Roger Czuchra

Bain & Company - The 2026 Retail Executive Agenda Successfully leading a retail business is getting harder—you’re not imagining it. The S&P Retail Index grew only 12% over the past three years, while the broader S&P rose 21%. The top 100 retailers had an average CEO turnover rate of 22% during the same period, up from 17% over the previous three years, according to our analysis of BoardEx data. Cycles are compressing, there’s no longer safety in scale alone, and iconic brands are going bankrupt. #Bain #Retail #turnover #brand #Growth #Business #CEO https://lnkd.in/exDctWvY

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IN THE NEWS: Josh Higgins, president of OS1st, on moving fast while staying focused. .... “We’re working very closely with our manufacturing partners to manage pricing, optimize our supply chain, and ensure stable inventory levels,” Higgins says. “Additionally, we’ve proactively increased inventory and secured additional raw materials to give us a cushion during this uncertainty. We’ve also shifted our demand generation strategy with simple pivots like updating our website’s front page to emphasize our in-store availability via Locally, which drives sell-through at retail.” Read Josh Higgins' take on the trade war and other recent disruptions, and how OS1st is responding. >>>> https://lnkd.in/ehDs6jM5

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In the latest episode of the Footwear Leadership Series powered by OrthoLite, Todd Krinsky, President and CEO of Reebok, shares unique perspective and firsthand insight into what it takes to build a career in the footwear industry. Find this episode and others from the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America (FDRA): 🎧 Listen here: www.shoeleaders.com 📺 Watch here: https://lnkd.in/gw5BHkpc 

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Rothy's’s is beefing up its executive team with two senior footwear veterans. The footwear company has named former Converse and Vans exec Philip Russo as senior vice president of design and innovation. Adidas and On alum Salym North is joining the brand as vice president of product development and production. Both Russo and North will report to Rothy’s chief executive officer Dayna Quanbeck. In a statement to FN, Quanbeck said that the move is in effort to evolve Rothy’s product, expand into new opportunities and build with “greater precision and scale.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/ekJHHD6x

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For those of us who spent years (decades) pouring blood, sweat, and real tears into massive Oracle or SAP transformations, this is a hard truth to confront. But ERP did not fail, it just has outlived the world it was designed for. ERP vendors optimized for control inside the four walls of the enterprise. Transactions, ledgers, internal consistency. That model worked when risk was slow, partners were stable, and data moved on predictable rails. That world no longer exists. Today’s most damaging failures do not occur inside finance or manufacturing modules. They happen at the seams between suppliers, regulators, distributors, hospitals, retailers, and customers. Recalls, shortages, compliance events, and demand shocks do not arrive neatly structured inside ERP schemas. So organizations fall back on the same tools every time: Spreadsheets. Manual reconciliation. Late nights. Executive guesswork. That is not an execution problem. It is an architectural one. Systems designed to manage transactions cannot establish truth across ecosystems. No amount of governance meetings will change that. The organizations navigating change best aren’t ripping out ERP. They’re decoupling truth from transaction and building collaborative data layers that operate across trade boundaries. This is not about innovation theater or AI. It is about survival. If you want to talk about what we have learned building a more connected, collaborative, frictionless data future, let’s talk. Insightful article Brianna Monsanto @ Morning Brew Inc., thanks!

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The future of retail isn’t fully digital or fully analog. It’s a better human experience, supported by smarter systems. Connection scales when the tools are working quietly in the background.

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This month, Modern Retail brought together a group of executives to talk about how AI is reshaping retail. Below are excerpts from the conversation about how these executives think AI is changing the shopper journey. Stay tuned for part two, which will include a deeper recap about how these executives are integrating AI into their businesses and evaluating which tools to use. In this piece by Anna Hensel, we speak to Paul Michaux of Prose, Kyle E. Simon of The Clear Cut, and Sarah Davis of FASHIONPHILE. https://lnkd.in/ehD3Bmaz

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