How do you make yourself matter to your local community? If you’re a hardware retailer, what you have to offer is more than nice; it’s a necessity. Ace Hardware gets it. They are innovative players in the retail media landscape with RedVest Media, designed to drive embedded community relationships that translate into measurable ROI advantages.

The Honest Company, co-founded by Jessica Alaba in 2011, is experiencing a renaissance with double-digit revenue growth and the highest gross margin in the history of the company.

Want to find out about the underside of retail today? Join Shelley and TRR contributor Mark Cohen, who is an industry veteran and former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, as they reveal the back stories on what’s making retail news headlines.

While consumers fixate on tariffs as the primary force behind rising food prices, the reality is far more complex and revealing. Regulatory changes, labor costs and operational expenses coupled with new tariff pressures on some food categories are creating uncharted supply-demand dynamics.

The retail industry stands at a crossroads where artificial intelligence threatens to eliminate millions of jobs while simultaneously creating new opportunities—but only for those retailers smart enough to adapt. Rather than competing with AI, forward-thinking executives are discovering how to amplify human skills like negotiation, empathy, and conflict resolution in collaboration with technology.

The Federal Reserve’s policy paralysis is creating a perfect storm for retailers heading into the most critical selling season of the year. Join Shelley and economist Daniel Altman as they discuss the dangerous disconnect between Washington’s focus on Wall Street metrics and the harsh reality facing retailers on Main Street.

The retail apocalypse isn’t coming—it’s here, and survival depends on adaptation, not market dominance. Consumer behavior has fundamentally shifted beyond price sensitivity to a complex value equation encompassing convenience, curation, and experiential factors. 

Do you know how to unlock the hidden opportunities in what your customers aren’t telling you? Traditional consumer research captures what customers say they want but misses the subconscious decisions driving 85 percent of purchasing behavior.

Wholesale is evolving—brands thrive by embracing strategic partnerships over DTC myths, adapting to retail shifts and smarter merchandising.