Retail Rewired Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
Every week, Retail Rewired Roundup pulls together a fast hit of what matters in retail right now: five signals, one opinion, one AI take, and one spotlight on a company worth watching.
This Week’s 5 Signals in Retail
Walmart e‑commerce surge underscores CEO Doug McMillon’s digital legacy Global e‑commerce sales rose 27 percent in Q3, and U.S. online sales have grown 28 percent for seven consecutive quarters. He will step down on January 31, 2026, and Walmart U.S. president John Furner will take over on February 1, 2026. The consistency shows how McMillon’s investments in omnichannel retail over the past decade set the stage for his successor to lean further into AI‑driven personalization and supply‑chain automation.
Bath & Body Works embraces Amazon to recapture grey‑market sales The fragrance and body‑care brand will launch a curated assortment on Amazon next year. The company already sees tens of millions of dollars in grey‑market sales through resellers, so partnering directly helps regain control over pricing and product presentation while learning from customer feedback.
Amazon unveils an AI‑powered unified advertising hub At its UnBoxed 2025 conference, Amazon rolled out full‑funnel campaign tools and merged its sponsored ads and demand‑side platform into a single Campaign Manager. Ads Agent automates campaign planning and targeting, while Creative Agent can now generate streaming‑TV ads. This shows how retail media is becoming more automated and data‑driven.
Target brings ChatGPT commerce to its loyalty app Target will launch a beta app on OpenAI’s ChatGPT that allows guests to build multi‑item baskets, buy fresh groceries and choose pickup, drive‑up or shipping. The retailer plans to link Target Circle accounts and enable same‑day delivery within the chat interface, showing how conversational commerce is reshaping shopping.
Old Navy taps DoorDash for nationwide same‑day deliveries The Gap‑owned brand partnered with DoorDash to offer same‑day delivery of denim, activewear and holiday pajamas from more than one thousand U.S. stores. This collaboration responds to growing demand for on‑demand apparel and shows how logistics partnerships can extend reach during peak shopping periods.
Taken together, this week’s signals reflect a common thread: retailers are removing friction across the path to purchase. Whether it’s Walmart scaling AI personalization, Bath & Body Works reclaiming control through Amazon, or Target and Amazon automating shopping and advertising, the message is clear. Convenience, speed, and smart partnerships are shaping how brands win. The key question now is not just how much tech to adopt, but how quickly teams can align behind the systems that actually move the shopper forward
Weekly Opinion: Marketplace or Bust? The New Reality for DTC Brands
Bath & Body Works has confirmed plans to launch a curated selection of products on Amazon in the first half of 2026. This is a notable shift for a brand that has long prioritized its own stores and website. The move is part of a larger turnaround strategy under CEO Daniel Heaf and is aimed at recapturing an estimated 60 to 80 million dollars in gray market sales currently driven by unauthorized third-party sellers. By selling directly, the company can control product authenticity, pricing, and brand presentation, while also building verified customer reviews.
This signals a broader change in how brands view marketplaces. As digital advertising costs rise and direct-to-consumer growth slows, more companies are treating platforms like Amazon as essential distribution partners. The trade-off is real. Lower margins and limited access to customer data can be challenges. However, the upside includes broader reach, faster fulfillment, and lower acquisition costs.
“A smart Amazon strategy supports DTC growth. When brands show up directly, they take back sales from grey-market sellers and make sure customers get authentic products with the quality they expect. Prime through FBA or 1P gives people a trusted way to try a brand, and many of those new-to-brand shoppers later buy from the brand’s own site. Owning your product pages, Brand Store, and A+ content also keeps your look and tone consistent across every channel.”
Success on a marketplace depends on having a clear strategy. Brands need to define what to list, how to differentiate, and what success looks like beyond just impressions. For those facing flat growth or brand dilution through resellers, a marketplace presence can offer both control and momentum.
The bigger question is whether more brands will start seeing marketplaces not as a compromise, but as a necessary complement to their owned channels. Is your current distribution strategy still fit for purpose? Are you reaching customers where they actually shop? And if you're not there yet, what is the cost of staying away?
Shadow AI: Why Leaders Need To Look Where No One Is Looking
Michael Mallette , Principal of AI Strategy at Lovia Edge and host of The AI Edge, makes a sharp point that hit me instantly. Shadow AI isn’t sabotage, it’s the real work happening in the dark where teams improvise because official workflows can’t keep up. His argument is simple, and powerful. If you want to lead in an AI-driven organization, you need to understand the hidden workflows, the unapproved tools, the quiet hacks that reveal where your processes are breaking and where your future operating model is already forming.
Shadow AI leading from darkness…
If you want to read the full piece, it’s a great read. Click this image!
By Michael Mallette
Spotlight: Why Shopliftr Is Worth a Closer Look
This week’s spotlight is on ShopLiftr, a company focused on tying digital media to in-store sales outcomes with far less friction than traditional retail media workflows. Their dynamic creative platform fuses live, local retail offers with programmatic display, video, and digital out-of-home placements. Each ad is automatically localized based on the shopper’s nearest retailer, current promotion, and region-specific availability.
“Brands are under more pressure than ever to prove impact. Shopliftr bridges the gap between what’s on the shelf and what’s on the screen - no new processes, no heavy creative lift, just real-world relevance delivered automatically at scale.”
The platform draws from the largest active trade promotion database in North America. It powers SMART Campaigns that combine dynamic creative, geo-signal intelligence, and closed-loop measurement through DSP partners to prove how digital engagement impacts store traffic and sales lift.
Strengths
Dynamically injects live in-store deals into digital advertising, aggregated from leading grocery retailers’ digital flyers by live data teams—not scraped.
Generates tens of thousands of creative variations automatically across key digital channels without burdening internal teams.
Hyper-local relevance aligns tightly with weekly promo cycles and competitive environments.
Multilingual rendering (English and French) supports the realities of Canadian retail and shopper preferences.
Available as both a fully managed service and an ad tech-only option within a brand’s DSP, offering flexibility for media teams.
Tap-to-Map and L-Bar video formats help connect story to sale in a single impression.
Case studies show meaningful increases in verified traffic, sales lift, and iROAS, including cross-retailer lift and newly acquired shoppers.
Limits
Performance depends on accurate promotional data and store execution, especially in categories with fast-moving inventory.
While it adds crucial market and competitive context, it does not replace internal analytics, retailer-specific data, or loyalty insights.
Requires brand discipline to avoid reacting too quickly to competitive promotions, such as shifting spend week to week.
It solves key parts of the retail equation, like local relevance, creative automation, and measurement. It doesn’t address assortment, distribution, or supply chain challenges
The current focus is on display, video and CTV, and digital out-of-home. Search-based retail media is not part of today’s offering.
Why I’d Take the Meeting
Tools that remove friction, speed up decisions, and connect digital spend to real-world outcomes are always worth exploring. Shopliftr aims to ensure ads reflect the actual promotions shoppers see in-store, in real time, across every relevant format.
In a year where precision, relevance, and cost efficiency matter more than ever, Shopliftr offers a practical and data-ready way to make campaigns more accurate, more local, and more accountable.
Sources
Grocery Dive article on Walmart’s Q3 e‑commerce growth and U.S. digital salesgrocerydive.com.
Retail Dive report on Bath & Body Works’ plan to launch on Amazon and address grey‑market salesretaildive.com.
Marketing Dive recap of Amazon’s UnBoxed conference highlighting Ads Agent and Creative Agentmarketingdive.com.
Retail Dive coverage of Target’s ChatGPT shopping app and multi‑item basketsretaildive.com.
Retail Dive piece on Old Navy’s partnership with DoorDash for same‑day deliveryretaildive.com.
CBS News report confirming that Walmart U.S. president John Furner will succeed Doug McMillon as CEO on February 1, 2026cbsnews.com.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this roundup and have ideas for next week’s issue, I would love to hear from you. Feel free to reply or share this newsletter with a colleague.