A preview of NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show

Episode transcript, edited for clarity.

Bill Thorne: Welcome to Retail Gets Real, where we hear from retail's most fascinating leaders about the industry that impacts everyone everywhere, every day. I'm Bill Thorne for the National Retail Federation, and on today's episode we're counting down to NRF 2024: Retail's Big Show. It's going to be back in New York City, this January 14th through the 16th, and today we're going to share a little preview about what's to come. Eric Olson is NRF's VP of Education, and he's here to share a little bit about the amazing speaker lineup at the show.

Eric, welcome to Retail Gets Real.

Eric Olson: Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Thorne: So, Retail’s Big Show. It is an exciting time for the industry, for the people that participate, for the people that exhibit …

Olson: It’s our Super Bowl.

Thorne: Yeah, it is the Super Bowl. For the NRF staff, there's a little sense of dread, but also excitement, and then when it's done, it's kind of like a, ‘Oh yeah!’

Olson: Yeah. Then you worry about next year. How are you going to top it?

Thorne: Starts right after it ends. No joke. So, tell us about the Big Show. What are the themes we're going to be hearing about and how many keynotes do we have this year?

Olson: We have most ever, 19 across … So, we basically bracket our days — Sunday, Monday, Tuesday morning and afternoon — with keynotes and we do them back to back. For 2 pm to 3 pm, and then at sometimes we extend to 4 pm, depending on the day.  And then in the middle of the day there's Expo time, and then there's also feature stage sessions, which are like our breakouts. Those are thousand-person stages, in and of themselves, so they command a lot of high-level speakers and topics as well.

Thorne: How many people do you set up for the keynotes?

Olson: Over 4,000.

Thorne: I've been there when there's been standing room only. Some of those speakers really bring the people.

Olson: Yeah, if you don't get there particularly early, it's … you can be going to the overflow room because of fire marshal issues, which is nuts if you think about it.

I remember having — you can probably tell me to stop — but when President Clinton came out … this was years ago, probably 10 …

Thorne: It was 12.

Olson: 12 years ago. He came out and he looked out and he looked at the audience and he said, ‘I don't think I've spoken to this many people since I've been president, and even then, I don't think I've spoken to as many people.’

Thorne: Yeah. It almost has a national party convention feel. I mean, it really does. The level of enthusiasm, excitement and just the number of people alone.

Olson: Lots of adrenaline.

Thorne: Yeah. Each day has so many speakers to hear from. Let's start with Sunday. Who's in the lineup? What's your can't-miss pick for this day and why?

Olson: So, there's … We have a number — and I'll get to my pick at the end — but I'm super excited about the very first one, after John Furner opens up and gives his Chairman's Welcome.

Thorne: John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart U.S. and chairman of our board of directors.

Olson: He gives the Chairman's Opening Welcome. I should know that, but I'm talking like he's my best friend. He's not, but …

Thorne: He kind of is.

Olson: He's a great guy. But afterwards we have Michelle Goss, who right now is the president of Levi's. She came over from Kohl's, as you all know, probably. She is going to — we just found out yesterday or the day before — she's going to be taking over the reins for Chip Bergh at the end of January. So, she will be CEO of Levi's. She's bringing a ton of experience, so I'm excited about that — to hear kind of what her plans are for Levi's and its next generation of growth.

We also have Raj Subramaniam, and he's the CEO for FedEx. He's going to talk about all the supply chain complexities, last mile developments, how they're using data to get closer to consumers and understand kind of efficiencies of delivery times, and things like that. So that was a big win for us too because that's going to actually kick off after the, these — we have a special program called NRF Supply Chain 360 Summit, and that's another kind of program within a program. And we'll have eight sessions with Walmart, Target, Macy's, like, you name it, the who’s who of the supply chain, Chief Supply Chain Officers, COOs and whatnot.

Thorne: This is the first time we’ve done that, right?

Olson: Yeah. Yeah. So, that'll be pretty cool to have him kind of kick that off from the main stage, and then thereafter people would be going to the other side of the building actually to go see that, that particular program, if they're signed up for it.

And then in the afternoon, we have Philippe Schaus who is the CEO for LVMH’s wine and spirits division, Moët Hennessy, and he starts at 2-2:30.

Thorne: 2:30 just in time for happy hour. This is going to be great.

Olson: So, pop the champagne corks, that'll be great. Or if you want, if you enjoy the Hennessy, we'll probably have some of that too.

And then what I'm really most excited about to close the day is — and we just announced this — is Mark Benioff, the chair and CEO for Salesforce. It's going to be a great conversation. Actually, John Furner’s going to come back to interview him, and they're going talk about all things AI, cloud computing. Not getting deep, deep delving, but kind of — what are the possibilities? What's Mark's vision for it?

Thorne: I mean, all of them are going to be crowded, but that’s going to be a big one. OK, so I'm going to assume that's your top pick.

Olson: That is my top pick for Sunday. Yep.

Thorne: Day one. Day two. Monday.

Olson: Monday. So, this is — I'm going to start with my top pick because it's the opening. We will have Magic Johnson and as you probably know … are you a Commanders’ fan?

Thorne: I'm a Commanders’ watcher. I live here. I mean, I have to watch them.

Olson: He's a recent part owner over there. But, as you know, Dodgers and he's built this post-NBA career …

Thorne: It’s amazing.

Olson: Close to a billionaire. I think he is a billionaire, but he doesn’t like to talk about it. He is very modest from what I understand. So that should be a really fun conversation. Our own CEO Matt Shay is going to interview him.

Thorne: I love. I can't wait for that picture of them standing next to each other. Magic came and he was at the Foundation program, and he was standing between Brian Cornell and Matt Shay, and it was just, it was like this behemoth and these two little people. It was fantastic. And he's got the biggest hands. It's just amazing.

Olson: I can't imagine that he was like a point guard. I mean, it's like …

Thorne: He’s great. Great, great, great.

Olson: Yeah, so that'll be fun, and I'm a lifelong Lakers fan. I grew up watching the Lakers. When I met Kobe Bryant at Shop.org, it was wild. I thought it was … just … I couldn't believe it. But now this has been a childhood idol for such a long time, so … so that'll be really cool to hear how he's built his empire, if you will. He won't call it empire, but he definitely has built …

Thorne: The movie theaters …

Olson: Yeah, I mean, and he has a lot of great connection to retail.

Thorne: Yeah, for sure.

Olson: Starbucks, and talking about how he develops underserved communities and things like that … it's, I think it's going to be really cool.

Dave Kimball, CEO for Ulta Beauty, he'll be in that morning as well. He's talking about kind of the face of — no pun intended. Now I lost myself. Oh. Just basically looking at kind of beauty enthusiasts, what are they doing to kind of serve new consumers, a diverse consumer set, diverse suppliers. How they’re working that into kind of their broader makeup and growth strategy. That's really cool. He's a board member too, so it was great to kind of get him to come in and give his view on — and this will be the first time we'll have Ulta on our main stage. That’s really cool.

Afternoon, we have our kind of economic outlook with Steve Liesman, who's the senior retail reporter, or senior economic reporter for CNBC. He’s going to actually do a presentation and I think this will be really cool given all that's going on in the world — kind of the economic uncertainty, although it's looking decent now, but who knows? After the holiday, what's the outlook?

Thorne: Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Olson: So, it'll be really be … and protracted wars, all these different things that are kind of going on in the psyche of the consumer, so he's going dive into that.

Thorne: Steve is also the father of the CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor, powered by Affinity Solutions, that just launched less than a month ago, and so I'll be very interested to hear what he has to say about sales …  

Olson: He's going to bring some of that data in, which is awesome. So, we’ll have that tie up there too.

And then Under Armour’s CEO. Relatively new. Took over for Kevin Plank, I think about a year and a half ago. Stephanie Linnartz is going to be joining us. She's going to bring along for her conversation two-time WNBA Champion Kelsey Plum for the Las Vegas Aces. They're going to talk about all aspects of sports and understanding kind of what that consumer is interested in, what are the different types of tie-ups that you can do there.

It'll be kind of an interesting because Kelsey is one of their brand ambassadors. And she’ll talk a little bit probably about what her career growth has been. It’ll be more of a chat back and forth versus a strict moderated conversation. So those are kind of like the highlights.

Thorne: So, we got our top pick is Magic. Now we’ve got one more day. Tuesday. What do we got?

Olson: Tuesday is going to be fun. So, in the morning … Hal Lawton.

Thorne: Hal Lawton is kicking us off on Tuesday.

Olson: President and CEO for Tractor Supply Company.

Thorne: A board member of NRF.

Olson: A board member. He's going to really talk about a lot of … they're doing some of the most advanced technology implementations as it relates to consumers, and like all the different … and he's at the CEO level. He understands it. He totally gets it, which is so cool to see. So that'll be really fun, to watch and hear that from the …

Thorne: He's a really, really smart guy. I mean a really smart guy. He's got a great career ahead of him.

Olson: He came for like Macy's and like a number of … He’s just really, really great guy too. We just had a conversation on the phone with him. He's such a fun, really personable person.

Thorne: Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Olson: Oh, also that morning, Ariana Huffington is going to do a quick presentation, but then she’s going to moderate a panel of power CEOS. She’s CEO for Thrive Global, former founder, obviously, of Huffington Post, and she’s going to be speaking with Carla Vernón and then we’ll be going into the afternoon.

In the afternoon we will have Martha Stewart, which I'm really excited about. We just announced that, or actually we're going to announce that next week. But at any rate, she'll be coming in.

And then our big celebrity closer this year, a la Chip and Joanna Gaines, one of your favorites that we've had in the past. Yeah, so we are going to have Drew Barrymore come in. She's going to talk about her launch with Made By Gather, which is kind of this influential producer of different types of goods. She’s launched a bunch of small kitchen appliances. Beautiful by Barrymore, is the name of the brand, and then she'll talk a little bit. She's going to be there with their founder and CEO of Made by Gather Shae Hong, and talk about their collaboration – what they do — and they’ll talk a little bit about her career and how she went from, you know, an A-lister to now her own business mogul.

Thorne: She's definitely done it all and she's done a really good job at it. So, Eric, you've been to a lot of Big Shows.

Olson: 30.

Thorne: Wow. That's a lot …

Olson: In a row …

Thorne: Dear Lord. That’s a … OK, so this is going to be really, really hard, but pick one. What was your favorite of all time?  Gimme the year.

Olson: It's really hard. I have to say every year, I …

Thorne: This is a cop out.

Olson: … This is a total. But I do. Every year, I go to it in the mornings and I look at it as, ‘Am I going to fail? Am I going to fail? Are people going to hate it?’ And at the end, I say, ‘How am I going to top this one?’

Thorne: Actually, you came up with a really good answer to that one. I will say though, you all do an extraordinary amount of work leading up to the Show. It always, always comes off -- if there's a hitch, nobody knows about it. And the people that you bring are always people that make people want to come back.

Olson: It’s calm on the inside … turmoil on the inside, calm on the outside.

Thorne: Eric, it has been a distinct pleasure.

Olson: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.  

Thorne: Thank you for joining us today.

Thorne: Retail's Big Show is called Big Show for a reason. Along with all the insightful programming are a wealth of opportunities to connect with peers, explore new technology on the Expo floor, build new connections, see the latest tech in action in the Innovation Lab, and all the time, having a great time doing it.

Susan Newman, SVP of events at NRF, is here with me to talk about all the great things you won't want to miss at the show. Susan Newman, welcome.

Susan Newman: Thanks so much, Bill. It’s great to be here.

Thorne: So good to have you here. And this is probably one of my favorite subjects because it's one of the best times of the year for the National Retail Federation. I believe. Do you agree?

Newman: I very much agree.

Thorne: I would think you would. So, we talked to Eric about the speakers and the content people are going to see and hear at the show, but there's so much more to experience. Tell us a little bit about what people will see this year around the Javits Center.

Newman: We have so much excitement around the Javits Center this year. We have everything that we have typically had. First and foremost, honestly, most people are coming for the networking, to see their friends and their coworkers and their peers, and talk about what's happening and all the latest trends.

We have about 1,000-plus exhibitors on the Expo floor. We have our Innovation Lab, which we started about — I don't know, five, six years ago — and every year it just keeps getting better and better as the technologies become more and more, just crazy in what we're seeing.

We also, we have our Startup Zone. We have … new this year a Foodservice Innovation Zone. So, tell me what you want to hear about.  

Thorne: The Innovation Lab and the Startup Zone — I remember when we launched those, and it is really extraordinary. It's kind of like you're seeing the future of retail. I mean, the whole Expo is really the future of retail. But this is kind of the fun stuff that people talk about. AI in action, virtual reality … it's really, really cool stuff. How many vendors do you usually show at the Innovation Lab?

Newman: We have 50-plus companies showcasing this year. The cool thing about the Innovation Lab is that these companies are handpicked. They're curated. They are the best of the best, and the most future-forward. And cool thing about the technology this year:  everything's getting more and more customized. More and more AI-capable. So, it's focused on you specifically. Well, not Bill Thorne, but the people. But it's becoming smarter and what that does is, it leads to smarter choices, smarter options. It's amazing what it can do.

The other thing up in the Lab this year is, there's a lot of robotics. So how retailers are using robots to do the jobs that people don't want to do, or just to be more efficient in what needs to get done.

Thorne: Yeah. You know, it always gets really crowded up there and I know that we've had to kind of change the configuration of the space. And the other thing that I found really interesting through the years is the international component of the Innovation Lab. There's a lot of companies that come in from overseas, from the Middle East. I mean, it's really quite amazing. I try not to spend all of my time up there, but you can definitely spend all of your time up there if you wanted to.

Newman: Yeah, what’s cool this year (not to give away too much) but when you walk in, you'll be greeted with an interactive hologram. So literally a hologram that can talk to and help you find whatever you need.

Thorne: I'm really excited to see that. We've recently recorded our boss Matt Shay, who's the CEO of NRF, and he'll be doing a couple of holograms actually at the Show. But the interactive one I'm really looking forward to. I've talked to the producer about it and it's just, I think it really is kind of giving us, a wave of the future as it relates to the customer experience, honestly.

So, the Innovation Lab, the Startup Zone, but there's so much more. What is the can't-miss experience around the Expo this year? I have a feeling I know this.  I think it's in 1D …

Newman: I'm going to have to say: I believe that the Foodservice Innovation Zone is … it’s in our Special Events Hall and it's called special events for a reason because we put only the coolest things in there. So truly what we've done this year is put a little bit of a spotlight on food service for a variety of reasons.

Food service is popping up in retail — from cafes in Nordstroms to state-of-the-art vending capabilities. We, this year, have two full-service restaurants on the floor that not only is serving amazing sous-vided, ventless cooking food options, but it's also showcasing the technology behind it, and what people, customers are going to be experiencing in real life as they go to restaurants.

Or in the airport, quite honestly. I mean, the vending capabilities can be put anywhere, and we are seeing them in places like stadiums and colleges and, and airports. But the technology and the fresh food that comes out of it, right, is amazing. And I think what — you know, there's big demand for fresh food as opposed to the roller bar hotdogs that you find in some convenience stores these days.

Thorne: I don't know.

Newman: So, they are transitioning because they have to — you know, it's about what the people want when they want.

Thorne: Sure, sure, so along those lines, so you've got 40,000 people showing up, and you've got this Food Zone and they're serving food. Are you ready to serve 40,000 people?

Newman: The intent isn't to feed 40,000 people. It is to feed those most curious about the technology and the kitchen equipment. 

Thorne: I’m hungry. I think I’m curious.

Newman: The food is going to be delicious. Quite honestly, but …

Thorne: What is the pizza thing you’ve been talking about?

Newman: It's called Pizza Bot and it is a robotic arm that actually can make fresh, customized gourmet pizza in minutes.

Thorne: That’s fantastic. And they’ll be serving those up?

Newman: Yeah. absolutely.

Thorne: And who are we partnering with on that, on the Food Zone?

Newman: Foodservice Innovation Zone is in partnership with the International Food and Beverage Technology Association (IFBTA). We have many Michelin sponsors that have helped bring it to life and make it possible. Middleby is one of our key sponsors who is bringing the restaurant and all of their technology and kitchen equipment, and lots of their partners that make that possible, which is really … we're calling it the ‘center of the plate,’ because it really is, you know, the center of the plate and what's going to bring everybody kind of together to see these technologies come to life.

Thorne: That's really cool. But how do you prepare for the Big Show? I mean, there's so much to see and so much going on. What's the best way to get ready for it?

Newman: Yeah, so I don't know that you can ever be fully prepared for the Show, but we certainly recommend — our app launched yesterday. So going on [that] and even on your, obviously your computer, going on the website, looking at the sessions, figuring out where you want to be when. We have more than 11 stages, so there is so much content to take advantage of, so knowing and prioritizing where you want to be. The building is quite large, so knowing that …

Thorne: How large is it? How large is the Javits Center? What, five city blocks?

Newman: It is …

Thorne: What, like, five city blocks?

Newman: It is, I think, more than five city blocks. Yes. Yeah, it is very large. And there's more than 300,000 square feet of Expo space just in itself. So also picking which technologies you're curious about, what companies you want to go see, and mapping that out.

I will mention one also cool factor that we have this year. Our wayfinding is going to be provided by AI characters at each entrance of every Expo door. So, you will tell them what booth you're interested in finding, and the creature that is there — whether it be a person or some other kind of creature, if you will — will actually help you. Either tell you that you're on the wrong floor, where you need to go to locate it, and even periodically give you a little helpful hint about some special things that might be happening at that company's booth that you had asked about.

Thorne: Creatures. This is the future. Wow.

Newman: Yes. It's going to be super fun.

Thorne: They do provide, I guess. There are fun things that happen, like happy hours and stuff.

Newman: Our opening party this year is going to be one for the records. We're doing ‘Ice and Spice.’ So, we have two levels: One if going to be ‘Ice.’ We have ice sculptures, we have frozen specialty drinks, and some surprises that are happening up there.

And then in ‘Spice,’ we have some Morocco dancers, fun music, and then beverages, hot beverages and things that are going to get y'all spiced up and hot. But not too hot. Appropriately hot.

Thorne: Yeah, not too hot. Well, it is in January. Tell me, in all of your time — and you've done a number of shows — what is one of your favorite things when you look back on the Big Show? 

Newman: Honestly, it is so hard to narrow it down. It’s … I'm amazed every time I see it go up, come together, experience the 40,000 people in the building, and then watch it come down in a matter of hours. To me, that’s the excitement and the reason that we do what we do is because we get to see people experience it, enjoy it, do an amazing amount of business at it, and then go home and hopefully put it all into action.

Thorne: That’s the vision comes alive. And then goes to sleep until the next year. Susan Newman, it has been such a pleasure talking with you. And thank you all for listening to another episode of Retail Gets Real. You can find more information about this episode at retail gets real dot com.

I'm Bill Thorne. This is Retail Gets Real. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.