Retail insights at the intersection of now and next. Unfiltered. Unbiased
For retailers, the message is stark: what begins in chemical plants and semiconductor fabs doesn’t stay there. It flows directly into the products on their shelves — and into the headlines that shape consumer trust. Companies like Target, Best Buy, and Walmart may not manufacture chips, but they market and sell the devices that depend on them.
WK Kellogg founder Will Keith Kellogg invented his cornflakes in 1894, with the cereal group growing to become arguably the best-known cereal empire in the world. On the other side of the Atlantic, Ferrero was founded in 1946 by Italian confectioner Pietro Ferrero, and the company remains under family ownership, with Ferrero’s grandson Giovanni serving as Executive Chair.
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.
Once AI has unfettered access to product data, it becomes much harder to control the terms of engagement. The brands that survive won’t be those with the biggest marketing budgets or the most shelf space. They’ll be the ones who recognized that in an AI world, controlling the data bridge between digital intelligence and physical products is the ultimate competitive moat.
Showrunner brings new risks. How will Amazon manage IP ownership for user-generated content? Can it maintain quality control while scaling content creation? Will creators embrace the platform or push back, as they have with other generative AI tools? And what guardrails will Amazon apply around moderation, misinformation, and monetization?
Whether you’re curating emerging brands for beauty, evaluating partnerships in wellness, or looking for buzzworthy products to add to your assortment, the Celebrity Brands Report is your new cheat sheet.
In its new ad campaign, “The Code,” Dove explores the explosive impact of AI in shaping perception and estimates that up to a whopping 90 percent of the content consumers currently engage with is generated by AI. And with AI-generated imagery in particular, the depiction of beauty is obviously skewed toward an unobtainable level of perfection. Dove is renewing its vow to champion real beauty, with a commitment to never use AI to create or distort women’s images.
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.
Retailers with rail-heavy networks may need to reevaluate their long-term exposure. That doesn’t mean abandoning rail altogether, but it does require stress-testing the network for vulnerabilities and building in alternative routes and modes where possible.
Sign up for emails from The Robin Report and get our Daily Report, the latest in retail insights and analysis, delivered to your inbox.
