David Roth, CEO of The Store – WPP and chairman of BAV speaks at NRF 2025.

What do plate glass, electric lighting, elevators and barcodes have in common?

Each of those technological breakthroughs were used first by retailers to deliver to their customers a better experience and to achieve much more as a business, David Roth, CEO of The Store – WPP and chairman of BAV, said at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show.

Retailers have always been early adopters of innovation. Now the industry is welcoming another technological innovation, one that is fundamentally revolutionary, according to Roth.

“Artificial intelligence is the latest in a long line of innovations, but unlike anything we’ve seen before,” he said. “For the first time, a single technological leap has the potential to completely rewrite retailing and, more importantly, the P-and-L ratios which have remained largely unchanged since God was a boy.”

AI in retailing is not just about efficiencies or automation, but the ability to create a very new kind of retail experience for both customers and retail employees. “AI is not just a tool. It’s a force multiplier,” he said. “It’s a technology that, when applied, absolutely, holistically, can transform every single aspect of a retailer’s operation — from product selection, merchandising, supply chain management, customer service, returns and marketing.”

For Albertson Companies, the second-largest retailer in the United States, AI has been a real game changer in training its 275,000 frontline associates, according to Albertson’s Chief Sustainability and Transformation Officer Suzanne Long. The industry overall has an annual turnover rate of 60%-70%, which means hiring and training a staggering number of people every year.

“When you need to train somebody — instead of using your best associates’ time to train a new associate — there's actually an opportunity for AI to be telling them what they need to know to be effective in their job and doing that in real time,” Long said.

Similarly, Lidl, a grocery chain with 13,000 locations throughout Europe and the U.S., uses AI to translate and summarize employee training materials and handbooks into different languages.

“In retail, you have a lot of information for your employees, and honestly, it’s getting more and more, and obviously no one wants to spend hours reading this information on these pages,” said Mirko Saul, senior vice president of innovation with Lidl parent company Schwarz Digital GmbH & Co. KG. “That’s why the real-time aspect is very important.”

Questions like, “The register is slow. What do I do?” or “My manager just yelled at me. What do I do?” can be addressed through the app, with answers based on company resources, policies and procedures.

“Now, you don’t have to wait for somebody to show up. You don’t have to call anybody. Now you have a resource to get immediate help,” Gao said. “They call it ‘the smartest co-worker in your back pocket.’”

The Chatty app has improved employee morale tremendously, she said, and eased the work environment. It also provides Pacsun management with customer service insights into additional employment needs by location, job type and role.

While there are many returns on investment to be achieved through efficiency and AI, it isn’t about cutting employees, the panelists said. It’s about augmenting them.

A lot of the hype is around efficiency, Long said. “How can I get more out of my people?” And that’s true, he said.

“But isn't it about, then, reinvesting that in the best service possible, in the best employee experience possible, so those people want to work with you and they are ambassadors of your brand and they are bringing … the life of your store to the customers who walk in every single day.”

Source: NRF blog posts

As an avid beauty shopper, Tracee Ellis Ross understands the marketing strategy of telling people they have a problem and then providing the solution to fix it. That doesn’t mean she agrees with it.

“When I feel good about myself, I actually buy more,” she said. “Particularly when it comes to the Black customer, that in and of itself is the problematic equation. Telling Black customers that their hair was a problem, and that you needed ‘this’ to fix it, absolutely did not work for me.” She set out to solve that equation in a different way through PATTERN Beauty. The hair care brand, launched in 2019, was a decade in the making.

Ross, an award-winning actor and producer in addition to CEO and founder of PATTERN Beauty, joined Sheena Butler-Young, senior correspondent with The Business of Fashion, onstage during NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show. The conversation explored the rise of PATTERN Beauty as a beauty brand rather than in-name-only celebrity brand, one that just happens to have a founder with a different high-profile “day job.” Ross is most recognized for roles in the TV shows “Girlfriends” and “Black-ish.”

“Human beings do multiple things, and have multiple interests, and can be incredibly smart in many different areas,” Ross said. She was educated at Brown University, she’s smart, “and I do naturally have business acumen. I’m not going to be afraid to say that because I’m an actor.”

The brand was born out of a need, she said, a “blank space” in a beauty industry that was “not spending the time, the money, the attention, or even acknowledging the importance of masses of people — 65% to 75%  of the global community — that needed products not only that worked and were effective, but that were not harmful, and also were beautiful and packaged well and elevated, and that our content was going to make you feel joyous and celebratory about yourself and your hair.” Ross founded the company to create products that supported hair the way it grew out of the head.

Though PATTERN Beauty’s content and marketing is based in the celebration of Black beauty, its products are for anyone with curly, coily and tight-textured hair. In addition to her statistic about the global community that fits into this category, Ross shared that the total addressable market for textured hair products in the United States is estimated at over $31 billion.

“I don’t believe hair has a gender or a race,” Ross said, and she’s fascinated that the market for Black hair care is considered “niche.”

In addition to the lost opportunity from a money-making perspective, there’s also the purpose piece: the great many people who are not being “celebrated, empowered and serviced, that deserve all of those things like everybody else.”

PATTERN Beauty launched with seven products, one retail partner and direct-to-consumer. There are now 11 retail partners and more than 50 products, including three that plug into the wall: a steamer, a blow dryer and a three-in-one interchangeable curling iron.

“All of that started with about three people around a table,” she said. Ross landed her first retail partner before she had a business partner; choosing the right one was a challenge. She went with Ulta Beauty, “because Ulta was able to guarantee a larger amount of doors, a better exclusivity deal, and we were able to have a relationship where I was working directly with (then-CEO) Mary Dillon at the time, and build my confidence as a CEO and a founder. It is, and has been from the beginning, just a wonderful partnership.”

Ross admitted that one of her biggest assets is to know when she doesn’t know something — and to know who to ask. PATTERN Beauty partners with consumer products house Beach House Group, which now has “about 47” employees designated solely to the brand.

Ross remains fully engaged from a creative and visionary aspect, considering herself an intentional, purposeful and creative leader. She has a co-CEO in Christiane Pendarvis.

“My business acumen is very based on my creativity,” she said. “I am an artist, first and foremost.”

These days, she’s looking for those who are team players, those who understand the full picture of what PATTERN Beauty aims to accomplish, and those who are experts in their field. “Bringing in the right people,” she said, “has been extraordinary.”

Source: NRF blog posts