Shownotes
In this Omni Talk Retail episode, recorded live at Retail Technology Show 2026 in London from the Vusion podcast studio, Chris Walton caught up with Giles Smith, retail technology consultant and advisor, to unpack how retailers should actually be thinking about AI right now.
Drawing on experience across brands like Burberry, Selfridges, and Unilever, Giles shares a grounded perspective on why AI is less about chasing the latest innovation and more about accelerating what teams can already do.
He explains why many organizations are overcomplicating their AI strategies, how governance is becoming the next major challenge, and why retailers should focus on real business problems instead of jumping on every new capability.
The conversation also explores the balance between building and buying technology, where AI experimentation actually makes sense, and why the most important differentiator in retail will still come down to people.
Key Topics Covered:
• Why AI is best understood as a productivity unlock, not a strategy
• The danger of running too many disconnected AI projects
• How governance and accountability will shape the next phase of AI adoption
• When retailers should build vs. buy technology in an AI-driven world
• Where experimentation makes sense and where it does not
• Why many “problems” AI tries to solve are not actually problems
• How AI is changing decision-making inside organizations
• The growing influence of CFOs in tech investment decisions
• Why human connection remains the most important differentiator in retail
Thank you to Vusion for supporting Omni Talk Retail’s live coverage from Retail Technology Show 2026!
#RTS2026 #RetailTechnologyShow #OmniTalkRetail #AIinRetail #RetailStrategy #DigitalTransformation #CustomerExperience #RetailInnovation #FutureOfRetail #Vusion
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcripts
Hello, everybody.
Speaker A:Welcome back.
Speaker A:This is omnitalk Retail, I am Chris Walton and we are coming to you live once again from the Retail Technology show in London from the One of a Kind exclusive fusion podcast studio.
Speaker A:And joining me now is Giles Smith.
Speaker A:Giles is a retail technology consultant and advisor to the industry.
Speaker A:Giles, how you doing this morning?
Speaker B:Very well, very well.
Speaker B:Nice to be here.
Speaker B:Thank you having me.
Speaker A:Yeah, this is kind of an impromptu thing, right.
Speaker A:We got this set up in like 30, 40 minutes.
Speaker A:I feel like.
Speaker B:Yeah, I was probably.
Speaker B:It was this or the merch and I thought do this.
Speaker A:Yeah, right, right, right, right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, let's find out a little bit about yourself.
Speaker A:So tell me about your background because your background is very, very, very interesting.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:That's, that's a nice, generous comment, I think.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's always hard, especially these days, to really explain to myself what I do, but I spent a good part of my career working with some amazing brands like Burberry, Selfridges, Unilever in house, seeing what it's like practically day to day to be able to build technology departments and, and innovation.
Speaker B:But I've also spent a good time in big consulting working on various different brands like John Lewis and Arcadia and also work for a few startups.
Speaker B:And now I've been advising very large brands of retailers, sort of CEOs, CTOs on their strategy and various elements of tech.
Speaker B:And I probably worked with about, I don't know, 25 retailers and brands over my career.
Speaker A:Well, that's a lot of brands, that's a lot of retailers and brands.
Speaker B:So I'm curious, I'm only 21 as well.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, you look good, you look good for that resume.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:So you know, with each of those positions, you know, there's different dynamics to it.
Speaker A:So like what I take from that is you've been, you've been a consultant and you've been in house.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I'm curious, what does the perspective of being in house provide for when you're consulting and vice versa, when you're consulting, what does that provide for, you know, say what you can provide to the in house folks as well?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, I think even as a non perm now, I always feel like my home is in the brands.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Yeah, I always feel like that's where I do my best work.
Speaker A:I bet.
Speaker B:And I think some of it is from when you're in a big department, however great it is because Burberry was a phenomenal standard and it was great people around me, you know, you are Trapped in a lot of, like, operational pressure, day to day stuff, a lot more process governance, like things that can hold you back from thinking forward.
Speaker B:And I think one of the nice things about what I do today is I have the little bit of freedom from the big.
Speaker B:Having a couple hundred people team to think and learn and be in places like this in a very thoughtful way.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And I think that's quite hard to do for a lot of the leaders.
Speaker B:It's very hard to not stay in the present or for some of them in the past.
Speaker B:And I have a bit of a luxury where I can get a bit of a forward point of view.
Speaker B:But I think also having been in house, you really see the real problems and the practical realities.
Speaker B:And, you know, I saw my great friend Reese do an amazing talk on product yesterday, but it was from the sense of, like, we're not tech companies.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:We have different dynamics.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That mean that we're not a Netflix.
Speaker B:And you need to operate and build technology in the context of a very unique environment.
Speaker B:And I think knowing that environment intimately is an asset, I think.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:No, that makes sense.
Speaker A:So, yeah, so.
Speaker A:So basically what I take from what you said is there's the practicality that you bring to consulting because you've been in the business.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And then there's also the awareness that you have.
Speaker A:I want to talk.
Speaker A:I want to dig deeper into that because I thought it's a really interesting point that you made.
Speaker A:There's also the awareness of, you know, when you're working with executives that are still in a brand or on perm, I think you said.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Which is a new term for me.
Speaker A:Thanks for that.
Speaker A:I always love catching all these new terms as I come over here.
Speaker A:You said there's an awareness that.
Speaker A:Because you see this in the States too.
Speaker A:I mean, I've seen it in my career too.
Speaker A:Like you get caught in your own process.
Speaker A:You think the process is such an endemic part of the success, and you get beholden to it as an executive and it's hard to break free from it, despite the outside perspective that you might be bringing in.
Speaker A:And so that's the challenge that you see a lot of these executives still have in terms of trying to break out and put new thinking into the organization.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:And it's funny because I never thought to describe myself as a disruptor, and I mean that in the positive sense, but I do feel like I get frustrated by.
Speaker B:I want to do new things.
Speaker B:And I know a lot of great friends in my network who are the same.
Speaker B:They're like, we want to innovate, we want to be creative.
Speaker B:And, you know, there used to be a couple of budget rounds and some very sensible processes, but now there's a lot more rigor, governance pressure.
Speaker B:And I think a lot of the guys who I see in house who are really talented are like, they're desperate to do creative stuff.
Speaker B:And I do feel like a bit fortunate, again, that I can bring a bit of that disruptive thinking into departments and ask sort of why, but in a way that you've got a little bit more of a license to do so when you haven't got the other difficult pressures about running a team or worrying about a PDP or pissing off the finance director or all the other stuff that matters.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And so, you know, that's a big part of it, really.
Speaker B:And I get a big kick out of doing new things and most of all being around new people.
Speaker A:Do you think that issue will become even more paramount as AI starts to take hold in organizations and starts challenging the way internal processes are run?
Speaker B:I think with AI, any traditional, like digital transformation or big organizational cultural transformation, it was never optional.
Speaker B:But like, some companies went very forcefully.
Speaker B:Some people, some didn't do enough, some did it really elegantly, but it was sort of.
Speaker B:Now it's like there's no choice, right?
Speaker B:And there's an element of, like, different behaviors and different decisions being made that, you know, I'll give you a kind of context, example.
Speaker B:Like a lot of.
Speaker B:In the past, a lot of these great technologies out here, the digital leaders and the tech leaders and the business leaders would decide what was going to drive growth and pick their favorite search platform.
Speaker B:A lot of it's coming from the CFO now, right?
Speaker B:It's like, can we reduce our engineering headcount by, you know, on that particular agency by 50%, by going to this platform or using low code or whatever.
Speaker B:So I think one is happening anyway.
Speaker B:And so there's less of a empathy around you.
Speaker B:You do have to get on board.
Speaker B:You certainly have to be informed.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That doesn't mean to say that there aren't loads of people doing it in a way that's considerate and bringing people on a journey.
Speaker B:But this is one of those things that this isn't a tech thing.
Speaker B:This is like probably one of the three most important moments in human history, frankly.
Speaker A:So there's some inertial force inside the organizations that's compelling them to think differently, outside their process.
Speaker A:So what should the narrative be around AI right now?
Speaker A:In the industry.
Speaker A:Like how, you know, should, should we pump the brakes on it?
Speaker A:Should we be all in on it?
Speaker A:Like, what's your, your candid frank take on how the industry should be approaching it right now?
Speaker B:Well, I do know, I just been to see a few facial recognition stands and that always gives me sort of as much excitement as it does uncomfortableness.
Speaker B:But I think mine's calm.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And when I was dealing with the press stuff for RTs, the narrative I got from the four brilliant leaders on the stage was like, what's the most impactful thing to your job in AI right now?
Speaker B:And it wasn't, you know, not to knock these guys out there.
Speaker B:Like it wasn't necessarily the innovation of the week or feature.
Speaker B:It was, it's making my team build faster than ever.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And actually that is the biggest unlock for any technology leader.
Speaker B:We're now, not always, you know, eight month project now maybe three months, we can deliver innovation quicker.
Speaker B:So it's more that general superpower that I think is actually going to make the biggest difference.
Speaker B:The kind of where I sit with AI is just like somewhere in the middle.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You go to one extreme like we did with NFT and Metaverse, we.
Speaker B:Right, where it's just a bit crazy, a bit bewildering, a bit tribal, like everyone's, everyone's dead if you're not on AI.
Speaker B:The other extreme is clearly ridiculous to ignore it and to not embrace it.
Speaker B:But I'm hoping this next 12 months will become where the level headedness becomes because it's like, so what?
Speaker B:I don't care how it works, what's the outcome, what does it mean to the customer?
Speaker B:Like what are the meaningful impacts of this particular innovation?
Speaker B:I think that I index a lot more on that conversation than which is the best LLM and do you like Claude?
Speaker B:I'll leave that to the scientists.
Speaker A:Right, right, that makes sense.
Speaker A:Well, how do you think about it from an investment and technology deployment standpoint?
Speaker A:Because I was having this interesting conversation last night after the conference concluded and I won't name names in terms of who the retailer was, but they were saying how they've got 400 different AI projects going on in that organization and that seems like a lot.
Speaker A:And so how do you get a handle on that?
Speaker A:How do you decide where to invest your time?
Speaker A:Where do you invest your money?
Speaker A:Who do you invest your money with?
Speaker A:How do you decide what to build yourself, what to buy yourself?
Speaker A:How do you think about all that?
Speaker A:If you encountered that as a consultant, what would you do?
Speaker B:These answers always have to be in context to the brand.
Speaker B:Like Burberry is not the same as Asda and Asda's not the same as ever Cycles.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So but if I generalize the answer, you know, there's been lots of cycles around build and buy.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And the general rules been if it differentiates and it's not a massive hoo ha to build it and make a mess of it.
Speaker B:Like, why build a commerce platform yourself generally when there are brilliant commerce platforms out there, but maybe do custom build for your website or other unique experiences.
Speaker B:That's kind of been the divide for the last 10 years.
Speaker B:But I think it's interesting because if AI does make it that easy to do software development, it's going to become more and more compelling for the brands to start bringing in house again and maybe some of these even more complicated services and capabilities.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So I do think it's.
Speaker B:It could go another swing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think the consultancy will have to stay on their toes, but it often depends on the maturity of the company.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You know, I've always looked up to, you know, Lego, for example, Frasers next.
Speaker B:But they've got very big, strong competency around software engineering.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:But if you're a DTC brand with a modest revenue that's growing, do you want to.
Speaker B:Do you want to take that risk?
Speaker B:So that's kind of where I'm at with this.
Speaker A:So that's it.
Speaker A:So let me put that back for you.
Speaker A:That's a really interesting point.
Speaker A:So you're basically saying like, so if you're more established, you're probably.
Speaker A:Your proclivity potentially should be to take more of it in house and maybe look less externally to start up as many projects as you can and just really go slowly, calmly using your word with your internal development resources to take you where you want to go as an organization to meet the needs of your customer.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And the other thing, I was working with a client recently and I was kind of like we sort of put it into two buckets.
Speaker B:I was like, let's leave the stuff we've got today and let's not jump on the ChatGPT Bang where I can just.
Speaker B:And redesign your entire website and then realize actually most of your customers were pretty happy with in the first place.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Let's not go rogue on a 200 million channel.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:But if you want to start a microsite for like a Runway show or a unique moment, well, why not play in that area?
Speaker B:Why not play in some kind of capability you haven't had before?
Speaker B:Because You've got nothing to lose.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So a very operational one would be if you can't, you know, take fashion brands, the photo studios can only handle a certain amount of images and operations around getting this outfit with one model, maybe two, five shots.
Speaker B:So I'm not replacing anyone's job by using AI to generate 100 me in different skin tone ages.
Speaker B:So I'm kind of like play with that.
Speaker B:Because you're not making anyone redundant.
Speaker B:You can't achieve that scale personalization anyway.
Speaker B:What's he got to lose?
Speaker B:But I would be a bit more watch and see with like really messing with this.com experience.
Speaker B:Because despite what the consultants tell you, I go like, do you know what?
Speaker B:I still use desktop over mobile.
Speaker B:Pisses me off like tapping on my phone trying to book a flight.
Speaker B:And I, I still actually don't find it that hard to find a medium green jumper using the drop down box.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So figure out you've got a real problem to solve before you go go crazy with the AI.
Speaker A:Right, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Cause the other thing we've been hearing too is like what are the jobs that you're just not getting done in your organization?
Speaker A:Even though you probably think they're getting done, if you really pulled back the covers on them, they're probably not.
Speaker A:And that's probably low hanging fruit to help you from a productivity standpoint.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And what I'm seeing in answer to your great example, with this company that's got hundreds of AI projects, we then got the next thing which is about how do we govern that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because in my career when the website's fallen over, we all got told off in a respectful way.
Speaker B:But we knew which team was fixing it.
Speaker B:We knew a process, we knew how to get the website back online.
Speaker B:But there was a human accountability.
Speaker B:I knew if I'd had a good day at the office or not.
Speaker B:But if agents are running my pricing, my content display, the operational side of the website and it falls over, where does the buck fall?
Speaker B:So I think there's some very fundamental questions on how do we govern all these agents that might be either changing the website or doing some of the technology engineering piece that's going to be an industry in itself.
Speaker B:And so I think you're going to see an emergence of platforms that are going to manage that problem for you.
Speaker B:Like as a tech director, I'm going to need a dashboard to feel in somewhat control of the commercial and technology performance of my channels.
Speaker B:I think that's a great opportunity for some business in this room to like be that safety net and be the, you thought the user friendly part of running your job, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:AI is really going to prove the mettle of a lot of executives based on what you just said.
Speaker A:All right, let's get you out of here on this.
Speaker A:In the interest of time, what's the one question or the one thing you would want every retail CEO to understand about what technology can and cannot do for their businesses?
Speaker B:Well, it can't make it human.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And I know so for me, when I look back on all of this and the thing that like the reason I'm sort of having a good day today is based on the fact that like hundreds of people over my career have like supported me, taught me, educated me, coached me and been, you know, I've had so many interactions around like my career development.
Speaker B:I go like, if you've lose sight of the fact that people, how important people are in your organizations, how much they care about your brand, the purpose and integrity behind like being part of that organization, then it will become very soulless.
Speaker B:And I swear that will reflect in the customer and the brand eventually.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I think the companies, the retailers and brands that maintain a really strong compass on just like being human, creating real life events, building teams, supporting young people into their organization who've got new ideas, skills, they're probably better than us at all of this.
Speaker B:I actually think that's a massive differentiator and the biggest losers will be the one that only focus on the tech.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker A:It's funny you said mentor because I had a mentor used to tell me doing retail right is always about, it's always about digital, it's about physical and it's about human.
Speaker A:Those are the three elements that you got to get right to do retail the right way.
Speaker A:So thanks for your time, man.
Speaker A:Really appreciate it.
Speaker A:Really appreciate it.
Speaker A:Giles Smith, thanks for joining us.
Speaker A:Thanks to the Retail Technology show and Evusion for helping us put on all this great coverage, bring you all this great coverage, I should say from the conference all, all week long.
Speaker A:On behalf of all of us at Omnitalk Retail, as always, be careful out there.