Premier retail conference eTail Palm Springs, organized by Worldwide Business Research, hosted its 26th edition Feb. 24-27, when 2,700 retail leaders, tech partners, entrepreneurs and other industry professionals descended on the event’s longtime host, the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa, in Palm Springs, Calif. Attendance was up nearly 8% year over year—and a lot more from eTail’s earliest days in 1999, when just 100 retail leaders gathered and the industry involved a lot more brick-and-mortar and a lot less Amazon.
Unlike many industry conferences, no singular theme powered eTail Palm Springs’s content other than, well, retail. “Optimizing the customer journey, leveraging AI and driving omnichannel growth” were recurring topics, recalled Lena Moriarty, eTail’s head of marketing. Specifically, a keynote from DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse CMO Sarah Crockett caught headlines, during which she admitted to her struggles—and successes—while refreshing a decades-old brand with 500-plus US locations during a time when consumers are spending less amid economic uncertainty. To make a long story short, Crockett said she’s leveraging consumers’ nostalgic connections to the brand in favor of a drastic refresh that scares off a loyal customer base, according to Marketing Drive.
In another headline-grabbing moment during the four-day conference, Richard Jones, the chief revenue officer of performance marketing firm Wunderkind, said that retailers feel as though there are “too many tools and not enough results,” Retail Brew reported. “We’ve been sold a dream that more technology equals better performance,” Jones said during his main stage keynote session. “But here we are drowning in tools, drowning in logins and dashboards.”
Jones concluded that “the focus is no longer on adding more tools,” but rather “on selecting and making the right ones work better together,” per Retail Brew. Thus, it only makes sense that eTail Palm Springs launched its first-ever AI Summit this year, Moriarty told Vendelux. It was “an entire day dedicated to learning and unpacking different AI use cases, strategies and more,” she explained.
“There was an industry need to go deeper into specific conversation topics and break networking standards, and we answered the call,”
Moriarty added of the new conference features, which also included “one-on-one meetings that were designed with eTailers in mind.”
And in the spirit of new, other inaugural elements of the 2025 eTail Palm Springs included a “Regulated Industries Track” for e-commerce professionals in alcohol and cannabis, a “Retail Media Track” and a personal development workshop on growing your e-commerce career.
Meanwhile, a noticeable change from last year’s programming was the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion-related sessions. Jennifer Velez, head of DEI at Forever 21, generated headlines during one of few sessions that addressed the topic this year. “We’re not the monster some people view us as,” Velez said, addressing recent resistance to DEI initiatives, according to Retail Brew. The retail industry news site noted that Velez kept things optimistic, noting that DEI “takes a very long time” and is “really everybody’s job” without addressing big corporations like PepsiCo and Target that have recently scaled back their respective DEI initiatives.
The rest of the keynotes, panel discussions, fireside chats, problem-solving roundtables and demonstrations that made up eTail’s 2025 agenda “covered topics like maximizing ROAS (return on ad spend) with performance marketing platforms and scaling brands profitably through innovative strategies, embracing meeting your customer where they are, [and] new innovative ways to cut through marketing noise,” Moriarty said.
In all, more than 250 speakers attended eTail Palm Springs 2025—more than ever before—from the likes of Allbirds, Bloomingdale’s, ButcherBox, H&M, Macy’s, Sketchers, Sur La Table and The North Face, just to scratch the surface. And Salesforce showed up by sponsoring invite-only retailer dinners throughout the conference. All attendees were welcome at the “Battle of the Festivals: Stagecoach Vs. Coachella” after-hours event, which featured “goodies from Fanatics,” Moriarty said.
Looking ahead, eTail Palm Springs 2026 is already on the books for Feb. 23-26, and will be returning to the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa “for the foreseeable future,” per Moriarty.
Until then, eTail’s invite-only Connect East event for senior-level retail leaders is headed to West Palm Beach, Fla., May 7-9, 2025. Then, eTail Europe is taking place in London June 24-25, 2025, and eTail Boston is taking place Aug. 11-14. Come fall, eTail Connect West in Loews Coronado Bay, Calif., is on the calendar for Sept. 15-17, and Worldwide Business Research’s final eTail event of the year is eTail Canada in Toronto Oct. 7-8, 2025.
