Did you miss Shoptalk 2023 this year? Or were you there and feel like you didn’t catch enough of the content and top trends? We’ve got you covered with another podcast cross-over event with This Week in Innovation and special guest host Jeff Roster! Kicking off this multi-part series, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with Shoptalk’s content team of Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller live and in-person on the final day of the event. Together they review the top 4 trends and what they mean for retailers, brands, and the retail tech community. The team goes deep to break down the hype vs reality of Generative AI and discuss how retailers are changing and evolving their relationships with consumers, employees, and suppliers. Plus, hear about the latest trends in shopper engagement! This episode’s guests: Krystina Gustafson, SVP Content, Shoptalk and Groceryshop Ben Miller, Director of original content, Shoptalk and Groceryshop We’re at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPTS2E12a #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - Krystina Gustafson & Ben Miller [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:20] Casey Golden: Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:00:33] Ricardo Belmar: And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. And boy do we have a special treat for you this episode! Today we are talking about the changing relationships between retailers and brands, the evolution of shopper engagement. How omnichannel is morphing into seamless stores, and we see how it's possible to transform over 320,000 meeting requests into over 50,000 actual meetings in a span of three days. [00:00:57] But first, let's talk about our newest [00:01:00] crossover event, and this episode's special guests. [00:01:03] Casey Golden: That's right after our wildly successful crossover event with This Week In Innovation podcast for our N R F Live miniseries. Joined by one of our favorite guest hosts, Jeff Roster. We've done it again for our Shop Talk coverage. [00:01:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, indeed. By popular demand, and by popular demand, I mean, we really liked the idea, so we thought, let's do it again. Jeff Roster and I teamed up at Shop Talk for a few special interviews to bring you a Shop Talk live mini-series. [00:01:33] Casey Golden: Well, I'm sad I once again had to miss this one, but I know you guys have pulled together a killer miniseries not to be missed. Who are the episodes special guests? [00:01:45] Ricardo Belmar: I am glad you asked Casey. What better way to kick off this mini-series and with a deep dive discussion on all the hot topics at Shop Talk than sitting down with the Source, Shop talk's, amazing content team led by Krystina Gustafson, SVP of Content, [00:02:00] and Ben Miller, director of original content. [00:02:02] Casey Golden: Christina and Ben are incredible. Uh, you and Jeff really got to dig in to all the hot topics and wasn't this right after they had delivered their retail zeitgeist presentation on , the main stage, right? [00:02:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. We, we recorded this the very next morning after that session where Krystina and Joe Laszlo had run through what Shop Talk was seeing as the major retail trends for the year. Plus , Ben and Krystina gave us some insights into what they found most notable from all the sessions at the show. [00:02:33] And did I mention those 50,000 meetings they orchestrated? I mean, just, wow. Wait until you hear all the stats about what was surely the, the biggest shop talk ever. [00:02:42] Casey Golden: Well, let's get to it then and jump right into you and Jeff's conversation with Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller from Shop Talk, recorded live and in person at the show. [00:02:54] [00:02:59] The Shoptalk Review [00:02:59] Ricardo Belmar: Hello everyone [00:03:00] and welcome to our special Retail Razor crossover event with This Week In Innovation. I'm Ricardo Belmar, live and in person here at Shop Talk 2023, and I am here with the myth, the legend, Mr. Jeff Roster from This Week In Innovation. How you doing, Jeff? [00:03:15] Jeff Roster: Really good. Ricardo. I, you know, I, I'm so proud of both of us. We're, we're here last day, literally working the show to the last minute, and that's how we roll. That's how we [00:03:24] Ricardo Belmar: what we do. That's right. And for this special edition episode of our live series here at Shop Talk, we have the incredible pleasure of having two folks from the Shop talk team to talk to us about the event. [00:03:36] We're here with Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller. Krystina. Ben, how are you doing today? [00:03:40] Krystina Gustafson: Doing awesome. [00:03:41] Ben Miller: Yeah, very good. Thank you. Thanks for having us. [00:03:43] Ricardo Belmar: Fantastic. Fantastic. So let's jump in. And I think, you know, one of the, the probably most in, well maybe not most interesting, but something I'm sure everyone wants to know is just give us a little bit of data around just how big a shop talk was this, this year? [00:03:56] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, happy to start. 10,000 plus attendees, our [00:04:00] largest crowd so far. I would say though, what I take away even more than the size is just the quality of the a attendee. So it really sort of felt like this was. The big year. I know last year was technically retail's big reunion, but with the loss of corporate travel bands people just really being back down to business, the caliber of attendee, the amount of retailers and brands we had attending the show at a very senior level was, was one of the big takeaways to me beyond just kind of the scale of the event. [00:04:25] I know we'll probably talk about meet up a little bit later, but we also were able to facilitate 50,000 meetings over the course of two days which was incredibly impressive. Other things to note about scale 275 speakers 70 hours. 50 hours of content, 80 sessions seven content theaters. So I would say those are kind of the high level numbers. But Ben, you might have some, some additional stats to toss out there. [00:04:48] Ben Miller: kind of, yeah, I think when we talk about the Meetup 50,000 sounds an incredible number [00:04:53] Ricardo Belmar: right? [00:04:53] Yeah, it does. [00:04:54] Ben Miller: We had 323,000 requests to[00:05:00] so the appetite the appetite for, everybody to want to get together, to have some meetings, to meet people, to build their business. And you could feel that energy when you walked around. [00:05:10] And that energy, you know, it's, day four with lagging a little bit, but that energy that that energy is palpable. And that's, and that's been, yeah, that's been a key part of the show this year. [00:05:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's un 323,000 requests . Wow. What I, I, you know, one of the things we were talking about before, you know, what we think is sort of unique about the Shop Talk experience you have you know, for example, like how, how, how many vendors were here, whether exhibiting or, or attendees. [00:05:39] I think that's always a key part of bringing all parts of the industry together. That Shop Talk is so, so special for [00:05:45] Ben Miller: key. No, we, we re really agree our. I think you've heard Sophie, our president talk before that we don't really think about a buy side and a sell side. We don't try and compartmentalize. We have a community and our vendors, the technology companies, whether they are [00:06:00] really small startups for whom a Series A feels a distant proposition still right through to Google Face meta. [00:06:07] You know, some of the biggest organizations and biggest corporations in the country and in the world are here. We have about 700. Technology companies and technology vendors, and many of them are on our show floor exhibiting showing their wear, hosting their their, their clients, and also being involved in the meetings and they're a really important part of our community. [00:06:26] Ricardo Belmar: And t
