Retail Unwrapped - from The Robin Report
Welcome to Retail Unwrapped, a podcast from The Robin Report.
Join Shelley E. Kohan as she shares insights and unpacks issues at the core of retail and consumer products. The conversations are lively and the opinions are honest.
New episodes every Friday.
Episodes
305 episodes
EP 305: How Does The Vermont Country Store Keep Going?
The Vermont Country Store is an 80-year-old retail icon that has sustained the charm that made it famous and the business expertise that has kept it thriving since 1946. We caught up with Eliot Orton, an 8th-generation Vermonter and 4th-generat...
EP 304: How to Avoid the AI Trust Recession
Who, or what, do you trust? Retailers who think moving quickly on generative AI as the winning strategy, may be sacrificing trust for speed driven by board and competitive pressure, not customer demand. Speed without building a trust framework ...
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EP 303: Autonomous Delivery in the Driveway
Every retailer preparing for autonomous delivery is watching the wrong vehicle; the real disruption isn't a drone or a sidewalk bot; it's the driverless car already parked in the customer's driveway. These autonomous vehicles are the next...
EP 302: It's About So Much More Than Lettuce
Who's watching the lettuce? The cyclospora outbreak has 1,600+ confirmed, and 7,000 suspected victims. Americans are panicked about fresh produce, and Taco Bell has taken the toll from its Taylor Farms lettuce supplier. Join TRR contributors Ph...
EP 301: Why an AI Agent Is More Trusted
Growing dependence on AI has revealed how risk and trust are influencing customer shopping behavior. Join Shelley and Shiv Gupta, Chief Analytics and Solutions Officer at Volute Group, as they explore how AI is used as a confessional when consu...
EP 300: Spoiler Alert: Stop Chasing AI and Clean Up Your Store First
AI continues to make headline news throwing retailers into disruption. But the real news is that retail is in crisis and it’s in the physical store. Join Shelley and Mark Cohen, TRR contributor and former Director of Columbia University's Retai...
EP 299: Signals Retailers Are Missing
The biggest threats to retail are hiding in plain sight. And the biggest problems facing retailers are caused by not asking the right questions. This is not convenient management theory; it is missing the key signals that are reshaping the reta...
EP 298: What AI Can’t Deliver
Everyone thinks AI will replace the workforce. But that’s the wrong assumption. The real question is what human work will become more valuable once machines handle the basics. Join Shelley and Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride...
EP 297: Humans Are the Weakest Link in Your Data Strategy
The weakest link in most data strategies is the human factor; it’s the team members who can’t agree on measuring what matters. Add to that, communications often break down in the best tech solutions to deploy and how to integrate them to preven...
EP 296: Gaming AI Search
AI search is growing at over 300 percent while traditional browser search is declining. Most retailers and brands are completely unprepared for what that means for their search visibility. Join Shelley and Heather Holmes, Founder of Publicity f...
EP 295: Are Your ORC Forensics Up to Date?
As organized crime gets bolder and more sophisticated, so do the tools that retailers can deploy to stop criminals in their tracks. ORC has become a $112 billion annual loss for retailers with mass theft feeding fencing operations across ...
EP 294: The AI-Empowered Store
Just released, ICSC and McKinsey do a deep dive in a new report, “Shopping in the age of AI: Redefining stores for a new era.” Spoiler alert: Agentic AI could drive up to $1 trillion in U.S. retail revenue by 2030. Join Shelley and Stepha...
EP 293: The Comeback of Century 21 NYC
Iconic Century 21 closed its doors in 2020, not the first retail victim of the fallout from the pandemic. Five years later the brand’s comeback story marks a page in retail lore. Join Shelley and Larry Mentzer, COO of Century 21 NYC as they tel...
EP 292: How to Be Human in the AI Era
Conversations in C-suites about AI typically bring up cost efficiencies, job cutbacks, competitive edges and workplace transformation. What leaders don’t discuss is being human in an AI era and what fundamental human skills and talents are not ...
Ep 291: Luxury’s Future After the War in Iran
The global luxury market has been experiencing a quiet crisis, and the war in Iran has accelerated its fragile spiral downward disrupting the Middle East as an emerging luxury market. With over $7.5 trillion in Gulf regional wealth projected to...
EP 290: The Next Frontier: Agentic AI and Operations
AI isn’t just a use case; it's a new commerce channel and operating model designed to amplify loyalty economics. Agents will help customers personally through discovery, comparisons, purchase, and fulfilling their orders. So retail, which has ...
EP 289: Jockey Turns 150 Years Old and Is Still Inventing
A family-owned, 150-year-old brand continues to succeed by sticking to the foundational values of the brand despite short-term disruptions and short-term market volatility. It’s no accident that Jockey has built something that is rare in the re...
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EP 288: Succession: Hire the Enemy or Promote Within?
CEO succession can be a minefield. Who makes the decision? Who gets the crown? Retail just lived through its most turbulent CEO cycle in a generation. Retail companies reported 41 CEO exits through August 2025, a 116 percent increase...
EP 287: GLP-1 Is a Disruption Retailers Aren’t Ready For
The fastest-growing consumer behavior shift isn't driven by a trend, a digital platform, or a fickle generation: it’s a weight loss drug. GLP-1 adoption is accelerating so fast that Ozempic is outpacing iPhone adoption curves in the same timefr...
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EP 286: Yeti Takes a Long View to Protect Its Brand
The Attention Economy is not a mandate for viral moments and six-second social clips. Long-form storytelling captures more attention, engagement and potential activation than fleeting moments of marketing distraction. Join Shelley and Bill Neff...
EP 285: Tarek Müller Builds a Global Retail Tech Solution
Many technology companies are built by people who create a solution for a nonexistent problem. SCAYLE was built by people who studied a problem and then lived it firsthand. For more than a decade, the team behind About You didn't just theorize ...
EP 284: How to Master Agentic AI, Not Fear It
Although Agentic AI and LLMs may cause high anxiety for retailers that sees bots as competitors, the truth is that we are experiencing one of the most exciting times in retail that is on the cusp of change. About 23 percent of Americans have al...
EP 283: Hershey Perfects Experiential Retail
Retail theater transforms the store to a stage, and that’s 130-year-old Hershey’s sweet spot. The iconic confectioner is quietly becoming one of the more sophisticated retail operators in the industry. Join Shelley and Stephanie Berman, Vice Pr...
EP 282: Tim Baxter Has a Bold Vision for Retail
When Tim Baxter left Express, he thought he might semi-retire. What he discovered instead was a vision he'd been building toward for 30 years; a belief in the meaningful role a retail store can play in people's lives, and his conviction to brin...
EP 281: A Data Expert Uncovers the Power of Re-Commerce
The consumer movement to invest in secondhand is led by values: meaning, provenance, and sustainability. Re-commerce is not a niche; it’s a $180-$200 billion global, parallel economy growing up to five times faster than traditional retail. The ...
