While there appears to be little overlap between the smaller brands paying for placement in physical marketplaces and the larger consumer products companies appearing via ad tech on even larger retailers’ sites, the objectives are similar: Retailers need to leverage their real estate and traffic, brands need new opportunities for placement and consumers are on a quest to discover what’s new, or at least what’s new to them.

It was fun to be interviewed by Business of Fashion reporter Chantal Fernandez about the contemporary market, a topic I used to think a lot about as both a professional buyer of it and as a heavy consumer of it.

Last week, I volunteered to give an informal talk to a largely non-retail audience about what’s happening in the industry right now. I realized I should jot down some bullet points, and afterwards I put them into sentences. What did I miss?

Why am I excited about the idea of brands known for fairly narrow product categories launching curated marketplaces? For three broad reasons.

The multi-platform, multi-venue, multi-product program I’ve now seen over several weeks appears to be the result of the proven creativity of The Infatuation team and the risk-taking for which Nike has become admired.

All of the best customer experiences I’ve had recently involve product I wanted to buy, an easy-enough way to purchase it, and pricing I could justify. But the differentiator was the people behind it all.

Based on what I saw at MWC (fka Mobile World Congress), the themes, especially as they relate to commerce, can be summed up most succinctly as SPEED.

The technology I like best in retail can be summed up by thinking about the 3 Es:

What enables, expedites, and/or elevates the store experience for tasks a customer doesn’t  need a human to perform?

Last month at Verizon, we built an in-store AR use case and rolled it out to thousands of our stores. The activation was tied into Verizon’s holiday campaign and encouraged deeper engagement in the store by prompting customers to search for and “unwrap” exclusive promotional offers as they browsed.

Observations and analysis about Amazon‘s London pop-up from retail consultant Rebecca Smith and me.

On the way to visit the new Amazon 4-star store in Soho, I stumbled upon a Cartier pop-up at 120 Wooster (open until 11/4/18). Unexpectedly, I found both to be about discovery.

To recap, trends hit:

• Instagrammable

• New CPG sales channel

• Small format

• Self-checkout

• Shift in ad dollars from digital to stores

And those missed:

• Experience

• Service

• Product education

• Brand immersion

• The “chat” in chat commerce

New and established brands are focusing on tighter assortments.

A new Barneys beauty brand gives customers an effective takeaway.

Earlier this month, I visited Amazon Go and Starbucks Roastery. They’re at opposite ends of the technology/human spectrum.