January 13 marked the third and final day of Retail’s Big Show, the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual conference and expo, held in New York City this week.

Running from January 11 to 13, the conference drew 40,000 global retail executives and other industry professionals, including suppliers and media, all eager to implement lessons learned from some of retail’s biggest players.

Several industry VIPs, including Miguel Almeida, Nordstrom’s president of digital and customer experience; Josh Krepon, Steve Madden’s president of DTC operations; and Sarah Travis, Target’s executive VP and chief digital and revenue officer, touched on the importance of strategic, but speedy, plays for improvement.

Whether you run a brand like Ralph Lauren or COS and are diving into AI, or a retailer like Target or Nordstrom and are delving into marketplace expansion, the only true way to push your business forward is through a constant cycle of execution, experimentation, and optimization.

As retail veteran and Brooklinen CEO Billy May concluded in one of the day’s last panels, “The only way to predict the future is to be a part of it.”

Rather than solely theorizing about ways to innovate their company, a leader must be actively engaged in adopting and integrating new technologies and strategies within their business.

This is especially vital in the coming year, with many consumers – particularly those in the Gen Z age bracket – likely to be more overwhelmed by rising costs of goods and further tariff-related price hikes.

2026 is truly the year when retailers will need to work smarter, not harder, to maintain the attention of the one-per-cent shopper and the everyday consumer, with enticing, well-curated product offerings and an optimized end-to-end shopping process.

North American retail economic outlook for 2026

In one of the day’s first panels, Joyce Chang, chair of global research at J.P. Morgan, shared research regarding the economic forces set to reshape the retail industry in 2026.

Despite US disposable income increasing by $1.3 trillion in 2025, with AI accounting for approximately one-third of this global growth, many consumers will struggle to pay for daily necessities, let alone small luxuries, this year.

One of retail’s biggest spending groups, Gen Z, faces a US unemployment rate of 9.2 per cent, with further job cuts expected to be driven by AI. Meanwhile, lower-income consumers are facing difficulties paying for daily goods amid the rising cost of living and are struggling to make payments on past-due amounts.

Chang noted that during the pandemic, approximately 45 million individuals with student loans—about 20 per cent of the US population – held $1.6 trillion in student debt.

Though the student loan moratorium ended in May 2025, over 60 per cent of loans remain unpaid among high- and lower-income consumers alike. There are also growing discussions of wage garnishment, which could theoretically cut US discretionary income spending by half. At the very least, it would cause eight per cent of the US population to struggle to pay for essential goods.

While consumer shopping in 2025 wasn’t as affected by tariffs as analysts had predicted a year earlier, the reality is that tariff-related price shifts won’t be de-escalating anytime soon, and further challenges, such as the rising cost of living, will impede consumer discretionary spending in 2026.

This is part of why retailers need to work smarter, not harder, at signalling cost-beneficial deals to consumers across economic backgrounds and presenting them with an especially well-curated marketplace of goods.

How traditional retailers are managing marketplaces

In a panel moderated by Ken Pilot of Ken Pilot Ventures, Miguel Almedia, Nordstrom’s president of digital and customer experience; Sarah Travis, Target’s vice president and chief digital and revenue officer; and Frank Bedo, Best Buy’s chief marketplace and e-commerce officer, discussed the challenges of operating multiple marketplaces in today’s hypercompetitive landscape.

For instance, one question Pilot asked the panellists was whether a marketplace could cannibalize the wholesale side of operations.

To this, Travis, Bedo, and Almedia unequivocally responded in the negative, provided retailers take the proper precautions, such as establishing appropriate service licensing agreements (SLAs) beforehand.

As Nordstrom’s Almedia told the audience, “From the very beginning, we set a series of guidelines that have helped us aggressively expand our seller base without friction for our merchants and buyers. At the end of the day, it is the Nordstrom brand name that the customer is buying from, so while we want those dollars, the guidelines help us stay agile and offer the extended assortment of products that our customers are loving.”

For Best Buy, which re-launched its digital marketplace in August 2025, Bedo explained that it has been “widely successful” in boosting the technology retailer’s profits. Where televisions or other larger electronic devices are often one-time purchases that last the customer for an extended period, the marketplace helps Best Buy’s shoppers find additional products to enhance their original tech purchase and provide a more well-rounded shopping experience.

While the program has acquired approximately 1,100 sellers since launching in August, Best Buy’s SKU count has increased elevenfold, helping drive comparable sales growth of 2.7 per cent year-on-year.

Additionally, Travis added that for players like Target, which is trying to start a new chapter with new CEO Michael Fiddelke taking over as of February 1, a well-curated marketplace is a clear sign of a clear understanding of consumer wants and interests.

“We’re a company that’s known for curation of products for national, emerging brands, and owned brands, and our marketplace plays an enormous role in helping us to identify trends and bring products on much more quickly.”

Travis added, “We are focused on opening the first page of the next chapter of Target. I get really excited about the role we can play in having a differentiated, curated assortment strategy, and our marketplace obviously plays a huge role in that. So I want to double down on where we’re headed as a company with strategic curation at scale.”

Further reading: Day two at NRF’s big show: Ralph Lauren and Sephora talk AI and taking risks