At this week’s Glossy’s E-Commerce Summit in Miami, brand and retail executives used town-hall and working-group discussions to workshop their next strategies, with considerations including lower consumer sentiments and disruptive, ever-changing trade laws. To wrap the event, we gathered some brand leaders onstage to discuss the conversations that sparked new ideas, the takeaways they plan to implement into their businesses and the overall direction of retail, based on the plans and priorities developed during the week. Below, a roundup of the practices brands will be championing, based on this and other Summit discussions.
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What a change two months can make in the current retail climate. While all talk at the Modern Retail Marketing Summit in early April focused on navigating newly announced tariffs, this week, executives seemed less in shock and more on task, focused on refining the next steps they’d defined as best safeguarding and strengthening their brand in the months ahead.
Be strategic about meeting content demands
As noted by Glossy senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi, several speakers and attendees shared examples of how they’re tackling new content strategies without risking big investments. For example, some said they’re leveraging their employees as advocates or ambassadors, compensating them for creating brand content on their own time, for example, or incentivising them for posting on social media while on the job.
Similarly, as content featuring L’Agence executives has proven to resonate with the brand’s customers, Tara Rudes-Dann, L’Agence’s fashion director, often leads its livestreams, L’Agence CMO Ashley Bryan said.
It befits the “scrappy” approach that many retailers, including Tuckernuck — as described by co-founder Madeline Grayson — are currently leveraging across strategies.
“I was inspired by [Summit speakers] Trinny Woodall [founder and CEO of Trinny London] and Cass DiMicco [influencer and Aureum Collective founder], and others who operate in this founder-creator zone,” said Danielle Vermeer, head of social commerce at ThredUp. “It’s such a powerful way to be the face of your brand and for people to connect on a different level — because nobody cares about a brand talking about themselves.”
Vermeer said she now plans to create content around ThredUp’s distribution centers, which she described as “the ‘Clueless’ closet on steroids.”
On a related note, many executives discussed the challenge of meeting the current demand for content across platforms. In short, executives said they’re choosing between high-cost content — for its part, H&M generates much content via its celebrity partnerships with the likes of Charli XCX, said Noah Gonzalez, its head of celebrity and influencer relations — and high-risk content. The latter includes leaning into AI-generated images and videos, which can result in consumer backlash, or going all-in on influencers, which risks diluting the brand voice and values.
“You want the influencers you work with to be on brand and aligned with your tone and aesthetic, but at the same time, they’re the experts on the right content for their audience, which is why you wanted to work with them in the first place,” said Vermeer.
“You need to give them the leeway to communicate in their own way. The highest-performing content feels authentic, while ‘mentioning the brand in the first three seconds’ of a video feels like an ad,” she said, referencing a pet peeve mentioned by DiMicco during an onstage session.
Leverage AI
Vermeer from ThredUp spoke about the power of AI, referencing ThredUp’s new AI-powered tool allowing shoppers to upload a Pinterest board as a search inquiry. It’s generating four times the conversion rate of a traditional on-site search, she said.
“It offers a wow factor,” Vermeer said. “And it’s not because we’re using AI in an obvious way, saying, ‘Here’s this new AI tool.’ It’s more that we’re serving the customer and making their life easier, while also making the feature seamless and intuitive.”
Latching on to all things AI is not the answer, she said, predicting that “AI slop,” or AI-driven video content, will put new value on “authentic content, made by humans.”
“People can see when it’s a real person who truly loves a brand or a lifestyle,” she said. “The cost of creating AI content has dropped to the floor, so anyone can create something — but not everyone can create something good or authentic.”
Executives joining a working group on leveraging AI for speed and efficiencies agreed, with several sharing that they’re creating content using AI but avoiding the use of AI-derived people, or models. Other ways they’re using AI include making sense of data, improving search and providing service via chatbots — some said their chatbots are earning the same customer satisfaction ratings as human customer service representatives.
Use retail partners to your advantage
At the Summit, Jill Sando, chief marketing officer at Target, and Ryan Waymire, head of women’s apparel at Walmart, spoke about the in-house brands they’ve helped grow to over $1 billion businesses. Meanwhile, Kim Nemser, chief product and supply chain officer at Warby Parker, spoke about the brand’s retail expansion through shop-in-shops at several Target stores.
Retailers continue to drive sales and awareness for brands, which is especially valuable when many brands are reducing their advertising budgets. Aurem’s DiMicco said her company is using partner retailers including Shopbop and Revolve to gain awareness beyond her own following.
“Many brands in treacherous waters want to cling to a big retailer for safety,” said Glossy’s Parisi, pointing to Nike shifting to DTC and back to wholesale again. “There can be friction between brands and retailers, but they do need each other. In a rocky economy, it can make sense to work together.”
As for that friction, brands spoke about delays in payment from the likes of Saks Fifth Avenue and questioned the future fate of department stores: One executive noted that tariffs are forcing brands to increase their prices, which will lead to higher costs for department stores that use the wholesale model. “Nordstrom won’t have the money to buy all these brands,” she said.
Listen to your customers
L’Agence’s Bryan said the event’s conversations served as a great reminder of the importance of prioritizing measurement and incrementality in everything a brand does.
“It’s so much more fun these days because you can really get down to knowing your customers’ paths [to purchase] and exactly how one channel makes an impact on another one,” she said. “You really need to be [omnichannel], because it’s really a customer’s ecosystem. They’ll find you at a wholesale partner, but then, if they like your fit and your styles, they’ll come to you at retail or on e-commerce.”
Remaining customer-informed or customer-led were priorities mentioned by brand executives throughout the Summit. With AI making it easier to make sense of customer data, it’s easier than ever.
Continue to innovate
Finally, Bryan said Warby Parker’s leap into the smart glasses category, which Nemser spoke about on Day 2, “made me want to get back to the office and think about what we can do to add some of that forward-thinking into our products.” Continuing to innovate in a trying time for retail is, of course, one way to safeguard.
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