May 2, 2025
Shoptalk Vignette 1 : “YOU’RE CHARLIE COLE!”
I’m going to be posting a lot about Shoptalk – but
A) I wanted to wait until all you people stop because I like feeling special.
B) I want to write about it in vignettes.
I was walking around the expo floor and this guy, who was like 6’6” and looked like he could run a sub 2 hour marathon stopped me…
“YOU’RE CHARLIE COLE!”
… to be clear – this is either a good sign --- or a REALLY bad sign. His name: Lutz FingerI came to learn Lutz is a brilliant dude and basically teaches CEOs and the like about how AI is changing the world as a faculty member at Cornell University - writes about AI for Forbes… and if you squint your eyes, Lutz and I are kind of competitors! This is why I appreciated what Lutz told me even more. Turns out Lutz had run his OWN generative AI study about all the vendors at Shoptalk… and here’s what he found:
There are 700 vendors (Ish) at Shoptalk
40% say they use AI
20% say the use GenAI…
7 --- that’s right 7 --- are ACTUALLY using multimodal Generative AI. 7. (And yes, XGEN AI was one of the 7)
So what’s a retailer to do? Pop the hood. Demand to see tech specs, models, etc. Keep in mind, for folks like us, this is proprietary stuff and our key differentiator, so we’re going to be ultra cagey. But you must ramp your diligence well beyond the traditional marketing decks, demos, and case studies. Also, I HIGHLY recommend back-channel customer references. Take the logos off their marketing deck and blindly reach out over LinkedIn. I’ve made a bunch of long-term friends through this method in my past (looking at you Noam Paransky).
More Shoptalk fueled vignettes to come!
