Good morning. Costco just closed the books on a monster fiscal year, Starbucks is trimming its footprint again, and Halloween is shaping up to be a $13.5 billion holiday. Here is everything that moved retail yesterday, Thursday, September 24.
Latest Retail Tech News
Domestic: Retailers are racing to adopt agentic AI faster than they can govern it. A report from security firm Netskope published this week found that retail’s AI usage has surged over the past year, and while some companies are tightening oversight of these tools, a lot of organizations still cannot see what their AI agents are actually doing with sensitive data. Netskope’s recommendations boil down to the basics: know what tools employees are using, and limit how much sensitive data those tools can touch. For executives building AI into merchandising, pricing, or customer service workflows, this is a good nudge to check whether your governance has kept pace with your ambition.
Global: Tapestry, the parent of Coach and Kate Spade, is putting its handbags where the shoppers already are. The company announced that Coach and Kate Spade products are now purchasable directly inside Google’s Gemini app and AI Mode search experience, making Tapestry one of the more visible fashion names to plug into Google’s AI shopping ecosystem. It is a small move on its face, but it signals where the next real estate battle in retail is headed: not just your website and app, but whatever AI assistant your customer happens to be chatting with. Expect more luxury and specialty brands to follow Tapestry’s lead over the next few quarters, since being discoverable inside a conversational AI experience is quickly becoming as important as showing up in a traditional search result.
Taken together, these two stories capture the split screen retail leaders are living in right now. On one hand, AI tools are becoming genuinely useful sales and discovery channels. On the other, the same tools are spreading through organizations faster than security and data governance teams can track them. Both trends deserve a seat at the same strategy table.
Store Openings and Closings
Domestic: Starbucks announced Thursday it is closing about 250 cafes across North America, roughly 1 percent of its 18,000-location footprint. The company said the affected stores either were not delivering the customer and partner experience it wants or were not financially viable. This is the second round of store trims under CEO Brian Niccol in his two-year turnaround effort, following a similar closure wave and layoffs about a year ago as part of a $1 billion restructuring push. On the flip side, Starbucks still expects 440 net new cafes in fiscal 2026, though that is down from its earlier outlook of 600 to 650, with essentially all of that growth coming from international markets rather than North America. The read here is not that Starbucks is shrinking. It is pruning underperformers at home while planting new flags abroad.
Global: In Poland, German discount chain TEDi began rebranding the 74 Woolworth stores it acquired, with the first converted location opening its doors in Gdansk. It is part of a broader pattern of consolidation playing out across European discount retail this year, as chains snap up struggling banners and relaunch them under stronger operating models. Elsewhere on the continent, grocery and specialty operators continue to expand aggressively into Southeast Europe, with acquisitions and loyalty program investments signaling that European discount and grocery consolidation still has plenty of runway left. Worth watching if you track how quickly discount formats are expanding share across Central and Eastern Europe.
The domestic and global pictures are telling slightly different stories this week. In the US, mature chains like Starbucks are optimizing an already dense footprint, closing the weakest performers while growth shifts overseas. In Europe, growth is coming from consolidation, with stronger operators absorbing distressed banners and relaunching them at scale. Different strategies, same underlying goal: fewer, better-performing doors.
