The Wharton School’s Baker Retailing Center hosted a dynamic and forward-looking panel on Penn’s campus, bringing together leaders who are actively reshaping how the world designs, operates, and experiences retail through artificial intelligence.
Moderated by Eric Bradlow, Vice Dean of AI and Analytics, Professor and Chair of the Marketing Department, and longtime member of the Wharton community, the conversation explored AI from three interlocking vantage points: back-end and infrastructure, in-store and experiential technology, and brand, product, and creativity. Eric framed the session around Wharton’s strategic goal: to be the world’s leading business school in the application of AI and data science to business and society. He emphasized that retail is one of the most exciting and consequential arenas for that mission.
Joining via Zoom, Neil Blumenthal (WG10), Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Warby Parker, described Warby Parker’s evolution in “acts”:
Act I: Building a lifestyle brand online and pioneering direct-to-consumer eyewear.
Act II: Scaling brick-and-mortar retail and expanding into holistic vision care.
Act III (now): Accelerating with AI across three dimensions:
- New products – including AI-powered glasses being built in partnership with Google and powered by Gemini, leveraging glasses as a natural “wearable” that sees what you see and hears what you hear.
- Customer experience – from true-to-scale virtual try-on (a technically demanding problem when placing third-party objects like frames on faces) to virtual vision tests and AI-assisted interpretation of retinal images.
- Productivity and profitability – AI tools that automate low-value work and help Warby expand EBITDA margins faster over time.
Blumenthal gave a vivid internal example: he asked Warby’s copy team to build an AI that could write in the Warby Parker voice. Initially, copywriters were nervous about being replaced. Six months later, the head of copy reported that AI had actually freed time from low-impact tasks (like job descriptions) so the team could focus on creative campaigns and brand storytelling.
He also offered candid advice for students: don’t just “follow your passion” blindly. Instead, balance passion with marketable skills and the lifestyle you want—especially in an era where AI is reshaping employment and massively amplifying proactive, adaptable people.
Stacey Bendet (C99), CEO and Creative Director of Alice + Olivia, brought the creative and brand-builder perspective. She traced her journey from launching Alice + Olivia right out of college to today’s reality where every fashion brand is also a media and content company.
Bendet showcased how Alice + Olivia uses AI across the organization. Using tools like Leonardo to transform simple iPhone photos and sketches into rich embroideries, prints, and detailed renderings. This allows the brand to push embellishment, beading, and stitching to new levels of complexity and beauty. Collaborations with partners (including Meta) to turn static images into dynamic video, and to generate high-impact ads at a fraction of the historic time and cost. E-commerce: Converting basic photography into e-commerce-ready imagery, saving “hundreds of thousands of dollars” while enabling faster, more flexible content production.
Internally, Bendet has institutionalized AI learning via “thursday.ai”: each department meets weekly to review tools they’re testing, what works, and what to adopt. Department heads then align monthly on which AI programs will be rolled out more broadly.
Her message to her teams – especially creatives – is unapologetically direct: fighting AI is not an option. She urges designers to see AI as a way to remove tedious work and unlock more creativity, not as a threat to their jobs or originality.
Bendet also stressed that taste, judgment, and brand identity remain human-led. The same AI tool will produce very different results depending on the prompts and vision of someone who has designed for Alice + Olivia for 20+ years versus a new user. For her, using AI to be more creative is completely consistent with being authentic as a brand.
John Imah, Co-Founder and CEO of SPREEAI, represents the experiential and customer-facing side of AI in fashion. A lifelong technologist and fashion enthusiast, Imah built and sold multiple companies before executive roles at firms like Meta and Snap, then founded SPREEAI in 2023.
SPREEAI is a B2B, fashion-first technology platform (not just “tech for fashion”), a white-label solution integrated into brands’ own sites and stores, focused on solving core retail pain points: personalization, sizing and fit, returns reduction, conversion uplift, support for VIP/high-value customers.
Brands can deploy features like virtual try-on, high-accuracy sizing, and enhanced in-store experiences where sales associates use SPREEAI on their devices to show customers how outfits look on them before they try them on. Shoppers themselves can browse in-store, see garments on their own bodies via phone, and narrow down what they physically take to the fitting room.
Imah emphasized that fashion is a relationship-driven, traditional industry where trust and partnership matter. SPREEAI’s strategy is to blend deeply into each brand’s identity, so the tech “looks like Stacy’s team made it”, and to serve as a unifying platform in an otherwise fragmented tech landscape.
Rounding out the infrastructure and analytics layer, Anita Beveridge-Raffo, Head of Retail and Consumer Goods at Palantir, explained how Palantir helps retailers move beyond spreadsheets to decision-making at scale.
They integrate disparate data sources (POS, inventory, logistics, customer data, forecasts) into a coherent model of the business. Builds what it calls an “ontology”—a kind of digital twin of the organization that captures: data (stores, products, trucks, employees, etc.), logic (forecasts, business rules, predictive models, GenAI models) and actions (writing back to ERPs, logistics systems, auto-replenishment, and more)
Anita demoed an inventory allocation app used by Alice + Olivia, where an AI agent can answer questions like: “What is trending in stores this month?”
In a live example, the system surfaced exactly what Bendet had guessed from instinct and store visits: tops and trousers (especially button-downs and specific blouse and denim styles) were leading. The key shift is that what used to require a full day of manual spreadsheet work now appears in seconds—and can be tied directly to actions like reordering and allocation rules.
Internally, Palantir has seen its own commercial business grow 130% year over year without adding headcount, powered by “hordes” of cooperating AI agents—an illustration of how profoundly AI can reshape work.
Across the panel, several themes emerged. AI as a decision support and amplification tool, not a pure replacement for humans. Headcounts and organizational structures will change; teams will likely become leaner, but work will become more strategic and creative. Creativity, taste, and brand vision remain central—AI amplifies those who have them. Retail is at an inflection point: for students and professionals willing to embrace AI, retail offers enormous opportunities for impact, innovation, and career growth.