Was it the amazing networking events, non-stop meetings with brands and partners, or fantastic content and speakers that ShopTalk carefully curated together?
If I answered “all of the above”, could you blame me? :-)
Let’s Start With the Networking Events!
TopGolf with CommerceNext
ShopTalk kicked off on Sunday this year, and there was no better way to launch the event than joining our friends from CommerceNext for TopGolf in Las Vegas! Over 300 retailers joined us to practice their swings, eat some delicious food, and enjoy beers from around the globe under the bright lights of the Las Vegas strip. Winning at Angry Birds was the highlight of my night, as I am a horrible TopGolf player! Our bay had a contest also associated with it, and IMO, our contest was the hardest of the night to win (maybe that’s because I can’t really hit a golf ball longer than 50 yards)! The contest was “Closest to Target on 175 Yard Shot”. We are pleased to announce that Tolly Harris from JTV.com took first place! Congrats Tolly!
See more of the excitement in the pictures below…
Carbone with TapCart
When bringing together great partners and marketers from across the globe to a conference, there’s no better way to merge together the history of great food, togetherness, and, well, great food than at Carbone. For New Yorkers, Carbone is a familiar spot, and an acclaimed one at that! Carbone has expanded to Las Vegas, paying “homage to the Italian-American restaurants of the mid- 20th century, where delicious, exceptionally well-prepared food was served in settings that were simultaneously elegant, comfortable and unpretentious”, according to their website. Highlights of the night included great wine and food pairings, plus the company of 30+ industry experts. And, I have to say, meeting the Feastables team who work with MrBeast was pretty amazing! They later joined Ben Valek from our team for a night with Nelly —yes, that Nelly. Get you some Air Force Ones!
Onto Meetings!
What would a time at ShopTalk be if we didn’t have full calendars?! There is NO other conference of the year that permits you to have almost every single first-degree LinkedIn connection you have, and also those second-degree connections you can meet, together under one ginormous roof, and ShopTalk hosted at the Mandalay Bay certainly didn’t miss the mark here! All-in-all, we hosted over 30 meetings across our partners, customers, and future customers alike! Two of my personal favorites: a coffee networking hour with our friends at Iterable, and our custom-designed Nike activity with our friends at Klaviyo in their VIP suite.
ShopTalk facilitated and expanded their renown “meetups” again this year - and that also was a highlight, as it kept us busy (and practicing our new messaging) over and over again throughout Monday and Tuesday! If we don’t know the new messaging by now, we’ll never get it down!
Oh yeah, and I ran into Mark Wahlberg! Seriously, not the meeting I was thinking we’d have prior to getting to Vegas…
Now, the Thing That Matters Most: ShopTalk Content.
ShopTalk has 100+ sessions for learning more about key industry trends in retail and eCommerce. It can challenging to make it to all the sessions you want to attend, but there are recaps on each session that are readily available online if you miss a few!
What ShopTalk does well is provide “tracks” around the following 5 areas:
- Shopper Engagement
- Emerging Channels
- Store Experiences
- Technology Innovations
- Organizational Change
My favorite session was actually from the “Store Experiences” track, where Manju Thomas, SVP of Engineering at Data Science at Stitch Fix, and Caleb Pearson, VP of Media and Digital for US Marketing at McDonald’s, joined together to discuss how the COVID pandemic-era advancement of online shopping has truly pushed the need for rich customer data that can be used across both digital and in-store locations. (PS: Bet you didn’t see that combo of StitchFix and McDonald’s coming!)
StitchFix, an innovator in the use of consumer-consented data before it was cool, has an 80-data point style quiz that captures the unique preferences, desires, and needs of its shoppers. They pair over 1 million quiz takers monthly with curated products just for them. Their quizzes also allow StitchFix to detect emerging trends, shifts in consumer behavior, and ensure they’re curating a virtual store-like environment that behaves more like a “personal stylist” versus an algorithm pulled together by non-consumer thinking data scientists. It works; I’ve been a customer for years!
Topics like AI, live-streaming, personalization and more were covered too! There’s an unending amount of content you can consume at ShopTalk, but only so much you can in one day.
Best to continue reading in blogs like this to learn more about what was covered, get your dose of FOMO, and not lose $$ in Vegas casinos —-like yours truly —who lost $500 to Willy Wonka this time around!
Until next time, dear readers!
