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NRF 2025 helps retailers navigate NY city store innovation with Retail Store Tours and the Expo at Retail’s Big Show and with Expo Tours.
NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show kicks off on January 12–14, 2025, in New York City. Attendees will hear from leaders in the retail industry and visit the largest display of retail technology on the expo at the Javits Center, with more than a thousand exhibitors.
Expo Tours are offered at NRF 2025 to help retailers navigate the expo while providing a guided journey focused on specific targeted technology.
“We partnered with Consumers in Motion (cimtours.co) to create guided, immersive tour experiences,” says Susan Newman, Senior Vice President of Events at NRF. The feedback from past participants has been very positive, with one international retailer commenting, “I liked the narrative that you created around building uniqueness through personalization, innovation, and service. Some real insights.” Another retailer said, “Our team was very pleased with the tours and would love to do this again. It increased our overall satisfaction with the Big Show.”
Retail Store Tours Experience
“New York City is the epicenter for retail innovation, and many retailers arrive early to experience the city’s vibrant and varied retail scene,” says Daniel Hodges, CEO of Retail Store Tours (retailstoretours.com). NRF 2025 offers Retail Store Tours (retailstoretours.com), which are expert-led, highly curated, time-efficient guided walking tours of cutting-edge stores. Attendees experience the latest tech, store designs, employee training, and best practices. These tours allow participants to gain insights from subject-matter experts, network with peers, and stay ahead of industry trends.
Tour options include:
Intelligent Retail at American Dream
American Dream is the global epicenter of intelligent retail and technology innovation. It offers ski, swim, soar, luxury, fashion, beauty, grocery and dining experiences. Social media and the world’s most sophisticated intelligent digital network are on display here. Just like technology, the American Dream experience is always changing.
The Iconic Tour: Fifth Avenue — World-Class Loyalty
Intelligent Retail – Perfecting the Consumer Experience
On this tour, we meet with the best-in-class retailers on Fifth Avenue, home to the finest shopping, dining, and cultural destinations in NYC. For more than a century, it has been the definition of glamour for both visitors and locals, and it continues to be a place to experience the best of the best. From flagship boutiques such as Tiffany’s, Gucci, Saks, and Bergdorf’s and cultural spots such as MoMA and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, to luxury hotels just a few steps away from Central Park, Fifth Avenue has something for everyone to enjoy.
The Meatpacking District
In this neighborhood, see AI implemented in technology, automotive, food and fashion stores. Continuing a transformation that began in the 1990s, the Meatpacking District is now home to the famed High Line linear park and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In the last 20 years, fashion and graphic designers, architects, artists, restaurateurs, world-renowned stylists and corporate headquarters have moved in alongside existing meatpacking plants. It is the home of innovative stores such as the new Google store, Restoration Hardware, the Samsung Innovation Center, Warby Parker, Sephora and many more.
Oculus: Where Every Store Has a Story
This survey of the Oculus district takes you on a tour of the recent history of retail disruption and adaptation. Visit the Apple Store, which pioneered evaluating staff based on kindness and empathy. Then go to Casper Sleep, which found a way to compress mattresses into boxes. We will stop by the stark Amazon Go, which has done away with checkout, and then take in the voluptuous Eataly, where children take cooking classes while the store sommelier educates parents on the latest Tuscan reds.
SoHo: Innovation in Action
Nowhere is the scale and diversity of retail more pronounced than in SoHo and NoHo. A short distance from the Javits Center, SoHo and NoHo are known worldwide for innovative artistry and artfulness. It is here that retail is unbound, spilling all over the streets in a kaleidoscope of forms. Side by side with iconic stores are avant-garde pop-ups that will not be around tomorrow. The randomness is inspirational, and it adds to the neighborhood’s excitement. See why these neighborhoods are where old stores come to reinvent themselves.
Expo Tour options include:
The New Connected Store Journey
Today’s consumers are navigating the physical customer journey and the digital customer journey seamlessly. Retailers are using cutting-edge CRM tools to improve the store experience with technology that keeps customers connected and coming back. This tour visits companies that provide retailers and shoppers with the technology to link the physical and digital shopping experiences.
Intelligent Retail: Innovation, Ecommerce and Best Practices
Enabling intelligent physical retail with sustainable, smart stores is the key to success with shoppers today. Connected commerce integrates in-store and online to allow customers a seamless shopping experience.
Engaging Consumers with Generative AI
Generative AI drives personalized customer experiences and improves the customer journey as well as store productivity. In a recent industry study, retailers said they believe AI is a differentiator in the market, revolutionizing customer experiences and marketing and content generation. AI fosters hyper-personalized shopping, product descriptions, price optimization and personalized customer service. It is estimated that 98 percent of retailers plan to invest in generative AI in the next eighteen months.
Maximizing Retail Media and Loyalty
This tour offers critical expertise for all retailers in today’s hypercompetitive retail environment. Today’s marketers gain control of real-time insights over their campaigns with better access to shopper data for route optimization. Participants will meet with companies that have state-of-the-art systems to manage smart loyalty programs, points and the processing of member activities. You’ll also experience companies with the most innovative solutions to improve profitability, create personalized customer experiences, diversify revenue and stay on the cutting edge of retail media and loyalty.
Future Tech Tour
This tour’s goal is to keep retailers on the forefront of innovation and to eliminate any blind spots in a rapidly moving marketplace. It focuses on cutting-edge digital and in-store technology, including advanced RFID, 5G, 6G, advanced voice technology, live-streaming, predictive commerce, suggestive shopping, smarter supply chains, innovation in sustainability, metaverse, holograms, conversational commerce, smart shopping mirrors, cybercrime and the latest in interactive digital signage. This tour will visit companies that focus on technologies adapted to consumers and review the importance of these applications.
To learn more about these tours contact: Daniel Hodges at dan@retailstoretours.com
