How does a 76-year-old legacy retailer reinvent itself as a tech-powered ecosystem? Lisa Horton, Chief Communications & Creative Officer at David’s Bridal, dishes on the company’s grand modernization and how they’ve expanded to accommodate the next generation’s Gen-Z-sized aspirations.

• David's Bridal's "Aisle to Algorithm" pivot puts AI at the center of everything — from merchandising to internal communications.
• The Style Squad ambassador program bridges employee creators ("Dream Makers") and external influencers, offering the most aggressive affiliate commission in retail at 20%.
• David's captures 90% of brides who enter their ecosystem — a first-party data advantage few retailers can match.
• The definition of "influencer" is broadening: word of mouth is influence, and everyone is influential.
• David's is building beyond bridal — eyeing the post-wedding household, where the majority of purchase decisions are made.
• [00:00:54] "We're basically a startup inside of a 76-year-old retailer." - Lisa Horton
• [00:12:09] "We have shifted in the last 12 months from being a legacy retailer to a 360 degree wedding planning ecosystem." - Lisa Horton
• [00:13:12] "Word of mouth is influence. And everyone is influential." - Lisa Horton
• [00:22:06] "Everything that we do moving forward is always going to come from a place of how do we mitigate her stress? How do we make her feel excited and seen and celebratory in every moment." - Lisa Horton

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Recorded live on the Shoptalk Spring show floor, Phillip and Alicia sit down with Leah Logan, VP of Retail Media Transformation for Inmar Intelligence, and Andrew Lipsman, Founder & Chief Analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce, fresh off a spirited on-stage debate about agentic commerce. We debunk AI Traffic Apocalypse predictions and make the case for creators as a critical yet overlooked retail media channel.

• AI referral traffic currently accounts for just 0.1–2% of retailer traffic; it has also led to eCommerce site traffic growth, not decline.
• Consumer intent data, not bottom-funnel ads, is where LLM advertising will find its footing.
• Creators are a media channel that predates the hype, and the measurement has been there for years.
• Retail media's growth depends on graduating from ROAS to incrementality — the sooner, the better.
• [00:11:08] "The next big trend already exists. People just haven't really wrapped their heads around it yet." — Andrew Lipsman
• [00:26:09] "We have to stop looking at CPMs and start looking at investments." — Leah Logan

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Recorded live at Shoptalk, Phillip and Brian sit down with Heather Rivera, Chief Business Officer at Wing (an Alphabet company), to talk about how Wing has crafted our five-minute delivery future. Spoiler: the novelty of drones wearing off might be the best thing that ever happened to the industry.

• Wing's fastest recorded delivery: 2 minutes, 37 seconds. Average is under five minutes.
• 25% of Wing customers order three times a week – habit, not novelty.
• Wing just announced its largest residential drone delivery expansion yet, with Walmart, covering 270+ store locations.
• ~70% of Walmart SKUs fit in Wing's current delivery box – roughly 50,000 products.
• Wing recently doubled its payload capacity from 2.5 lbs to 5 lbs, opening new SKU and category possibilities.
• [00:20:39] "I want this technology to become unremarkable for people because it just becomes part of the way they go about their lives." – Heather Rivera
• [00:13:09] "I predict there's gonna be whole sets of new companies that design existing products to fit into the five pound baskets." – Brian

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