Shoptalk On Building The New Retail Community

IRT spoke with Anil Aggarwal, founder of Shoptalk — a new event that’s getting an incredible amount of industry attention — about what retailers can expect to gain from attending the show. Anil founded Money20/20 (the world’s largest consumer payments event with over 10,000 attendees in just its fourth year) as well as two tech companies with successful exits, including one sold to Google in 2012 for more than $200m. He’s also an angel and venture capital investor.

How is Shoptalk different from the many other retail industry events?

There’s nothing like Shoptalk in the retail industry.

Retail is now squarely a part of a much bigger picture — commerce — that includes all of the ways people discover, shop, and buy their products, services, and experiences.  Shoptalk is the only event that covers this complete picture, which we think retailers need to fully grasp to ensure their customers continue to return to do business with them.

Consumers and their expectations have changed a lot in just the past few years. While some of this change is based on mobile connectivity and generational shifts, much of it is based on the plethora of new technologies and services consumers are being offered by literally thousands of innovative companies — mostly newer ones but also many established ones.

Shoptalk is leading this commerce dialogue and building the community of commerce innovators, providing retailers and brands with the opportunity to engage with startups, tech companies, Internet companies, and the investment community at an unprecedented scale.

All of this makes Shoptalk a truly one-of-a-kind experience.

What are some of the real-world takeaways retailers can expect to get at Shoptalk and implement in their own organizations?

We have many of the brightest minds in commerce speaking at Shoptalk, including 100+ CEOs of venture-backed companies plus another 100+ senior retail and brand executives, prolific investors, and more. Shoptalk is the only industry event where retailers can discover the most important new business models and technologies, and network with the innovators responsible for shaping how products, services, and experiences are created for today’s consumer.

Our agenda covers the key topics redefining the customer experience ranging from search and discovery, on-demand services, delivery and logistics to the digital store, advances in measurement and analytics and design. We’re also covering topics as far reaching as experiential retail, virtual and augmented reality, and different use cases of artificial intelligence in retail.

With so much to learn from so many well informed executives, we see Shoptalk already resonating deeply with the industry, which is why we’re tracking to sell out at 2,000 attendees in our first year. Shoptalk is not an event where the blind lead the blind, and it’s not a place where retailers will be harassed by vendors, both of which occur far too often in my opinion. Instead, we’ve created an easy and open environment to engage with others and learn from them — in both formal and informal settings.

The result, we believe, is that people will take back entirely new perspectives to their organizations that will empower them to help answer very difficult questions about the path forward for their businesses.

What retailers should attend the event — what size, and what titles?

All retailers of every size should attend Shoptalk.

We’re creating a comprehensive, consumer-centric dialogue. And just as consumers use all channels to buy in any number of different ways from every kind and size of retailer, we believe an industry event should be all encompassing in its coverage and dialogue. This seems obvious, but it doesn’t exist. Our team saw a similar siloed and fragmented community and dialogue in the payments industry when we created Money20/20 in 2011 — today, payments has a complete and all-inclusive ecosystem and framework due in large part to Money20/20, which quickly became the world’s largest payments event with over 10,000 attendees.

As to who should attend Shoptalk, an executive at a retailer recently asked me if they should send just senior people to Shoptalk, and I responded that they should send smart people — regardless of how senior they are. The reality is that, like anything new, we’re attracting curious minds who are passionate learners to our first event. These individuals are signing up every day from every area of their organizations, and our goal is to help them get even further ahead.