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Don't just talk about 'community', build products with them, for them

Don't just talk about 'community', build products with them, for them

What we saw on Day 2 at Shoptalk Fall

Zihan Lyu
September 19, 2025

Hi there,

Here we go - Day 3 at Shoptalk Fall! Yesterday was about speed and clarity. Today, the focus shifts to bold campaigns, leadership lessons, and finding the signal in a noisy retail media landscape.

🧠 Day 2 Download

The Beauty Lab: Founders Redefining Innovation

Suveen Sahib (K18), Linda Wang (Karuna | Avatara), Sarah Gibson Tuttle (Olive & June)

What does innovation look like when you're building for emotion, speed, and science - not just shelf space?

At Shoptalk Fall, three beauty founders revealed how agility and cultural fluency are outpacing big budgets and long pipelines. Their brands may be smaller, but they’re growing nearly 4x faster than global conglomerates, and the reasons why are deeply operational.

🔬 Suveen Sahib of K18 sees innovation as a science problem, not a marketing one. K18’s biotech hair treatment was built “from first principles,” working with bioscientists to repair damage at the molecular level.
📦 Linda Wang of Karuna and Avatara brings agility to the front line, compressing development cycles to mere months and tailoring assortments by retailer. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are her audience, and pop-culture-ready packaging is part of the product.
💅 Sarah Gibson Tuttle of Olive & June built a brand by listening. Community feedback drives every decision, from product timelines to packaging, and the brand invests in education, not just advertising, to convert consumers into loyalists.

📹 Watch Linda Wang in this clip on why data is central to keeping pace with modern beauty consumers.

@clickz_official
How do beauty brands stay ahead of the curve when consumer tastes shift overnight? That was the focus of yesterday’s session at Shoptalk F... See more

Each founder underscored that innovation is defined by how well you read the room.

📌Big CPG waits for certainty. These founders ship with conviction.
📌They move in parallel, stay close to the consumer, and test ideas in the wild.
📌And they don't just talk about "community", they build products with them, for them.

Amelia Garone from Fospha shared her reflections right after attending this session at Shoptalk Fall:

@clickz_official
Amelia Garone from Fospha shared her reflections right after attending The Beauty Lab: Founders Redefining Innovation session at Shoptalk ... See more

Why Fospha’s work matters here:
Beauty brands rely on speed, cultural relevance, and emotional connection. Fospha gives them the measurement tools to see how those investments pay off.

With always‑on full‑funnel measurement, Fospha surfaces Unified ROAS across channels (including DTC, Amazon, and social commerce), so teams know which creative, packaging, or launches move the needle.

Its Halo solution reveals how ads influence sales in marketplaces beyond .com; Glow connects awareness and brand storytelling with real business outcomes. When trends shift overnight, that visibility helps brands adapt with confidence, not just with hope.

Retail Intelligence: What AI Can and Can’t Do Today

Dan DeMeyere (ThredUp), Neelima Sharma (Lowe’s), Stephen Yalof (Tanger)

🔹 At Lowe’s, the focus is on applying AI to real customer journeys, not speculative tech. Neelima Sharma outlined how Lowe’s uses AI across shopping, selling, and operations.

Generative AI powers a tool that lets shoppers upload a photo of their space and get style recommendations.
A semantic search engine improves intent-based queries like “patio furniture for a small balcony.”
Milo, an AI assistant, supports both customers and store associates with project-specific advice.

@clickz_official
AI in retail isn’t a silver bullet, it’s a tool. At Shoptalk Fall, leaders from Lowe's Companies, Inc.’s, ThredUp, and Tanger joined Matth... See more

"We are prioritizing the problems that are very important to our customers, problems important to our business and for our associates. And then we're bringing in AI that can most effectively solve that problem."

Neelima Sharma

🔹 ThredUp’s challenge is scale and uniqueness. With 5 million secondhand items live at any time, Dan DeMeyere stressed that AI helps surface what customers are most likely to want.
An overhaul of their search engine and personalized merchandising has led to a 60% increase in new customer conversion and a 10% lift in lifetime value.

"It's not necessarily a silver bullet, you have to kind of understand where traditional tech and AI... come together to sort of address a real customer problem, as opposed to, I have this AI hammer and walking around and looking for nail."

Dan DeMeyere

🔹 Tanger is using AI to drive deeper loyalty - but without losing its physical edge. CEO Stephen Yalof explained how AI helps personalize offers tied to credit card activity, nudging return visits. But store experience still leads.
Tanger has built an internal committee to test AI carefully, with adoption measured against workforce readiness and operational impact.

Across all three brands, a few themes stood out:
✔️ AI that’s embedded - not marketed - is more likely to deliver results
✔️ Tech teams are focused on frictionless, human-centered use cases
✔️ Caution is a competitive advantage

Designing Shopping Experiences That Convert In-Store and Online

The best stores stick in your memory. At Shoptalk Fall, leaders from Caruso, Wayfair, and American Girl shared how they’re turning physical retail into engines of emotion, storytelling, and long-term loyalty.

🔹Caruso wants to win more than wallets - it wants “heart share.”
Corey Conrad shared how Caruso’s properties like The Grove are designed to encourage longer visits (averaging nearly 100 minutes), blending curation, community, and entertainment.

Its Glass Box incubator gives digital-first brands a flexible way to test physical formats.
Pop-ups from brands like Dr Jart and Lineage are beating expectations, and boosting cross-shopping across the property.

🔹 Wayfair is bringing digital breadth to physical depth.
Chief Merchant Liza Lefkowski called its new store a “physical manifestation” of the Wayfair brand.

Associates use tablets to link in-store visits to each customer’s app journey.
The curated range includes a “Wayfair Verified” label to avoid decision fatigue and reinforce trust.

🔹 American Girl is reimagining what experience means for a legacy brand.
Danielle DiMaiolo Rendini highlighted a full reinvention of the in-store journey, including:

“MAGIC” service protocols where staff aim to inspire and celebrate, not just serve
Style by You, a new semi-custom doll experience that delivers emotional value in one visit
Personal shopping and loyalty events that deepen the relationship

🟣 Across all three, the big shift?
Experience is the commerce.
✔️ Conversion is tied to emotion
✔️ Data powers frictionless journeys, but never replaces human connection
✔️ Loyalty starts with storytelling

3 lessons in brand expression from ACE Hardware CMO Kim Lefko at Shoptalk Fall

1️⃣ Consistency is a superpower
Ace will never outspend its biggest competitors, but it wins by repeating a clear, consumer-rooted message across TV, digital, social, and in-store. The challenge isn’t what to say, but how to tailor a 60-second story into a 7-second scroll.

2️⃣ Focus where consumers care most
Ten years ago, Ace shifted from being a generalist hardware store to doubling down on four categories: paint, power tools & outdoor power, backyard & barbecue, and home preservation. That focus, guided by consumer behaviour, now drives everything from marketing to store layouts.

3️⃣ Data turns stores into platforms
The Elevate Ace format, now in 700 stores, puts those categories front and centre, delivering 12% higher sales overall, and 20–25% gains in featured categories. Paired with Ace’s rewards program and new Red Vest Media network, data is turning 5,100 local stores into a national marketing engine.

One of the most compelling sessions at Shoptalk Fall was Winning Brand Expression Across Platforms: A Conversation with Lauren Price (COS), Nicklaus Hasselberg (Every Man Jack).

A few things stood out:
- Brand is the moat but equity is harder than ever to measure. Upper-funnel attention doesn’t come with neat leading indicators, traditional MMM only takes you so far, and incrementality testing is effective but can’t run every day. That leaves marketers without a true “catch-all” metric.
- Creative and performance are converging. Teams that align on both storytelling and measurement are breaking through, proving that the best campaigns today live at the intersection of brand and performance.

Companies like Fospha are pioneers in this space. They understand the pain marketers endure. Measuring over $2bn a year in ad spend, they are finally giving marketers an always-on platform to invest confidently across the funnel.

ClickZ is still collecting POVs from brands and leaders - share yours to be part of the conversation.

🌟 What's Coming Up Today

📌 How Retail Media is Rewriting the Storefront and Digital Shelf
Speakers: Target, Expedia Group Advertising, Media, Ads + Commerce
🕑 11:20am – 12:00pm | FIRE

📌 Creative Sprints: Moving from Idea to Execution at the Speed of Light
Speakers: Papa John’s, SharkNinja, Milani, January Digital
🕑 11:20am – 12:00pm | WATER

📌 Bold Campaigns, Unexpected Collabs, and Brand Guts
Speakers: Coach, MCoBeauty, Teleties, FTI Consulting
🕑 1:05pm – 1:45pm | WATER

📌 What the Best Leaders Are Doing Differently
Speakers: Anthropologie, Elie Tahari, Chameleon Collective
🕑 1:05pm – 1:45pm | EARTH

📌 The Alchemy of Relevance: Day Trading Attention
Speaker: Gary Vaynerchuk (VaynerX, VaynerMedia, VeeFriends)
🕑 4:10pm – 4:30pm | Mainstage

📲 Like what you’re seeing?

Follow ClickZ on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn for exclusive video content, speaker soundbites, and behind-the-scenes moments from Shoptalk Europe and beyond.

Enjoy the last day!

The Unofficially Shoptalk Team

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