On February 26, Kepler joined leaders from across the kyu collective at kyu House: Future of Retail, an invitation only forum hosted at kyu Studios in New York. The event brought together senior retail and brand leaders for an afternoon of discussion on how commerce is evolving across discovery, experience, and loyalty, with sessions led by Kepler and Haigo, IDEO, and a panel featuring leaders from Anthropologie, Snap, and Aesop.

Kepler’s Global CEO, Remy Stiles, took the stage alongside Haigo to share early signals from the Omnichannel Retail Barometer, a study designed to assess how connected retail experiences perform in real customer conditions. The conversation centered on a simple reality: Omnichannel is no longer about channel expansion. It is about whether brand, experience, and marketing operate as a single system where customers encounter them.

“Omnichannel has to flow from how a brand shows up, into the experience customers have, and through every marketing touchpoint that connects those moments. Marketing's job is to act as the connective tissue that ensures the brand promise actually matches the customer's reality,” Stiles shared during the session. When those handoffs break, customers feel it immediately.

The broader program reinforced that the future of retail is not converging around one model. In IDEO’s working session with senior retail leaders, perspectives ranged from reinvesting in physical retail as experience hubs to leaning into personalized curation, convenience led design, cultural responsiveness, the rise of the anti brand, and wellness focused retail. The closing panel, hosted by IDEO and featuring Barbra Sainsurin of Anthropologie, Rudi Anggono of Snap, and Rob Imig of Aesop, explored how brands are navigating seamless experiences across physical, digital, and loyalty ecosystems, alongside the tension between speed and intention in experience design.

From Kepler’s perspective, growth now depends on orchestration. Performance is shaped by how well media, experience, and commerce reinforce each other in practice, not just in planning. The next phase of retail growth will be defined by how intentionally brands design systems that hold together across discovery, purchase, fulfillment, and service as expectations continue to rise.

The full Omnichannel Retail Barometer will be released in March, expanding on these early signals with deeper sector analysis and practical implications for teams building omnichannel experiences at scale.