Agenda

Retail’s biggest transformation barriers aren’t technical – they’re organizational. In Monster Transformation, authors Rafeh Masood, Ari Lightman, and Gary Hirsch identify the hidden “monsters” – misaligned incentives, cultural resistance, legacy processes, and leadership blind spots – that quietly derail digital and AI initiatives. For senior retail leaders, these monsters are the real reason promising AI pilots fail to scale, transformation stalls, and ROI remains elusive. This session introduces a practical framework to identify, confront, and dismantle these blockers, enabling organizations to move beyond experimentation to sustained, profitable change. Attendees will gain tools to align teams, redesign decision-making, and build transformation-ready organizations, turning AI and digital investments into measurable business advantage rather than isolated innovation.

Agentic commerce is no longer just a futuristic idea, and AI and AI agents are rapidly reshaping the ecommerce landscape. As autonomous agents start to shop and purchase on behalf of humans, the fundamental relationship between merchants and their customers is being rewritten. Agentic commerce introduces a myriad of risks for merchants – not being able to identify returning loyal customers, an inability to distinguish good agents from bad bots, and more. In this executive panel, Tapestry and Forter will share how to prepare for an agentic commerce future, while maintaining customer loyalty and mitigating the risks of fraud and abuse. 

AI assistants are rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for store associates -- helping them locate products, answer customer questions, execute tasks faster and deliver more personalized service. This panel session of retail technology leaders will provide attendees with lessons from deploying in-store AI assistants that drive real operational and business impact and highlight future priorities, based on their practical experiences with deployment over the past several years.

Session details are coming soon!

Retailers are investing heavily in AI—but many are discovering that the biggest barriers aren’t necessarily technical. They’re structural.

As agentic systems reshape content creation, forecasting, fulfillment, and personalization, traditional boundaries between marketing, digital, IT, and strategy are blurring even further. Simultaneously, the underlying skill sets are changing—requiring AI fluency, data literacy, model oversight, and new forms of cross-functional orchestration. Without clear ownership and redesigned capabilities, AI initiatives stall or introduce new structural friction.

In this session, Dr. Janet Sherlock, Founder & CEO of Org.Works and former Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Ralph Lauren, will share her proven AI organizational framework together with new research findings on the future evolution of marketing, digital, and IT teams in the era of agentic commerce.

What happens when a customer asks an LLM which retailer to buy from — and your brand isn't mentioned? As LLMs and answer engines reshape product discovery, retailers must optimize not just for search – but for AI-generated answers. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) require brands to publish precise, high-volume, structured content that AI trusts and cites.

Increasingly, models rely on sources like Reddit, LinkedIn, and Quora – where a single outdated or negative post can disproportionately influence brand perception. Retailers are facing new risks: AI hallucinations, reliance on outdated or paywalled information, and shrinking first-mover advantage windows. This session explores how brands can audit AI responses, scale and syndicate authoritative product and policy content, and prepare for emerging monetization models. Learn how to ensure your brand is recommended – not misrepresented – when AI becomes the primary interface for product discovery and purchase decisions.

Consumers aren’t just searching anymore; they’re asking. As product discovery shifts from traditional search engines to AI-powered chat environments, brands face a critical question: will you show up when customers ask for recommendations? This forward-looking session explores how conversational discovery is reshaping visibility, influence, and conversion. Retail and digital leaders will unpack how AI-generated answers differ from traditional search results, what it means to “write for AI,” and why structured, enriched product data is now a growth lever. We’ll also examine the emerging landscape of paid placements within AI chat and what it takes to compete. If discovery has moved, your strategy must move with it.

Retailers are under pressure to deliver personalized, frictionless experiences at increasingly rapid speeds. This session explores how combining AI with nearshore delivery models can help retailers accelerate transformation and scale innovation across the enterprise. Learn how AI can enhance customer service, enable faster decision-making, and power more seamless omnichannel experiences – from digital engagement to store operations. Through practical examples and real-world lessons, this session will outline how retailers can move beyond experimentation with AI to operational impact – while building the delivery model required to sustain innovation, improve customer outcomes, and drive measurable business results.