The retail landscape has fundamentally shifted. While the industry spent years obsessing over technological capabilities and optimization metrics, the most successful brands have recognized a critical truth: these tools and platforms enable what truly matters to customers—creating emotional connections that transform transactions into relationships. The impact of creating experiences that surprise and delight customers–rather than simply streamline transactions–resonated with industry leaders at Shoptalk 2025 Las Vegas. We observed these emerging themes from those sessions.
Content and Commerce: A Necessary Convergence
Entertainment isn't just adjacent to shopping anymore—it's becoming the storefront itself. This isn't merely theoretical; it's playing out in real time across platforms where discovery happens through immersion, not intention. Increasingly, the natural discovery of a brand or product through a creator’s video or post is replacing a proactive search. Amy Oelkers, General Manager of Commerce, U.S., at TikTok, echoed this: "Four-fifths of customers discover products through a creator.” Her finding underscores why TikTok, including its lucrative TikTok Shop, positions itself primarily as "an entertainment platform" rather than a shopping destination.
The brands seeing extraordinary results are those creating continuous feedback loops between content and commerce. Reformation's 72% conversion rate among fitting room users isn't magic—though its innovative "magic wardrobe" system (where customers browse digital catalogs, select items via touchscreens, and find selections already waiting in their fitting rooms) certainly feels magical. It's the result of understanding that customers don't want prediction; they want responsiveness. As Reformation’s CEO Hali Borenstein recently observed, the brand is focused on "building feedback loops that respond to what customers are loving right now" rather than attempting to forecast trends months in advance.
Industry leaders are acknowledging a crucial imbalance that needs correction. "Many retailers had over-rotated to performance marketing and efficiency, at the expense of brand storytelling," observed Canada Goose CEO Dani Reiss—a sentiment echoed by numerous executives acknowledging that optimization without emotion creates disconnection.
AI: From Back-Office Tool to Experience Director
The AI conversation has matured beyond theoretical capabilities to practical applications that directly enhance—and often create—customer experiences. Leading retailers have moved AI from behind-the-scenes optimization to frontline experiential orchestration.
ThredUp exemplifies this shift, using AI to transform overwhelming inventory into moments of discovery. When its systems can instantly identify "48,000 comparable listings to a pair of viral $1,300 jeans within 10 seconds," ThredUp is not just showcasing technical prowess—it’s creating serendipitous shopping moments that would be impossible through traditional merchandising.
Similarly, luxury beauty brands under LVMH are using generative AI to create what Sapna Parikh, Chief Digital Officer at Kendo Brands, describes as "immersive moments, not just product feeds." Kendo Brands’ AI systems bring "more personalization and magic" by aligning product suggestions with customers' moods, routines, and aesthetics—crafting emotionally resonant experiences rather than simply serving up recommendations.
Redefining Value Beyond Price
Forward-thinking retailers recognize that price sensitivity doesn't automatically mean discount-driven strategies. Richard Dickson, CEO of Gap Inc., demonstrated this by removing omnipresent discount signage from stores, shifting customer focus from "math and price" to "brand and product"—a move that improved margins and added “$2.6 billion to the company's bank account.”
As the Gap example shows: physical retail spaces aren’t merely points of sale anymore–they’re experiential media channels in themselves. The primary goal isn’t generating ad dollars or data collection but creating memorable experiences that build long-term brand affinity.
Reformation, for example, has cultivated long-term brand affinity by emphasizing sustainability–redefining the value of its items by moving focus away from the retail cost and towards high-quality materials, positive impacts on the environment, and offering resale and recycling options. In doing so, Reformation aligns the customer’s investment with an item to an investment in the planet, which customers can feel good about.
The New Loyalty Equation
The insight that binds these strategies together is remarkably simple yet profound: "Experience is the new frontier of loyalty," as Superlogic CEO Lin Dai articulated. Brands missing this shift risk being left behind in an environment where transactions increasingly follow emotions, not the other way around.
For marketers and brand strategists, the imperative is clear: the question isn't whether to adopt new technologies but how to deploy them in service of creating true connections. These connections yield satisfied, passionate customers who become long-term brand advocates–driving growth in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
