NRF 2026- The NEXT ‘NOW’
Four days in the concrete canyons of NYC have made one thing clear: the hype cycle is over, and the utility cycle has begun.
From the NRF Foundation Honours Gala celebrating the visionary leadership of Fran Horowitz, to a brilliant final-day podcast session with my great friends Chris and Anne at Omni Talk Retail, the energy has been relentless.
This week was a masterclass in extreme networking. I’ve had the privilege of meeting hundreds of incredible retail leaders, disruptive solution providers, and brilliant minds. Whether we were debating the strategic divide between European precision and American scale or exploring the shift toward Agentic AI, the collective hunger for real-world execution was palpable.
The big takeaways:
- Frontline First: Technology must empower the shop floor, not just the back office.
- Agentic Execution: We are moving from chatbots to AI that actually does the work—from optimising shelf edges to predicting shrink.
- Unified Commerce: If your data isn’t talking in real-time, you’re standing still.
A massive thank you to the innovators who inspired National Retail Federation 2026: Quorso, Vusion, Kallikor, Edgify, TruRating, Kwayga, Uncrowd, Rethink Retail, OmniSol and Omnitalk.
To the hundreds of people I connected with—the conversation is just getting started. I’ll be reaching out to you all next week to turn these “Big Show” insights into big results.
Onwards to a human-centred 2026.
