Sarah Engel on Community, AI, and Why Hero Products Still Matter

Sarah Engel doesn’t traffic in platitudes. The President of January Digital and a former marketing executive across fashion, travel, and tech brings a sharp, operations-led lens to every conversation. During Shoptalk Europe, she shared her view of a retail industry that’s not being disrupted as much as quietly rebuilt, one cross-functional decision at a time.

In this interview with Tamara Karsten, Engel unpacks what she’s seeing across January Digital’s client portfolio, from Carhartt and Kendra Scott to Sakara and Steve Madden, and why AI, community, and channel planning are now everyone’s job.

Earlier today, Engel also led one of Shoptalk’s most compelling main stage sessions: a keynote conversation with HOKA Co-Founder Nicolas Mermoud, exploring how to build a brand that prioritizes emotional performance over category norms. Read that full session recap here →

The New Mandate: Community With Teeth

Community has long been a safe word in brand marketing. But Engel sees a shift: “It’s no longer just CRM or loyalty. It’s the whole business.”

She pointed to Mattel Creations as a standout transforming physical fan culture into a digital-first experience hub where content, commerce, and exclusives collide. “What they’re doing is letting fans build with them,” she explained. “Not just watch.”

At January Digital, Engel’s teams are helping brands rewire for this shift integrating loyalty with customer insights, feeding feedback loops into product development, and using events and store activations to test real sentiment.

With Steve Madden, this translated into measurable demand signals helping prioritize influencer partnerships and category focus based on consumer pull, not just push.

Retail Media: No Longer a Land Grab

Retail media’s hype hasn’t disappeared, but the energy is changing. Engel noted that many clients are “moving out of exploratory mode and into justification mode.” Budgets are under pressure, and brands are now asking harder questions: Are these channels efficient? Do they cannibalize organic? What does performance look like across ecosystems?

Her biggest critique? Data fragmentation. While retailers have improved online-store unification, few have a strategy for bridging first-party data with platforms like Amazon.

“There’s still a performance black hole when you shift off-platform,” she warned. “And that limits how strategic you can be.”

AI, Agents, and the End of Search as We Know It

Engel was clear: AI isn’t coming. It’s already here and it’s changing discovery itself.

Where consumers once scanned endless links, they now expect a single intelligent result. For retail marketers, this changes the game for SEO, performance marketing, and even product copywriting.

But Engel’s longer-term interest lies in agentic retail intelligent tools that help consumers plan wardrobes, mix resale with new items, or recommend what to pack for a trip. These are not futuristic they’re starting to appear in beta form.

“AI will be the most valuable when it’s invisible,” she said. “It’s not just about personalization. It’s about removing friction from decision-making.”

Hero Products, Not Assortment Creep

Reflecting on early-stage brands she’s worked with including Sakara, a DTC health brand, Engel emphasized one foundational truth: you can’t scale until you’ve landed your hero.

Too many brands launch with a range of SKUs but no defining product. “If someone sees your ad once, what’s the one thing they remember? What’s the one product you’d be proud to hand to an influencer?”

That clarity, she argues, should guide assortment, media, and even channel strategy. In Sakara’s case, it meant emphasizing the detox program that people came back for not just the wellness halo.

What Makes Shoptalk Europe Different

As a regular attendee of both the U.S. and European editions of Shoptalk, Engel reflected on what made Barcelona feel distinct this year.

“It’s intimate,” she said. “You meet someone once, you see them again later. That creates better conversations.”

She also praised the content this year as “less theoretical, more practical,” and more focused on execution, not just trends. In particular, she noted that conversations about AI, media, and loyalty were finally converging showing signs of maturity, not just experimentation.

Final Word: More Listening, Less Launching

Engel left the conversation with a grounded reminder: the best strategies in retail right now aren’t the loudest. They’re the most integrated, feedback-driven, and consistent.

“Right now, the smartest brands aren’t focused on doing more,” she said. “They’re focused on doing the right things better. And they’re learning how to listen.”

Independently Created. Not affiliated with Shoptalk.

Unofficially Shoptalk is a ClickZ Media publication in the Events division