Target, Neiman Marcus and Jet.com among Shoptalk headliners
More than 100 senior retail executives are already confirmed as speakers for a first-of-its-kind event called Shoptalk that will be held next May with a focus on next generation commerce.
Organizers of the event have confirmed speaker participants including Jason Goldberger, president of Target.com and mobile; Casey Carl, Target chief strategy and innovation officer; Joe Megibow, chief digital officer at American Eagle Outfitters; John Koryl, president of Neiman Marcus stores and online and Andrea Wasserman, senior VP and head of direct-to-consumer at Nine West Group.
Other notables include Chieh Huang, CEO of online warehouse club Boxed Wholesale; Katrina Lake, founder and CEO of Stitch Fix; Michel Dubin, CEO of Dollar Shave Club; and former J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson who now serves as CEO of Enjoy, a company he founded last year to focus on home delivery of high-end electronics.
The roster of more than 100 speakers is impressive considering organizers only revealed plans in September for the inaugural event billed as, “the tech event for next-gen commerce.”
Shoptalk is scheduled for May 16-18 in Las Vegas and is being launched with the goal of providing attendees an unmatched opportunity for dialogue and interaction among the entire commerce ecosystem. Roughly 2,000 people are projected to attend the event the first year representing a range of retailers, brands, investors, Internet companies and tech startups.
“People understand we need this,” said Shoptalk chairman Anil Aggarwal, referring to the response from speakers and ambitious attendee projections. “The response from the industry has been ‘we absolutely need this type of platform to serve as a catalyst for dialogue.”
Aggarwal, a co-founder along with Jonathan Weiner of the recently concluded Money 20/20 financial technology show which drew 10,000 attendees, wants Shoptalk to be a platform where attendees discover groundbreaking solutions, trends and new directions to take their businesses, discuss and debate the latest and most novel business models across all commerce verticals and collaborate in new ways to forge innovative partnerships and fund new ventures.
“Connected and empowered, today's consumers expect a wide range of new integrated, on-demand and personalized products, services and experiences. This is the future of commerce,” Aggarwal said. “It's far more than just the incremental shift to omnichannel that dominates today's dialogue: It's a reinvention of how consumers discover, shop and buy everything."
From a content standpoint, Shoptalk promises to focus on 10 trends event organizers regard as revolutionary and redefining that are impacting all types of commerce. They include:
• Pioneering brands and retail models
• On-demand services, delivery and logistics
• Collaborative consumption and the sharing economy
• Integrated, omnichannel shopping
• Search, discovery and curation
• Consumer-centric product development and customization
• Delightful user experiences and interfaces
• Anywhere, anytime marketing
• Measurement and analytics everywhere
• Globalization and borderless shopping