Rick Watson, Jessica Lesesky, and Nick Kaplan warm up the show with jokes about last week’s performance and introduce the episode’s segments. They highlight Jeoparty, Headline Hangover, and the week's special guest, Kelly Goetsch.

Headline Hangover: The team guesses blacked-out words from recent retail and e-commerce headlines.

* Levi’s chooses Microsoft to deploy AI- and agentic-commerce solutions internally to improve efficiency and collaboration.

* Lowe’s builds out its $8.8B wholesale business as DIY slows, reflecting macroeconomic pressures, rising material costs, and softening home-improvement demand.

* Whatnot looks like “all of commerce” — The livestream shopping platform is booming:

~$6B GMV, 140+ categories, 20M minutes of live content viewed last week, strong traction with younger audiences, and zero legacy tech debt → accelerated innovation with AI tools like Snap List.

Rick “wins” Headline Hangover—the group jokes that this is a rare event.

Kelly Goetsch from Pipe17 joins the show to discuss the launch of The Order Network Exchange (onX) and the Commerce Operations Foundation.

The industry lacks a standard for connecting selling channels to fulfillment systems. Every OMS, WMS, 3PL, and marketplace uses different formats, leading to slow integrations, high operational overhead, fragile point-to-point connections, and fragmented inventory visibility.

The Solution

onX Standard + MCP (Model Context Protocol)

Defines standard tools and resources for order, inventory, and fulfillment data.

Allows AI agents to consistently query backend systems.

Gives vendors interoperability without bespoke APIs.

Makes OMS and 3PL systems more “swappable

The Commerce Operations Foundation has 62+ members, including major OMS vendors like Manhattan, IBM Sterling, Kibo, Fluent, etc.

Goal: Full standard published by January 1, 2026, with implementations rolling out in Q1–Q2 2026.

MCP allows AI heads (GPT, Claude, etc.) to speak directly to order systems:

“How many orders today?”

“What’s the inventory of pink socks?”

Reduces dependence on hacky webhooks.

Jeoparty Part Deux:

A retail spin on Jeopardy with categories such as:

* Chapter Eleven (Nick Kaplan's love language)

* Did Tobi really say this?

* Sam Alt-Delete (AI & Sam Altman themed)

* M&A

* New kids on the block (e-commerce edition)

* Easy pictures

Memorable Answers

Joanne's bankruptcy

TikTok Shop / Shein confusion

Tariff schedules with a wreath

“Year of the Discount”

Walmart + Vizio acquisition

GEO → the new SEO

The Watson Weekend is sponsored by Rithum

In commerce, every second counts.

Rithum connects every channel with AI automation and insights,

helping brands grow profitably across marketplaces, dropship, and retail media.

Learn more at rithum.com

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