Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just a buzzword in the retail industry — it’s a foundational technology, much like electricity, that has the potential to augment everything it touches.

AI is becoming an integral part of every process, enabling businesses to innovate, streamline, and grow in unprecedented ways.

At NRF 2025, our EVP of Global SaaS, Thor Turrecha, joined Brooks Thompson, Director of Emerging Technology and Partnership at Telaid, to discuss the exciting future of AI in retail. Their conversation touched on the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities for retailers looking to harness AI to drive innovation and growth.

From personalized customer experiences to operational efficiency, this discussion dives deep into how businesses can strategically leverage AI to stay ahead in a competitive landscape.Watch the full conversation below

Watch the full conversation below:

Featuring:

• Thor Turrecha - EVP of Global SaaS, meldCX
• Brooks Thompson - Director of Emerging Technology and Partnership, Telaid

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Brooks Thompson: Hi, everyone. Really excited to be here with Thor at, from meldCX. Thank you for being here. Brooks Thompson. I am the director of emerging technology at Telaid and here we're talking about AI and how it's going to help us change in the future. So, Thor, thanks for being here.

[00:00:19] Thor Turrecha: Thanks, bro.

[00:00:20] Brooks Thompson: Maybe do a little intro on yourself and your, your company.

[00:00:23] Thor Turrecha: Okay. A little bit about us. We call ourselves meldCX. It's Melding Experiences. And we pride ourselves in basically. Simplifying the things that a physical space needs to have to basically improve it. Get the leaders to make better decisions. We started our journey with assisting services in EOS and improving ways that we can connect all the physical hardware inside the retail environment.

And then we added new features like what we're doing with Viana, which is a computer vision platform that allows us to track a physical space like a website. So we track the behaviors of customers inside a store. So our customers could make better decisions, make money, save money, kind of thing.

[00:01:07] Brooks Thompson: That whole like omni channel side of how to try to replicate online, drag, shopping cart, no purchase, all that kind of stuff.

That's really, really great. So we talk about customer experience, right? As a previous retailer, I love the idea of customer experience, improving it, understanding the next phases. What do you think that kind of, investment model looks like for their customer experience. Do you have like a hot take or something of that nature on how that's going to change?

[00:01:35] Thor Turrecha: I believe based on what we've seen in the market, customers tend to expect that when they get into a retail environment, that the retail environment gets them, that the actual brand gets that, Hey, I'm here. I've been going here for many, many years. I'm a local. At this point, you better know what I need, and at least have a semblance if I need something, I could get it easily.

Or if I get a content in front of me on a screen, at least it's contextual to what I think would need today or maybe near time. And if I decide to pick something and buy, be able to provide me a service that seamless, at least we could get out of there and hopefully it becomes more memorable, like the old school kind of thing, like retailers before they know each other, they'd basically call each other names.

They can't do that today, but aided with technology, you can understand the behavior and therefore you can personalize it to the kinds of customers you've got in that location.

[00:02:37] Brooks Thompson: If I go into a store and I, they have everything I need, I'm going to go back to that store. Exactly. Right. So how do you think AI machine learning, how is that going to influence, say the associates?

And in a retail environment, does that actually, does your platform help them make decisions?

[00:02:55] Thor Turrecha: AI has been a big thing for, for a very long time. I'm an engineer and almost like we've been dealing with AI for 15 years. And in the past, no one talks more about it, but then recently there's a lot of AI that's been being put out there.

And the relationship on the staff associates starts really with. Is this going to replace my job? Oh, yeah. So you have to break through that barrier first. And then once you get through that, you then start saying, by the way, they say, I was going to help you. This is going to augment you moving forward.

It's not going to replace the human. It's gonna activate the human better. Absolutely. So it's almost like. Tting a second class AI to support a first class human. Oh, wow. So the sort of idea that an AI is just an enhancement of the people that are there. It's almost designing the UX. UX before was the things you touch on your phone website.

Now it's the human to machine interaction. So how do you get them to interact? How do you get the AI to start working on things that humans doesn't like, but it's significant enough that the business. Saves enough money that to afford to keep pretty much doing it. So it's a, it's a very difficult thing.

Like it's easier when you talk about AI, it's just functional. D you just basically talk about mathematics of it and science of it to apply it, it just becomes a different story. You need to look at the finance. You need to look at the interaction of people. I mean, you really understand also the customer that those guys are doing.

So the education piece is, is what consumes a lot of our time. I feel like. AI is simpler today, getting humans to interact with it is one of the hardest thing that I think we're going through.

[00:04:47] Brooks Thompson: Yeah, it's Interaction with technology, right? I mean, you see the evolution of technology where it's scaling so much faster and I think people are comfortable with

[00:04:59] Brooks Thompson: Or what's capable out there. The user experience between technology and humans, that's going to be a big point for the winners out there. It's how do they do that the best.

[00:05:09] Thor Turrecha: Absolutely. Right. And, and get it to adopt and have the patience to really understand the scenario.

[00:05:15] Brooks Thompson: Yeah. Yeah. And it's not going to be the same for everybody. And stickiness means different from each customer to person.

[00:05:21] Thor Turrecha: Absolutely.

[00:05:22] Brooks Thompson: Right. And this is solving your problem. So it's the fastest way.

[00:05:25] Thor Turrecha: It's very difficult to profile the kind of customers, the kind of users that would basically embrace AI. And I think that's where they sort of figuring out how do you get it soft enough that it can coexist with humans.

And not threaten this, this sort of position, but AI today, everyone can see that it has the capability to be smarter than humans in some degree. So that's why everyone thinking, you know, you're sometimes like weighing all the time. Is it the right thing to do or not?

[00:06:00] Brooks Thompson: Yeah, it's definitely something conscious that I think we need to continue to look at and monitor.

I think technology advancements usually come with. Healthy amount of skepticism and risk. Yes. But as long as you're balancing now and having kind of a final human review. So let's talk about retail installation. Right. You think about hurdles that retailers go through and how does meldCX help solve this?

[00:06:28] Thor Turrecha: At least with our experience, we seldom have an engagement with customers that are not scarred from previous kind of projects. So by the time we're engaged, they're already cynical and they're basically have many stories to tell. Great yard is full. Absolutely. Like, so I think the struggle really is how do you educate the different levels of leadership within an organization and be able to tell that story that everyone can start to give you an ability to just start small and really just have an ability to prove value.

And then scale the, the challenge that we've seen in the past is that a lot of big brands are used to selling something that they know already works. So no one gets fired by making those big decisions. And the moment AI basically started being used by different companies, there's a lot of executives that are got in trouble because they jumped too early.

There's too much unknown so they cannot justify what's happening. So the amount of stories that are basically starting to show up in the industry that kind of scared some of the brands to think, Ooh, we might as well just be conservative and just wait, yeah, just wait and understand what's happening. I think the, the approach that worked for us best was that to really spend time on the problem statement that, you know, the, a problem well defined is a problem half solved.

And then once you've identified the problem and identify the stakeholders inside a retailer. Starts a journey with starting small, right? Find something small. Again, it's very difficult because everyone wants to have results. But if you start small and you find something that works, you then prove the sort of value, not just functionally security.

Financially and be ready to scale because I think that's always the balance that a lot of startups started providing the start small program. Yeah, and that was amazing. They've done a prototype. Everyone's excited, but they cannot scale it because they're, they're used to being small. And then when a big brand starts to decide, I've got 15, 000 stores and we roll out Nike a week, that becomes a problem.

So it needs to be in the right balance of. Starting small, educate every stakeholder, but be prepared as well that when you find something that works, you're ready to scale.

[00:08:44] Brooks Thompson: Yeah, that ability to scale is something on why we're actually working together, right? Absolutely. From the creation of our relationship has always stemmed on you guys have a strength, and we have a strength. And then together we can be stronger.

[00:08:58] Thor Turrecha: That partnership that allows you to basically take that start small, improve value, build on that. And then scale and maintain it. That basically has sustainability moving forward.

[00:09:07] Brooks Thompson: There's a word we use a lot of repeatability. Yes. Right. Like if it's done well, just redo it very well. You know, you have to start somewhere like you're saying. But I think that's, that's where we have and continue to, you know, work together, able to scale to those. 15, 000 customers.

[00:09:25] Thor Turrecha: Absolutely.

[00:09:25] Brooks Thompson: Thank you so much for talking to us today. We're really excited about the partnership and moving forward.

[00:09:31] Thor Turrecha: Thank you. Thank you for having me.