A Glimpse at the Future With Cowen & Co.

Executives from companies as diverse as Walmart Inc. to Farfetch trekked to the Cowen and Co. annual “Future of the Consumer Conference” in Manhattan to compare notes Tuesday and talk about, well, the future. Gauging from their comments, tomorrow will be an amalgamation of all of today’s buzzwords. It will be digital. But also local. And filled with omni experiences. And engaging platforms with hard-to-find looks. One retro theme that reemerged was an emphasis on the store. The Internet is very clearly as important as ever, but retailers also seem to be relearning the virtue of their bricks-and-mortar. Erik Nordstrom, copresident of Nordstrom, talked about the department store’s move into New York City, and how the early read on the men’s store is shaping the still-to-be-opened women’s flagship. Janey Whiteside, Walmart’s executive vice president and its chief customer officer, doubled down on retail. “What sets us apart is we’ve got close to 5,000 stores,” she said. “We are within 10 miles of 90 percent of the population….Nobody has that brick-and-mortar footprint, and that is a unique differentiator for us. And our capacity to create integrated solutions to leverage that brick-and-mortar presence to be able to allow people to interact in those stores and online…sets us apart.” File

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