.

“It’s not necessarily a quick win opportunity or just a marketing play,” Kleinewillinghoefer said. “It’s a real chance to start something new and build trust with the consumer to make sure that it can move forward.”

What’s eBay doing at Fashion Week?

The secondhand platform returned to NYFW with another iteration of its endless runway show in partnership with a series of designers. 

Searching for an item on the internet isn’t what it used to be, mostly because we’re all ditching typing fragments and scrolling endlessly, thanks to AI. Nowadays, a shopper can simply ask for “the best fall jacket under $150” or a “cozy but modern sofa” and get precisely what they mean.

 made by Google to AI tools like Amazon’s Lens Live are in many ways reshaping the convenience of search and shopping online and making this shift possible. Amazon recently dropped 

—a visual search tool that lets you point your camera at stuff and instantly get product matches plus commentary from Rufus, its AI shopping assistant.

AI tools like Amazon Lens and Google Shopping, among others, act as personal shoppers, weaving together context, preferences, and recommendations in natural conversation, transforming search from a chore to a chat that coughs up what you’re looking for on the first try.

“The journey for search has always been to really ensure that the consumer is getting what they need based on their queries,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, told Retail Brew. “What we’re now seeing is an evolution of the search happening almost at a prompt level. Where the prompt—it’s really taking in much more context, almost than even the searches.”

“A search is just a product or some item that you’re looking for. Maybe that’s the traditional path we’ve thought about in terms of a search query, but when we think about a Gen AI prompt, it’s filled with a lot more context,” Pandya added.

And companies like Google and Amazon are both steering directly into this frame of shopping by adapting their search and shopping experiences and embedding AI tools they’ve built in-house. Google, for instance, has upgraded its shopping experience with new AI features including a virtual try-on tool, agentic checkout, and AI-powered product discovery within AI Mode. It has also introduced its Search Generative Experience (SGE), which uses generative AI to provide more conversational and context-rich responses to shopping queries.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s recent AI upgrades include a suite of new tools like Lens Live for real-time visual search, personalized AI Shopping Guides, and its interactive Rufus AI assistant.

Another marker that AI is truly transforming the consumer journey is 

 from AI platforms has seen a big upswing recently. Per Adobe data, traffic from generative AI-powered links to retail websites has surged up 4,700% in July.

“Consumers are much more comfortable giving [Generative AI] a lot more information to give background on what consumers need,” Pandya said. “And so then we get these very sophisticated, advanced responses from the Gen AI platform. That is where we see Gen AI really setting a new bar in terms of whatever journey the consumer is on to get the goods they need.”

“So in a way, search has to evolve to meet that new world we’re in, and how it can rationalize the traditional experience that it’s provided consumers with what they’ve come to expect based on Gen AI prompts, and that the responses it’s getting there,” Pandya added.

From a brand’s perspective executives are cautiously optimistic and measured about the evolution of product search with AI. Dibs Beauty CEO Jeff Lee 

 in July that there is still no clear winner when it comes to search, not even Google: “We haven’t found a true winner yet, and I think it’ll be some time before we find that one great solution that replaces all search for customers discovering brands.”

Looks like the prompt for this year is: big year of change for online shopping.

Why the shopping search function will be rebuilt because of AI

AI tools are becoming the new personal shoppers, stitching context, preferences, and product recommendations into one conversation. 

The holiday rush may still be weeks away, but retailers are in full holiday hustle mode. Fittingly, that theme was front and center at Retail Brew’s in-person gathering in July.

“Rewiring Retail: Mastering Data, Inventory, and the Online Customer Experience” in New York City saw top retail executives bring their A-game with hot takes for the upcoming holiday season. Here are some of the top takeaways from our chats with some of the best speakers in the business.

 that while shoppers are still spending, the consumer is reeling under pressure.

According to Maggie Barnett, COO of ShipHero, brands are going to invest toward their mainline essentials this holiday season. “We’re going to have a lot of products, but again, it’s going to be a limited run,” Barnett told Retail Brew. “We’re going to stick to core SKUs. There’s not going to be a lot of the outlier SKUs.”

Keeping costs down: ‘It’s not about UPS, FedEx, DHL anymore.’

Barnett said we’re not going to see “fully stocked shelves” this time around as inventory for Q4 is running light.

“We’re trying to get folks to get their inventory [in] early, but people are waiting till the last minute,” Barnett said. Retailers don’t want to gamble on experimental products that might just sit on shelves in January.

Barnett also flagged the growing role of regional carriers, as brands zero in on cost cutting with surgical precision: “We’re going to see a lot of regional carriers. I know that’s more to do with the last mile versus actually in-store retail. However, we’re going to see the regional carriers. It’s just not about UPS, FedEx, DHL anymore.”

Meanwhile, for health tracker ring company Oura’s VP of Global Retail Jeremiah Linder, this holiday season will be like none other as Oura sets up overseas channels to sell across parts of Europe and Australia for the first time.

“Every year, our holiday season is a new opportunity for growth,” Linder said. “We’ve also got totally different distribution versus last year in holiday.”

“That means we’re planning for businesses that this is our first holiday in Germany retail, our first holiday in Australia retail. We’ve got to get really tight with our planning now. We’ve already got inventory being built to get us ready for that holiday season,” Linder said.

Pointing to consumer sentiment, Linder struck an optimistic tone: “We expect that consumers will be a little bit more deal seeking, waiting for that period of Black Friday–Cyber Monday and into December to really commit their dollars, given some of the macroenvironment of tariffs, inflation.”

Collaboration is key to inventory forecasting this holiday season

For months, brands have wrestled with how much inventory is really enough for the holidays.

Linder said Oura relies on its retail partners to develop a “collaborative” inventory forecast. “I think that’s important so that if we miss we know that we missed together—whether that’s overshooting forecast or under shooting,” he added. “But by collaborating, we can get a sense of what their expectations are for holiday, what our expectations are, and then we can meet in the middle.”

Spice supplier Burlap & Barrel’s Co-CEO and Co-founder Ori Zohar agreed, saying that being a “good partner” always pays off.

“We are a really good partner to our partner farmers,” Zohar said. “We pay them more, we pay on time, we pay ahead of schedule. And so we’ve been really building this trusted relationship where we have this first right to the best quality that they have. Because of that, we feel like we’re in a really good position where we have exactly the inventory we need, and we’re really set up to keep growing through holidays this year.”

Overall, Zohar said brands are feeling a sense of turmoil ahead of the holidays.

“With all the political news and global news, we know that there’s a lot of displacement happening,” Zohar said. “We’re [a] more nimble company—it’s able to bob, and weave, and pivot, and figure out how to show up in the market. We’re working really hard to be ready, be on the balls of our toes to be able to react to whatever comes down our way.”

Dibs Beauty CEO speaking on a panel at Retail Brew's Retail Rewired event in NYC

Holiday season momentum was impossible to miss at Retail Brew’s event

Core SKUs, keeping costs tight, and leaning on collaboration, especially for inventory forecasting.

While many believe August is a month when not much of anything happens, that may not be the case for Shopify customers, who spent their wallet share on creating art, cleaning up, and upgrading for fall.

Orders for art, craft, and DIY essentials like craft sets, doll-making kits, felting pads and mats, and art and drafting tables jumped 483%, 251%, 108%, and 63%, respectively in August, according to data shared first with Retail Brew.

With kids heading back to school, some shoppers decided to focus on tidying up and organizing their spaces before fall. August orders for upright steam mops, lawn sweepers, and brooms went up 187%, 115%, and 81%, respectively, across Shopify stores.

Back-to-school season also struck a chord with musicians, with instruments being in high demand, as students returned to bands and orchestras. Shoppers shelled out to buy synthesizer keyboards (up 86%), metronomes (up 71%), baritone saxophones (up 62%), and acoustic drum kits (up 44%). Bass flutes (up 44%), bass trombones (up 29%), and trumpets (up 20%) also saw a moderate spike in orders.

Back-to-school season isn’t just about books—it’s also about bragging rights. Chasing recognition means orders for award ribbons and trophies, which jumped 31% and 21%, respectively.

 Meanwhile, cold-weather fashion heated up, with several wardrobe staples trending this season. Orders for bomber jackets (up 76%), sweaters (up 65%), sweatshirts (up 56%), leggings (up 56%), trench coats (up 40%), and overcoats (up 33%) all rose in August.

Football season also rallied students together—on the field as players, on the sidelines as cheerleaders, or in the stands as loyal fans. No surprises then that shoppers bought cheerleading pom poms (up 40%), American football girdles (up 34%), and football gloves (up 29%).

With baking season on the horizon, some sweet staples were also flying off shelves. Orders for pie and pastry fillings (up 52%), granulated sugar (up 29%) and bread and pastry dough (up 28%) all trended upward.

Shopify shoppers went all out for crafting, household cleaning, and jackets and sweaters in August

Shopify’s August data showed a spike in orders for craft sets, doll-making kits, bomber jackets and cleaning tools like upright steam mops.

Traffic from generative AI-powered links to retail websites has surged in recent months, up 4,700% in July, according to the latest data from Adobe.

“We’re seeing the momentum increase each month; we’re seeing the growth continue to scale,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, told Retail Brew. The surge, Pandya added, is being driven by consumer trust in the links shared by generative AI-powered platforms like Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, among others being tracked by Adobe.

“We also ran a survey—in addition to the Adobe analytics platform data that’s informing the traffic spikes that we’re observing—and there, the consumers are saying that they really trust the links we see,” he said. “More than 90% of them trust the responses they’re given from these LLM [large language models] and that’s what’s really driving the surge.”

Adobe spotted the first big wave of generative AI-driven traffic to US retail sites during the holiday season. In 2024, from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, clicks from AI sources jumped 1,300% YoY—and on Cyber Monday alone, visits spiked 1,950%. While still small compared with channels like paid search or email, the surge marks a significant shift. The data is based on Adobe’s analysis of the universe of chat services and AI-powered browser experiences.

​​Momentum carried into 2025 as generative AI traffic to retail websites rose 1,100% in January and 3,100% in April, compared to July 2024—the earliest point traffic was large enough to serve as a baseline.

Consumers using generative AI to shop online spend 32% more time on sites and view 10% more pages, another nugget of data from Adobe showed. Bounce rates from this traffic are also 27% lower.

“You have a very strategic, conscientious, research-focused user who’s exploring on the generative AI platforms their options, then getting links, then visiting the sites, then spending a stronger amount of time on the site,” Pandya added.

The path to purchase, or visits that turn into purchases, has also narrowed considerably for these users. In July, generative AI traffic was 23% less likely to convert—down from 49% in January and 38% in April.