NRF day three: How Foot Locker, Rent the Runway, Pacsun are switching things up

An image of Foot Locker executive vice president and chief commercial officer Frank Bracken and Gouvêa Ecosystem’s operations director Eduardo Yamashita.
Foot Locker executive vice president and chief commercial officer Frank Bracken. Supplied

The third and final day of the National Retail Federation’s conference, Retail’s Big Show, was packed full of intriguing presentations and last-minute insights from retail experts and laudable leaders. 

Retail executives from big brands – like Foot Locker executive vice president and chief commercial officer Frank Bracken, Rent the Runway co-founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman and Pacsun CEO Brie Olson shared their thoughts on the shifts they are making to keep their foothold in the industry. 

Meanwhile, NRF’s vice president of industry and consumer insights Katherine Cullen, PwC’s global retail leader Kelly Pedersen, Happy Returns chief operating officer Timothy Fehr and Pinterest’s director of consumer product marketing Rachel Hardy discussed emerging consumer trends in 2025. 

Foot Locker’s fresh new look

The 2024/25 version of the legacy footwear retailer looks very different from a few years back.

That’s because the brand has been heavily investing in resuscitating its image with a slew of new stores bringing updated layouts, new tech and customer service facilities, such as an advanced customization station, and updated omnichannel operations, with a new app to be revealed not too far in the future. Six opened just last year in New Jersey, New York, India, France, Australia and the Netherlands

But Foot Locker is not only updating its store locations. The iconic footwear retailer has also been focused on reviving sneaker culture itself. 

“What we’ve seen in coming out of Covid, particularly in the last 24 months, is that there actually has been some fatigue and the consumer is wanting to be inspired,” Bracken observed. “They [the consumer] want the reintroduction of humanity and community into sneaker culture and the retail experience,” Bracken explained. 

Consumer outlook 2025

During a panel hosted by NRF’s vice president of industry and consumer insights Katherine Cullen, PwC’s global retail leader Kelly Pedersen, Happy Returns chief operating officer Timothy Fehr and Pinterest’s director of consumer product marketing Rachel Hardy discussed emerging consumer trends in 2025.

Two main points that stood out in this discussion were younger consumers’ increasing interest in personalized visual discovery and retailers’ growing need to invest in efficient and convenient customer return solutions. 

Pinterest is a visual discovery platform where users can find and save images and videos, often for lifestyle-centered content around cooking, fashion or home decoration.

More recently, Hardy explained, consumers have been using the platform to search for more than just their next Friday night outfit inspiration.

The Pinterest executive noted that 90 per cent of the platform’s users’ searches are unbranded and Gen Z, which makes up approximately 40 per cent of the platform’s user base, are guided more by visuals and aesthetics, like tenniscore. This leaves ample opportunity for consumers to discover new products sans labels, and for brands, indie and large-scale, to be found.  

Another trend Hardy, Fehr and Pedersen mutually agreed upon was an ever-present “don’t tell me what to do” mentality from consumers, especially those within the Gen Z age range. 

Fehr explained that consumers are expecting, and in some cases demanding, returns to be as effortless as possible, otherwise they won’t return to a retailer. 

It is imperative that retailers look into measures to better detect returns fraud and help optimise the process to go as smoothly as possible. 

The future of fashion: Innovation and impact with Rent the Runway

When apparel rental brand Rent the Runway first launched in 2009, the fashion industry was an entirely different beast.

Consumers were still iffy about vintage fashion; they still believed that fast fashion couldn’t hold up to premium fashion standards; and they had to be convinced about the benefits of renting a wardrobe. 

Over the past 16 years, all of this has changed but so has fashion retailers’ ability to hold onto the increasingly overwhelmed consumer. 

In an interview moderated by Axios senior reporter Hope King, Rent The Runway CEO and co-founder Jennifer Hyman offered advice for how retailers can win in today’s competitive market.

She emphasized that retailers “have to focus on a very specific, intentional customer. You have to know every detail about who you are focused on and you should not deviate.”

Retailers should avoid catering to everyone because they will end up catering to no one and alienate their target consumer base, Hyman warned. 

Instead, retailers should conduct in-depth research to find the exact brands each type of consumer is seeking – for example, more trendy customers may prefer brands like the boldly-patterned Farm Rio – and set up shop in areas to find curious new consumers, such as Rent the Runway’s more recent forays onto college campuses. 

Building a Gen Z-centered lifestyle brand 

During an interview moderated by Melissa Repko, CNBC’s retail and consumer report, Pacsun CEO Brieane Olson shared the company’s recent efforts to build itself into a modern lifestyle brand that appeals to younger consumers.

This includes delving into social commerce opportunities, such as live shopping sessions hosted on platforms like TikTok, hopping onto viral social media trends to engage with internet-savvy consumers and tapping into the power that microinfluencers have with encouraging product sales. 

The CEO also cleared up some notorious misconceptions about Gen Z shoppers.

As Olson explained, “There is a misconception that Gen Z is not brand loyal. I find that brands that connect with them on their core values, which include authenticity, inclusivity and allowing them to be a part of the conversation really build brand affinity with them.”

With that, Inside Retail has concluded another incredible NRF conference and we look forward to seeing what comes next. 

Inside Retail’s coverage of the 2025 Big Show is brought to you by Adobe.

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