Overheard at NRF 2025: CEO highlights
Overheard at NRF 2025: CEO highlights
With more than 50 keynote and featured sessions led by industry experts, NRF 2025 more than lived up to its reputation as “Retail’s Big Show."
As in past years, the chief executives of some of the industry’s most prominent retail firms were on hand to share insights about their companies.
Below is a sampling of some of their remarks.
Brian Cornell, chair and CEO Target
“We spend a lot of time with our frontline teams … listening and learning. Our teams are kind of unlocking the door of what we need to do next.”
“We're going to be building hundreds of additional stores over the next 10 years. We’re investing in and preparing for the next generation of store directors."
“Human interaction in retail will play an important role for years to come.”
“One of my favorite parts of what we do is when you meet a team member who might've started out as an hourly team member and 10 years later is a store director with 200 or 400 people that report to them.”
Mary Dillon, president and CEO, Foot Locker
“I’m a firm believer that brick and mortar is here to stay. But you have to make it an experience that people want to have.”
“Once you realize you can wear sneakers to almost anything, you hardly ever go back to heels.”
John Furner, president and CEO, Walmart U.S.
“2024 was a successful year in the face of a lot of challenges like lingering inflation, elevated interest rates, geopolitical issues and events with labor and the ports, and we’d love to say that’s all in the past and this year is going to be smooth sailing. But this year will bring more uncertainty and more challenges.”
Doug Herrington, CEO, Worldwide Amazon Stores
"We know speed is important to our customer base. The faster we deliver, the more they shop.
“About half of our customer service interactions are being touched by AI.”
“AI may even spawn new retail formats.”
“We’ve been very intentional with our willingness to accept failure in order to get innovation.
Calvin McDonald, CEO, Lululemon Athletica
“There’s no doubt the consumer is willing to spend, you just have to give them reasons to.”
“Physical retail will always be part of the brand.”
Artemis Patrick, president and CEO, Sephora North America
“Our secret sauce 100% is our beauty advisors.”
“We have embarked on the largest capitol project in Sephora’s history. [Patrick is referring to the re-design of Sephora’s store fleet across North America.]
“I'm not sure I’ll ever see a world in my lifetime where people aren’t going to want to come in and touch and play with beauty.”
Joe Preston, president and CEO, New Balance
“There’s power in private.” [Stated after Preston noted that the company had no interest in going public.]
“Our top-selling styles, for the most part, are the same around the globe.”
"This is the fourth consecutive year that we’ve had over 20 percent growth in sales. Quite frankly, we could be bigger if we wanted to, but we use a selective distribution approach to manage the brand and not oversaturate.”
Joshua Schulman, CEO and executive director, Burberry
“The best brand evolutions make you smile and think that ‘swhat you always loved about the brand. But it’s new and fresh an different.”
“You hear on social media immediately if your brand isn’t resonating.”
Tony Spring, chairman and CEO, Macy’s Inc.
“The death knell for department stores has been going on since I was a child.”
“We’re in the retail therapy business.”
