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

Andrew Adam Newman

retailbrew.com

What probably does not come up when you’re sending your boss the budget request to attend that conference in Copenhagen is that what you most hope to get out of the conference is a job somewhere else. But lanyards can make excellent lassos, and in a surprisingly candid panel at the recent Lead Summit conference in New York, retail executives discussed how connections made at industry gatherings have helped lift them out of some grim professional circumstances.

“This is obviously a slightly different panel than normal,” moderator Dominick Miserandino, CEO of Retail Tech Media Nexus, said at the beginning of the packed session. “We’re not discussing sales numbers…We’re coming to the reality that people, believe it or not, sometimes go to conferences to find a new role.”

And so began a panel free of buzzwords—not a single “AI” or “omnichannel” was uttered once over the next 30 minutes—where panelists sounded not like their LinkedIn profiles but rather very much like themselves.

“What’s important with networking is just recognizing that we’re all humans, and it’s about building relationships and getting to know people,” said Elizabeth Drori, CMO of shoe brand 

. Instead of just scanning one another’s badges, she extolled the virtues of schmoozing and asking ice-breaking questions: “Who are you? What did you take away from that event? What are you choosing for lunch?” (Andy. This article. The kale caesar salad.)

Drori recalled how her last role, as CMO and GM of e-commerce at shoe brand Sperry, ended when parent company Wolverine World Wide 

 the brand to Authentic Brands Group in 2024.

“We all lost our jobs, like the entire company,” Drori said. “When something like that happens, it’s pretty traumatic, but you also realize we’re all in this together…You have to have a little faith and a little community.”

Drori, who—fittingly for a shoe exec—eventually landed on her feet, and even hired some of her former Sperry colleagues at Kizik, came away from the experience with a new appreciation for the value of giving others in your network a boost, a boost you might need soon enough.

“I would encourage people to really relate to other people in difficult moments, when they’re looking for a job or they’re looking for help,” Drori said. And when the situation is reversed, she added, “I would encourage you not to be shy and to tell everyone you know if you’re looking for something, because you never know who knows someone.”

“I was at Barneys—RIP—till the very end,” added Danielle DiMaiolo Rendini, who’d worked in retail operations and project management at the luxury department store retailers until it 

 in 2020, and today is head of retail at American Girl.

Rendini recalled that she was on maternity leave when the company 

 for bankruptcy in 2019, so she was “coming back to work as a new mom, trying to figure out what my identity even was and what that meant, and navigating my career and family.”

When she returned to work she found herself “trying to do my role, and also taking on other roles as it was nearing the end, but also you can’t spend any money,” she said. Stressful, surely, but “what got me through it was realizing that it’s going to come to an end, there’s going to be opportunities. I’ve created a career for myself, I’ve created a network. Something will come—I’m just going to have to be a little bit patient.”

Miserandino, the moderator and a consummate networker, noted he had more than 31,000 followers on LinkedIn.

“Anyone here wants to meet someone, you connect with me and if I know them…I will connect you,” Miserandino said.

And while conferences are often consumed with learning new skills and demonstrating your competence to others, he said that when he interviews job candidates, he’s often sussing out just whether someone seems like a good egg.

“I like to interview people based on who they are more than the skill set,” Miserandino said. “I can teach you how to use Google Sheets, I can teach you how to use social media. But can I trust you? If I can trust the person, if I feel they’re a good soul, I’m with them…at that point.”

From left: Dominick Miserandino, Danielle DiMaiolo Rendini, Elizabeth Drori, and Daren Hull onstage at The Lead Summit../

How to find your next job at a conference

Job hunting on your current employer’s dime takes finesse. 

In 2022, the National Retail Federation made it plain that it was championing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

 in advance of that year’s “Big Show” conference, which is now accessible only through the Internet Archive, promised that the gathering would “highlight [the] importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Multiple panels would be part of its “DE&I Stage and Showcase,” highlighting retail’s “recommitment to the important work that remains in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

I covered that conference, and in an article recapping the show published in January 2022 wrote that DE&I “

But that’s unlikely to be anyone’s takeaway for this year’s Big Show, which begins Sunday.

Retail Brew compared this year’s Big Show programming schedule with archived versions from 

. We discovered that in three years NRF went from using DE&I terminology liberally to using it rarely or not at all:

The words “inclusive,” “inclusion,” or “inclusivity” appeared 13 times in the 2022 program but only twice in 2025.

The words “equity” or “equitable” appeared four times on both the 2022 and 2023 schedules, but not at all in 2024 or 2025.

The word “equality” appeared 26 times in the program in 2022 (when some panels were held on an “Equality Lounge” stage) but not once in the 2025 agenda.

When it comes to speakers at the conference, “diversity” appeared in their titles six times in 

, according to this year’s online list of speakers and archived versions from the three previous years. Similarly, the word “equity” appeared in speakers’ titles twice in 2022 and four times in 2023 (although in one case it was someone in the non-DE&I-related equity financing profession) but not once in 2024 or 2025.

A case for “retail vertical diversity”: 

In a statement responding to our findings, Stephanie Martz, NRF’s chief administrative officer and general counsel, said in an email that retail “is an industry of diversity, as reflected in its employees, the communities it serves, the goods it sells and the consumers that shop its brands, in stores and online.”

Martz highlighted that Tracee Ellis Ross, actor and founder of Pattern Beauty, was speaking at a keynote session at the conference. (The 

 of her talk says that Ross would be “highlighting the importance of representation and inclusivity in the beauty industry.”) She also pointed to Sephora US President and CEO Artemis Patrick appearing at the conference, and the program 

 reveals one topic she’ll address is “how Sephora continues to cultivate a community where beauty enthusiasts of all backgrounds are celebrated.”

Martz also wrote that Tommy Hilfiger, who “revolutionized global retail through his commitment to inclusivity,” was being presented with NRF’s The Visionary 2025 award during an onstage interview at the conference. 

Finally, she argued for a more expansive view of diversity. “In addition to gender and racial diversity,” she wrote, “NRF 2025 offers retail vertical diversity (soft goods, hard goods, beauty, grocery, etc.) and age and generational representation in our speakers.”

We shared NRF’s response with Kimberly Lee Minor, CEO of the Women of Color Retail Alliance, and we asked if she thought it was a stretch to characterize Hilfiger as a standard-bearer for inclusivity and whether being from different sectors of the retail industry constitutes diversity.

“Yes, it’s a stretch,” Lee Minor responded in an interview with Retail Brew. She characterized NRF’s statement overall as “a little disappointing” and “kind of status quo.”

 at The Lead Summit conference in New York in July criticized Tractor Supply for reversing most of its DE&I efforts following a campaign by conservative activists, said NRF was not alone in deemphasizing DE&I, which 

 including Target, Molson Coors, and Lowe’s have done as well.

Diversity has “been weaponized and politicized,” Lee Minor told Retail Brew, but added that companies who reject it do so at their peril.

“Why would you leave money on the table?” she asked. “Why would you not want to support those who shop you? Why would you not want your brand to reflect your customer, unless you no longer want a diverse customer base?”

Lee Minor is attending the conference and stressed that NRF has been a valuable “partner” to the WOC Alliance. Still, she prefers the way NRF championed inclusivity in 2022 over the more subdued approach of this year’s conference.

“There’s opportunity as they think about their influence in the industry to facilitate more conversations about culture and inclusivity that maybe they’ve stepped away from,” she said.

An earlier version of this story inaccurately stated that NRF made no reference to the designer Tommy Hilfiger’s commitment to inclusivity in the program for its 2025 Big Show conference.

Panelists on stage at an NRF Big Show panel in 2022, “The Achievable How: Implementing DE&I learnings inside your business.”

‘Equality’ doesn’t appear once in NRF’s 2025 Big Show schedule

Like many retailers, the trade group is backing off DE&I terminology.

‘Equality’ appeared 26 times in NRF’s Big Show schedule in 2022. This year? Not even once. 

Nobody wants to be put in a box, even a company famous for putting things in boxes. Take FabFitFun, the DTC brand that’s sold subscription gift boxes targeted at women—with products spanning beauty, fashion, fitness, and wellness—for 12 years. It’s now expanding to target a member of the household who’s adorable (but not a child) and hirsute (but not a spouse).

The company has acquired PupBox, a monthly subscription box for dogs, from Petco, for a price that FabFitFun declined to disclose.

Daniel Broukhim, co-CEO and co-founder of FabFitFun, told Retail Brew that PupBox will continue to “maintain its own identity and character.” Asked if it might bundle the two subscriptions together in the future for a cheaper price than getting them individually, he said such details are TBD.

“It’s probably something we’ll look at,” Broukhim replied. “There’s a good chance that there’s going to be some sort of bundling like that.”

According to FabFitFun, 61% of its subscribers have dogs, well over the 44.6% of Americans overall who do, per 

Launched in 2014 by Ariel and Ben Zvaifler, who are married and who built buzz for PupBox when they appeared on 

Like their newly acquired customers who are house-training puppies, FabFitFun knows what it’s like to step in something extremely unpleasant.

In November, as brands were pulling ads from X after owner Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic tweet, 

 at a New York Times event, “If someone is going to blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself.”

In a since-deleted paid X post, FabFitFun announced it was “pledging an additional $100k of X advertising in support of its free speech ideals” and promoted a subscription deal that could be redeemed with the code, GoFuckYourself.

, the brand apologized, but the headlines (

: “FabFitFun, a $1 billion subscription box startup, frantically backpedals after a profane, pro-Elon Musk ad bombs”) live on.

“Obviously the language that we chose was an error in judgment,” Broukhim told Retail Brew last week. “We’ve learned from it and we’ve moved on, and our customers I think for the most part have forgiven us.”

Why FabFitFun is buying PupBox from Petco

It’s positive news for the subscription box brand aimed at women after its Elon Musk fiasco in November.

Why subscription giftbox DTC FabFitFun is buying PupBox from Petco

Jasmine Sheena

Minda Smiley

A significant portion of AAMCO’s leadership team has reportedly left the automotive services company, according to sources who spoke to Marketing Brew. 

The company’s franchise website states there were 

CMO Amy Johnson has reportedly departed. Johnson joined American Driveline Systems, AAMCO’s parent company, in 2019. James Gregory, AAMCO’s chief executive, is also among executives rumored to have left. (Gregory has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging 

 filed last September by a former executive, Jerome Staley.)

Johnson, Gregory, and other executives who may have left the company, did not respond to our request for comment by time of publication. AAMCO had also not responded to requests for comment.

AAMCO is owned by Icahn Automotive Group, a subsidiary of Icahn Enterprises, which also owns Pep Boys, Auto Plus, and Precision Tune Auto Care; Auto Plus voluntarily filed for 

. Icahn Automotive was founded by Carl Icahn, who was listed on Forbes’s “world’s billionaires list” in 2023, and is the chairman of the board of Icahn Enterprises.

AAMCO CMO, CEO, other execs reportedly depart

The automotive services company, founded more than 50 years ago, is currently owned by Icahn Automotive Group.

Katishi Maake

 spotlight Retail Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click 

global head of HR at Froneri, the international ice cream company that owns iconic brands like Häagen-Dazs and Drumstick. But she also serves as chief legal officer for Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream—Froneri’s US division. The sweet gig isn’t Zuber’s first in the CPG space: She got her start as an HR manager at PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division. Here, she dishes more about her day to day.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? 

I make sure that we have the right team at Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, a team which is diverse and passionate about making, packaging, and servicing our customers and fans with the best quality and tasting ice cream. I also help keep the organization whole and support my colleagues in growing the business.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile: 

Aside from having wicked Excel skills for a lawyer, I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and help. This is unique about us: Everyone knows everything. If I happen to be at one of our facilities and support is needed, I have the skills to jump in.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? 

During the pandemic, we delivered free ice cream to frontline workers and to firefighters who were battling wildfires. I love that through my work, I get to spread joy and put smiles on people’s faces.

One emerging trend that you’re excited about this year: 

This may not be a typical retail trend, but I am fascinated by the Great Resignation. In my role as chief HR officer, employees are an employer’s consumers. And just as consumers expect brands to do more than just sell products, employees expect employers to do more than just make products to sell. I anticipate employers will flex and extend in many ways to attract talent and I am curious to see what their organizations end up looking like.

HR

How to find your next job at a conference

‘Equality’ appeared 26 times in NRF’s Big Show schedule in 2022. This year? Not even once.

Why subscription giftbox DTC FabFitFun is buying PupBox from Petco

AAMCO CMO, CEO, other execs reportedly depart

Coworking with Heidi Zuber

Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know