From the aisles of Target to the Instagram feeds of big brands, the rainbow logos are gone & the merch shelves are empty.
This is quite obvious when you stop & notice how retailers position inclusion with respect to their brand. It’s business & political strategy taking priority over moral fortitude. I’m thankful to work for a retailer that stays true to its values by elevating the voices of Co-Op members & staff who are part of (and allies to) the LGBTQ+ community not only in June, but year round.
Retail Brew analyzing how REI is doubling down on diversity, equity and inclusion:
While REI is affirming its values now, the company, by its own admission, betrayed them earlier in the current Trump administration.
Full disclosure: I work for REI and what follows is my personal view from the inside.
Earlier this year the Co-Op signed on to an outdoor industry letter sent to The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources supporting the nomination of Doug Bergum for Secretary of the Interior. Many REI employees were left confused, upset and feeling somewhat betrayed by a company whose primary purpose was to protect our public lands and work tirelessly to ensure the outdoors is accessible for all. We felt the letter was in direct conflict with the values that drew us to work at REI.
Since that letter was published, REI has a new CEO. In one of her first public statements as CEO, Mary Beth (MB) Laughton announced clearly and transparently that it was a mistake signing the letter:
Signing that letter was a mistake. The actions that the administration has taken on public lands are completely at odds with the long-standing values of REI…I’m here to apologize to our members on behalf of REI, to retract our endorsement of Doug Burgum, and to take full accountability for how we move forward.
At REI’s annual member meeting held on May 8th, MB made another public statement affirming REI’s commitment to DEI, even in the face of mounting pressure from the current administration:
In a time when our public lands and values like diversity, equity and inclusion are under threat, I want you to hear from me that REI believes these are essential to our business.
I feel like this is the kind of leadership REI needs right now. Admitting mistakes, owning the accountability for those mistakes, and charting a path forward honoring the core values that make the Co-Op a special place work. Most of us who work at REI don’t work there because we love selling tents. We work there because we love the outdoors. We want to protect it. We want to ensure people of all backgrounds and abilities can experience it. We want to make a positive impact in the world. With leadership like this at the helm, I still believe all of that is possible.
The retail industry is tough business. It’s even harder when the political current is working against company values. As I survey the room of other retailers and notice their actions related to the politics of the day, it’s very easy to see which companies are willing to sell out for political favor. I’m glad REI is not one of those.
I envy product thinkers who operate within the context of a lean and born-digital startup. Product strategy is never easy, but building technology in this environment becomes fairly straightforward. Write code, test, deploy. Rinse and repeat. Or some variation of this. But try bringing that same approach into a complex physical environment like a retail store, and suddenly you’re not just a product manager – you’re part ringmaster, part therapist, and part exorcist for technology that seems possessed by real-world demons.
I’ve spent the last two decades building tech designed to be used in physical space – first in museums, then in retail organizations – and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the gap between the digital roadmap and the reality of the floor is extremely wide.
First, there’s the idealism divide. Most technologists think about users as disembodied entities who interact with software in predictable, often ideal, ways. This is the happy path mentality. Meanwhile, most retail associates are often juggling many scenarios at once: a customer who’s trying to return a swimsuit they bought 6 months ago, a thief trying to steal an expensive piece of outerwear, a random question about product specs, or a manager who’s just informed them they need to be cross-trained on a new area of the store – all while attempting to use enterprise systems on six-year-old hardware.
Then there’s the physical environment itself. That sleek tablet kiosk we designed? It’s now positioned directly under an HVAC vent that drips condensation like a leaky faucet. That in-aisle digital display meant to guide customers? It’s been commandeered as a support pole for seasonal decoration. And the once-white customer-facing payment terminal now bears the fingerprint smudges of a thousand customers.
Let’s not forget connectivity. In the product requirements, the system requires a stable internet connection. In reality, we’re dealing with large-scale Faraday cages that create spotty Wi-Fi at best.
The gap between digital intention and physical implementation creates a special kind of cognitive dissonance. Most product managers are trained to think in terms of user journeys and personas, only to watch customers use the self-checkout as a surface to scratch off a lottery ticket. I’ve grown to love this dichotomy over the years.
Within this chaos lies a peculiar beauty. Unlike purely digital products, retail tech exists in a messy, human world – one where success is measured by metrics, of course, but also the absence of complaints. The most elegant product isn’t the one with the cleanest code or the most impressive AI; it’s the one that works when the Wi-Fi doesn’t, when the user hasn’t slept, and when reality refuses to conform to a carefully plotted customer journey.
I’ve found the best retail tech product managers develop a kind of zen-like mindset. We learn to let go of digital perfection and embrace analog reality. We don’t build for the ideal conditions of the demo environment. We build for the beautiful disaster that is actual retail.
So the next time you’re struggling to operate a seemingly simple piece of technology in a store, know that somewhere a product manager is observing, taking notes, and going back to the drawing board to try once again to bridge the gap between the binary code and the bricks-and-mortar – one humbling iteration at a time.
Spring has sprung here in Pittsburgh! With the kids home from school this week for spring break, I needed to get out of the house so I decided to bike commute to the store to work from there today. It was an absolutely glorious ride. Sunny, warm and with a slight breeze to keep it cool.
If that wasn’t enough to put me in a good mood, when I got to the store the team had an official REI name tag for me. It’s really cool to feel like part of the store team, even though I work in headquarters. One of REI’s core values is “We go further together,” and this is absolutely true in my line of work building software to make our stores easier to operate. I guess after nearly four years with the Co-Op, it’s officially official.
Things have been quiet on the site lately and the reason is due to some professional news. A couple weeks ago I transitioned into into a new role at REI: Manager of Product Management for Front of House Technology. That’s a mouthful, but basically this newly-created role expands my responsibility beyond my current domain to include leading the product strategy for almost all the technology employees use to keep stores running smoothly and customers use to shop with us. Think point of sale & checkout systems, bike and ski shop services, apps that power sales floor workflows and our growing Re/Supply business.
The new role is a “player-coach” position and it feels like a natural extension of my work over the past few years. I’ll continue to have hands-on product management responsibilities, while taking on the added responsibility that comes with being a people leader. I now lead a team – and while I’ve done this in previous roles – it’s a new realm for me at REI.
I’m approaching this shift with open eyes and open ears. Good leadership isn’t about having all the answers, but about understanding what you don’t know, asking the right questions, listening with empathy, and creating space for honest conversations. It’s with this spirit that I plan to lean into leadership.
We have a lot of work ahead of us. What really gets me hyped is how these interconnected front of house systems — from browsing to checkout to services — have the potential to create a cohesive, amazing experience for our customers, members and employees. We’re not there right now. But we will get there eventually.
The retail technology landscape shifts quickly, and the boundaries between digital and physical experiences continue to blur. At REI, we’re embracing this head-on while staying true to our core mission of connecting people with the outdoors. In many ways, this parallels my own journey of finding balance between technological innovation and mindful living – my personal and professional sweet spot!
As with any new challenge, I’m approaching this role with both excitement and vulnerability. There’s so much to learn, systems to understand, and relationships to build. Things may be quiet around here for a while longer, but I’m super grateful for this opportunity, eager to continue my work with REI, and committed to leading with wholeheartedness. And as capacity allows I’m looking forward to sharing this journey as it unfolds.
Yesterday was a travel day, but the REI store technology team made it to the SoCal market with some time to explore San Diego before we’re visiting stores the rest of the week. We dipped toes in the Pacific, explored Ocean Beach, watched the sunset at Sunset Cliffs, and ate some amazing tacos.
This has been an insane week at work & I feel like I’ve been neglecting you, Fediverse. Next week is shaping up to be equally crazy (traveling), but I am looking forward to dipping my toes in the Pacific Ocean (Do we still call it that?) for the first time & eating some solid tacos in SoCal.
Come work with me at REI! If you are passionate about the outdoors & product strategy, our Customer Experience team is hiring a Principal Product Manager who will set the course for key customer journeys, including our foundational offering Co-Op Membership. LMK if you have questions!
This is an interesting move for the U.S. based mega-retailer. The Monroeville Mall has been struggling for years, but Walmart as a buyer is a surprise. It will be interesting to see how redevelopment shakes out.
Personally, I have many memories cruising this mall back in the day, but haven’t been inside in decades.
At work, we started implementing server-driven UI patterns in the iOS app used by REI store employees. This has allowed us to move faster and respond to employee feedback in near-realtime, without shipping app updates. My colleague and engineer-extraordinaire David Allison breaks it down in detail.
As a product manager on REI’s store technology team, I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can make life easier for our employees. Our team builds Ascent, an iOS application that helps more than 10,000 REI store employees access product information and accomplish tasks on sales floors across 180+ locations in the US. Our mission is simple but vital: provide store employees with the tools and information they need, in the moments they need them, so they can do their job with ease, confidence and joy.
Last week, during REI’s internal hackathon, my colleague Seth Daetwiler and I had the opportunity to explore how we might thoughtfully apply AI to support this mission. The result was CarsonAI, a friendly Raccoon process assistant named after environmentalist Rachel Carson (who, like Carson the bot, was also born here in Pittsburgh).
The Problem
Store employees face a common challenge: when they need to understand a process or find best practices, they have to step away from the task at hand, search through dense documentation scattered across various internal systems, hope they find the specific information they need (sometimes it can be one sentence in a 12-page PDF), and then return to their task. This constant context-switching isn’t just frustrating for our employees - it takes valuable time away from why they work at REI in the first place: serving customers, sharing their vast expertise and geeking out over gear.
Can AI Be Thoughtful, Responsible & Humane?
I’ll be honest - I have reservations about AI and I’m extremely conflicted. Like many, I’ve watched its rapid emergence with a mix of fascination and concern. But I’ve come to realize that rather than resist its inevitability, we should focus our energy on finding thoughtful, humane ways to apply this technology where it can create genuine benefits in people’s lives.
I think Carson represents this philosophy in action. Instead of using AI to replace human judgment or save a quick buck, we’re using it to remove pain points that employees have told us exist. The goal isn’t to automate tasks or increase throughput - it’s to give employees better, easier access to the knowledge they need to do their jobs well.
How It Works
Carson integrates directly into Ascent’s interface in two ways:
On the home screen for general process questions
As a contextual “Need Help” button within specific workflows
This means employees can verbally ask Carson questions about workflows and get immediate answers to process questions without leaving their current task. No more hunting through documentation or switching between systems - just quick, relevant guidance exactly when it’s needed.
Building During Hack Days
Working with Seth on Carson was a highlight of the hack days experience. His killer chops in iOS development and user experience design brought the concept to life in ways I hadn’t imagined. When I first floated the idea, his enthusiasm was immediate, and he ran with it, creating an elegant and intuitive interface that makes complex processes more accessible.
Looking Forward
While Carson began as a hackathon project, we’re excited about its potential. Obviously, we aren’t planning to immediately ship a project we threw together over a couple days to production. There are optimizations and tweaks we need to make before opening access to our fleet. Our next steps include:
Testing the prototype with store employees to gather feedback and better understand their needs
Making UX improvements based on feedback
Benchmarking performance and load testing
Exploring a beta release in Ascent during Q1 2025
Learning more about how employees use Carson in real-world situations once it’s live
A Reflection
The retail environment is complex and constantly changing. Our store employees navigate this complexity daily while working hard to provide the best possible experience for our customers. I think tools like Carson represent an opportunity to use emerging technology in a way that genuinely supports our employees - not by replacing their expertise, but by making it easier for them to access and apply it.
At REI, we live and work by a set of values called The Co-Op Way. Three of these values are:
We courageously embrace change
We go further, together
We start from a place of respect
I think Carson is in alignment with these principles. As we continue to explore the possibilities of AI in REI store operations, keeping these Co-Op Way values close will be crucial. The goal isn’t to chase technology for its own sake, but to thoughtfully apply it in ways that responsibly look forward, respect and foster human interactions, and make the work experience better for employees in our stores.
Hack Days are occurring at REI this week. This is an annual event where employees working in product, design or engineering get some flexibility to pursue ideas we think have potential, but aren’t officially on the docket. My team is working on an AI-powered voice assistant for store employees. The goal is to give our employees quick and easy access to ops process guidance and best practices while they’re in the midst of their work on the sales floor or warehouse, so they don’t need to hunt down a standard operating procedure (SOP) or find a small piece of information within a lengthy document.
Like all internal systems and apps at REI, this hack-days product has an outdoors-inspired hame: Carson. Named after legendary conservationist and author of Silent Spring Rachel Carson, the bot is coming along nicely.
So far, we’ve spun up a locally-hosted LLM that we’re training on operational process documents, retail knowledge base articles and other sources of internal data. Next up will be to build a conversational interface that we’ll plug into the apps on store employee mobile devices. There are still a lot of tweaks needed on the model, but I’ve found the responses to be quite good.
We might be at a point later today where I could test it with store employees. I’m excited to get some feedback that we could rapidly integrate before the final deadline and pitch presentation on Friday.
Merchants will have access to Perplexity’s API to refine how their products appear in search results and use a custom dashboard to offer insights into search and shopping trends.
The modern-day take on Santa Claus is introduced in a 30-second commercial, “Born to Be Kris,” where he rides out to a Target in a red Ford Bronco truck (with license plate “Sleigh”).
A few articles about the shopping habits of Gen Z have caught my attention over the past few days. As someone who works in retail technology – leading a team that focuses on sales floor operations – I keep a close eye on consumer trends. These two pieces, published within days of each other in separate outlets, are interesting to me because they reinforce a singular thesis: digital natives enjoy shopping in physical stores.
Modern Retail sets the stage with reference to an ICSC study that highlights the social nature of shopping for young people:
Sixty percent of the ICSC survey’s Gen Z respondents said they visit malls to socialize or meet friends even if they don’t need something specific, 60% also said they would rather spend money on experiences than material items, and 70% said retail centers and stores have done a good job designing things for Gen Z members to enjoy together.
This is interesting. I think the social experience created inside a store flys under the radar of most retailers. This is natural because we’re primarily business-minded and transactional in nature. Creating an environment for social connection on our sales floors not only meets this need for young customers, but it creates opportunity for connection points among all in-store customers. If you can do that well, it’s a big step toward creating community.
To my surprise, a few days after reading the Modern Retail article I stumbled upon a similar piece in The Guardian about how bookshops are suddenly cool1 with Gen Z and Millennials. Some of the same themes are reinforced here, notably how physical space can foster community and a growing aversion to algorithmic recommendations:
“I think it’s kind of a misconception that younger people want to do everything online or only care about how things look on social media,” Grace Gooda, the manager at Morocco Bound in Bermondsey tells me. “In our experience … it creates a relationship where they trust our recommendations and might take home something they wouldn’t have seen advertised elsewhere.”
This deeper connection is what really makes physical bookshops appeal to many younger readers. “Bookshops aren’t just places to buy books, they’re places of community, of gathering and this is something that’s actively fostered by so many bookshops,” Ash, 29, from Yorkshire, says. “Speaking to staff to get book recommendations is often a path into hearing more about the community aspects of bookshops, too – it’s often more than just a book recommendation.”
When I think about how these threads apply to my daily work at REI, I think there is relevance here. We already do a great job of showcasing the knowledge & expertise of our store employees, but we can definitely do more to foster human connection in our stores – inclusive of employee-to-customer and customer-to-customer experiences. My world (store technology) can play an important role in this effort, but it will take a truly collaborative effort across all store teams to create compelling experiences for the next generation of outdoor enthusiasts.
Bookshops have always been cool in the mind of the Gen X author. ↩︎
Did you know that every REI has a survey marker out front? I am in Virginia for my daughter’s soccer tournament & today I stopped by the Bailey’s Crossroads store to say hello & gather some feedback from the amazing team there. It’s the 3rd oldest location on the east coast!
I’m lucky to work on a product team that builds solutions in close partnership with our users. David Allison (engineering lead on our team) describes our process on the REI Engineering blog. This approach creates such a high signal to noise ratio, and it shows in the work we are able to deliver.
Orders are coming in quickly, but there aren’t enough baristas behind the counter to prepare drinks. Wait times are climbing…about 8% of Starbucks customers waited between 15 and 30 minutes for a drink in the second quarter…and, Starbucks now has more than 170,000 possible drink combinations, making everything more complicated.
This doesn’t sound like an app problem, but rather an operational one. Technology & ops processes must work together in service of the customer experience.
As other retailers divest from curbside order fulfillment, Target continues to go all-in by deepening its ties into mobile ecosystems like Apple CarPlay:
Once connected to CarPlay, the Target app will automatically display the Target store where the purchase was made on the car display. Then, shoppers can view order details, get directions to the store via Apple Maps, and notify the store once they have arrived in their Drive Up parking space.
Target is the only place I do drive-up orders anymore, due in large part to how easy their retail technology makes the experience. Kudos.
It’s release day for my team at REI. We’ve been working tirelessly for the past few months to build a tool that makes pricing product in our stores easier and less painful for employees. Our goal is to replace an archaic, manual & paper-based workflow with a modern, scalable, digitally-supported tool and standard operating process (SOP) that streamlines sales floor operations across the Co-op.
This morning, we deployed the tool to our first group of pilot stores. Exciting! As a data-driven product manager, these days are like Christmas morning. It’s like I woke up to some new datasets under the tree and I can’t wait to unwrap them to see what insights might be inside.
Every now and then I catch myself lamenting that I don’t work on products with millions of users or billions in revenue. But then I catch myself on days like this when I can see the thing we’ve built in the hands of REI’s amazing employees. I can see them using it and the positive impact it makes in their daily lives. I can hear the pain points surfaced in our feedback channels rapidly fade off into the distance. I can watch the thing we’ve built make our stores a better place to work for more than 10,000 people who wear the REI green vest with pride.
I think that kind of direct, measurable impact is something special.
The next few weeks will likely be hectic as the team analyzes and responds to usage data, fields feedback from employees, and optimizes for rollout to all 190 locations. When we get to that point, I’ll circle back with some insights.
I’ve been in retail technology for a long time, and this is the first time I’ve heard the term Summerween:
For many retailers, the weeks between July 4 and Labor Day have customarily been all about stocking up on lunch boxes, crayons and notebooks for back-to-school shopping. Now, store shelves are just as likely to be filled with cauldrons, candy corn and pumpkins.
