Furniture.com is a new kind of furniture marketplace: a single platform aggregating more than 3 million SKUs from 80+ retail partners, using standardized data and AI-powered personalization to replace the 15-hour odyssey most shoppers endure. VP of Brand & Creative Olivia Hnatyshin joins Phillip and Brian to unpack how the team is rebuilding the third-most expensive purchase of a person's life – one where hunter green and forest green finally mean the same thing.

• Buying furniture is the third most expensive purchase a person makes, after a car or a home.
• 83% of furniture shoppers start online; 73% of searches are non-branded.
• Shoppers spend an average of 15+ hours across 4+ retailers before buying a single sofa.
• Data standardization is the real unlock for the category.
• Verticalized, purpose-built AI beats general chatbots when the stakes are high.

• [00:07:20] "It's not really a discovery problem. It's a systems problem. The industry hasn't caught up to how people are actually shopping." - Olivia
• [00:18:50] "When you stop trusting the system's recommendations because they're going to be guided by advertising, you stop believing there's a real curation based on your tastes and your needs." - Phillip
• [00:19:45] "We're doing one thing and we wanna do it really, really well. That gives us the advantage because we're not trying to build for a bunch of other retail streams." - Olivia
• [00:35:50] "We're moving away from search entirely. It really is more about expressing intent and having that intent met instantly and accurately." - Olivia

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Evelyn Mora, founder and CEO of VLGE, joins Phillip and Brian to challenge how we think about AI training data, brand identity, and the coming era of individual-first commerce. We move from the mechanics of world modeling to the cultural philosophy of what it means for brands to let go, adapt, and become an ingredient rather than the star of the show.

PLUS: Strata Volume 001 is available for purchase now!

• Good AI agents are trained on embodied, human data, not synthetic simulations.
• Brands' training data pipelines will become their most competitive IP.
• The "personal economy" is shifting commerce from generational boxes to radical individuality.
• Brands must become an adaptable story that’s recognizable but infinitely mixable.
• The future of AI is expensive. Data sovereignty and consent economics are coming.

[00:06:46] "A good agent would know my budget, my personality, my preferences." — Evelyn Mora

[00:21:08] "When you have humans going and playing and reacting with their free will and their freedom and their personality and identity... that to me is the ultimate high signal data." — Evelyn Mora

[00:40:06] "Brands should kind of evolve into these different mediums... into a flavor that can really be mixed into everyone's lives." — Evelyn Mora

[00:53:54] "In this agent Hunger Games, it really does matter how you train and what kind of training data you capture." — Evelyn Mora

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Andrew Youderian joins Phillip and Brian to break down the 2026 eCom Trends Report: a decade in the making, 300 brands surveyed, and a lot of conventional wisdom overturned. The data reveals a diverging landscape where gross margins are climbing but net margins are shrinking, Amazon's dominance is quietly unwinding, and AI's productivity promise hasn't quite arrived – yet.

• Paid advertising isn't the problem, but your P&L structure might be
• Amazon's share of community revenue has fallen to 2017 levels, despite record seller counts
• AI adoption isn't moving the financial needle. 2026 may be the inflection point
• Lean operations (sub-20% overhead) consistently separate the optimistic from the pessimistic
• Raising prices remains the fastest, highest-impact lever operators chronically underuse
• Andrew's thesis: we're entering the era of the small, durable brand — slower, sturdier, built to last

• [00:12:14] "Quality product is no longer the moat. Attention is the moat. But the problem is attention is expensive and easily diverted." — Brian
• [00:14:22] "The future is going to be the era of the small, durable brand — fewer brands that scale quickly, more brands that build slowly the old-fashioned way." — Andrew Youderian
• [00:27:24] "I think 2026, 2027, we're going to see those AI-adopting brands start to pull away — but I don't think it has delivered yet on what it's promised." — Andrew Youderian
• [00:35:34] "There's nothing I have done across multiple businesses that has ever had as much impact, as quickly, and that I have regretted waiting as long to do, as raise prices." — Andrew Youderian

• eCommerceFuel 2026 eCom Trends Report (Blueprint)
• eCommerceFuel

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How does a 76-year-old legacy retailer reinvent itself as a tech-powered ecosystem? Lisa Horton, Chief Communications & Creative Officer at David’s Bridal, dishes on the company’s grand modernization and how they’ve expanded to accommodate the next generation’s Gen-Z-sized aspirations.

• David's Bridal's "Aisle to Algorithm" pivot puts AI at the center of everything — from merchandising to internal communications.
• The Style Squad ambassador program bridges employee creators ("Dream Makers") and external influencers, offering the most aggressive affiliate commission in retail at 20%.
• David's captures 90% of brides who enter their ecosystem — a first-party data advantage few retailers can match.
• The definition of "influencer" is broadening: word of mouth is influence, and everyone is influential.
• David's is building beyond bridal — eyeing the post-wedding household, where the majority of purchase decisions are made.
• [00:00:54] "We're basically a startup inside of a 76-year-old retailer." - Lisa Horton
• [00:12:09] "We have shifted in the last 12 months from being a legacy retailer to a 360 degree wedding planning ecosystem." - Lisa Horton
• [00:13:12] "Word of mouth is influence. And everyone is influential." - Lisa Horton
• [00:22:06] "Everything that we do moving forward is always going to come from a place of how do we mitigate her stress? How do we make her feel excited and seen and celebratory in every moment." - Lisa Horton

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Recorded live on the Shoptalk Spring show floor, Phillip and Alicia sit down with Leah Logan, VP of Retail Media Transformation for Inmar Intelligence, and Andrew Lipsman, Founder & Chief Analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce, fresh off a spirited on-stage debate about agentic commerce. We debunk AI Traffic Apocalypse predictions and make the case for creators as a critical yet overlooked retail media channel.

• AI referral traffic currently accounts for just 0.1–2% of retailer traffic; it has also led to eCommerce site traffic growth, not decline.
• Consumer intent data, not bottom-funnel ads, is where LLM advertising will find its footing.
• Creators are a media channel that predates the hype, and the measurement has been there for years.
• Retail media's growth depends on graduating from ROAS to incrementality — the sooner, the better.
• [00:11:08] "The next big trend already exists. People just haven't really wrapped their heads around it yet." — Andrew Lipsman
• [00:26:09] "We have to stop looking at CPMs and start looking at investments." — Leah Logan

• Retail Confessions Podcast
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Recorded live at Shoptalk, Phillip and Brian sit down with Heather Rivera, Chief Business Officer at Wing (an Alphabet company), to talk about how Wing has crafted our five-minute delivery future. Spoiler: the novelty of drones wearing off might be the best thing that ever happened to the industry.

• Wing's fastest recorded delivery: 2 minutes, 37 seconds. Average is under five minutes.
• 25% of Wing customers order three times a week – habit, not novelty.
• Wing just announced its largest residential drone delivery expansion yet, with Walmart, covering 270+ store locations.
• ~70% of Walmart SKUs fit in Wing's current delivery box – roughly 50,000 products.
• Wing recently doubled its payload capacity from 2.5 lbs to 5 lbs, opening new SKU and category possibilities.
• [00:20:39] "I want this technology to become unremarkable for people because it just becomes part of the way they go about their lives." – Heather Rivera
• [00:13:09] "I predict there's gonna be whole sets of new companies that design existing products to fit into the five pound baskets." – Brian

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Oreos are Baptist, Biscotti are Anglican, and we're losing our minds. Cookie theology, meme reality, mass hallucinations, the price of attention, and more on the full After Dark episode – accessible to Future Commerce Plus members.

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Recording LIVE from the show floor of Shoptalk Spring 2026, the Future Commerce team brings our hottest takes and deepest insights from this year’s event. PLUS: We celebrated the launch of our newest zine, STRATA Vol. 001, with over 150 of our favorite people (including Snoop Dogg?). Get your copy at futurecommerce.com/strata.

• AI was the headline theme, but the humanity angle landed harder with attendees.
• In-booth content creation has become the industry standard; Future Commerce pioneered it in 2017.
• FedEx's Jason Brenner reframed logistics as a brand trust moment, not just a last mile.
• Victoria's Secret CEO Hillary Super showed what vision-led turnarounds actually look like.
• Curious people will always find leverage. AI just multiplies what they were already doing.
• “Maybe by this time next year, we will see OpenClaw-specific agencies on the show floor.” – Phillip
• "If you're inherently curious and someone who likes to problem solve...AI is gonna help you, totally, without a doubt." – Alicia

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