The industry kicked off 2025 at Retail’s Big Show in New York, alongside retail’s best and brightest. Convening 30,000 service, operations, and technology professionals from 6,200 brands across 100 countries, the annual conference measures the pulse of the industry in a way that no other event can, providing invaluable insight on strategic “must haves” for retailers of every kind. Drawing on the wisdom of thought and innovation leaders shared on the mainstage and the buzz from the exhibition halls, we’ve compiled our key NRF takeaways on what’s setting retailers up for success in 2025.
AI is everything, everywhere, all at once
AI’s potency across a wide range of challenges was on full display, as was the industry’s enthusiasm for sharing insights and knowhow gleaned over the past decade of experimentation. NRF Chairman and Walmart CEO, John Furner, opened the event with reflections on the increasing importance of AI in today’s retail landscape. Stitch Fix CEO, Matt Baer, shared how AI helped them to tweak new designs to reflect consumer preferences, Bath & Body Works CDTO Thilina Gunasigh credited AI with massive improvements in store assortment and localization, and the S&OP gurus of Oracle, Microsoft, and Salesforce were all on hand to share best practices for integrating cloud-based AI into retail’s operational DNA.
Courting the next generation of consumers
With Gen Z firmly grounded in the workforce and Gen Alpha reaching the age of babysitting gigs and allowance, NRF helped retailers understand what these digital-native generations want from their retail experiences, and how to give it to them. H&M and trend expert, Casey Lewis, spoke to the importance of social engagement in Gen Z and Gen A-friendly spaces. Roblox’s Head of Retail and Fashion Partnerships spoke on the avatar economy, a vertical that’s essential for achieving relevance with the next wave of consumers.
Engaging and Empowering Employees
Retail is harnessing technology, creativity, and cultural capital to answer the ongoing labor shortage. While previous conferences devoted attention to the impact of manpower deficits in customer-facing positions, this year’s discussion on retail’s workforce (or lack thereof) stressed that having the ability to attract and retain IT and data professionals is absolutely key for longevity. E.l.f. Beaty’s Chief Digital Officer, Etka Chopra, spoke to the difficulty of building staff that’s truly capable of navigating large-scale digital transformation: “Everyone is an AI expert, and no one is.” Leadership from Target and Great Place to Work spoke to the importance of leveraging technology to upscale employee confidence and competence while building the highly-invested laborforce retail needs to to sustain its future.
Collaboration is King
The industry is doubling down on collaboration as the driving force for growth and resilience, evidenced by the prevalence and variety of discussions surrounding strategic and technology partnerships featured on this year’s mainstage. The CEOs of Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Bluemercury, spoke about how their unified growth strategy, “A Bold New Chapter,” leverages strategic synergy between the three nameplates to unlock stronger operations, service, and branding. IT leaders from UNTUCKit, Veronica Beard, and Manolo Blahnik also gathered to outline best practices for selecting technology partners that align with business goals—not just budgets. For technology providers, NRF offered insight into new ways to approach partnerships, with particular emphasis on trouble-shooting specific supply-chain issues, such as inventory management or S&OP. With infinite ways to collaborate, 2025 will be a watershed year for forming partnerships whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Upscaling Authenticity
Following the economic and supply upheavals that have characterized the 2020s thus far, retail is grounding itself in brand identity and value-structure to foster internal and external resilience. Best Buy CEO, Corrie Bailey, explained how functioning as a purpose-driven organization helps the company stick to its core values while providing the flexibility needed for innovation, while celebrity founder-CEO Tracee Ellis Ross spoke to brand authenticity’s oft overlooked power to shape social and market trends. From PATTERN Beauty’s celebration of identity to Steve Madden and Kendra Scott’s drawing on brand identity to create customer-first strategies, NRF 2025 underscores that authenticity is not just a trend—it’s a business imperative.
Conclusion
Counter to the diversity of discussions on this year’s mainstage, all talks converged around synergy and connection as pillars for successful retail strategy in 2025. Interestingly, inventory operations figured prominently into such conversations, highlighting its importance in achieving strategic aims, be they service-related, operational or cultural.
The ubiquity of inventory management in strategy conversations is easily understood. Beyond serving as the key vehicle for brand expression and customer engagement, inventory is the connective tissue that binds each stakeholder and component of the retail supply chain together. The extent to which a retail’s inventory is in flow or friction determines the success of engagement with customers, employees, and partners. The extent to which a brand can use data to guide its inventory planning and execution will deeply impact its relevance and resilience in the long-term.
As the industry strives to build stronger connections and adapt to the challenges of the 2020s and beyond, inventory management emerges as the natural starting point. By leveraging AI and data-driven insights to streamline inventory, retailers can align their operations, empower employees, drive customer satisfaction, evolve authentically, and bridge purpose to delivery.
