Cart

Your cart is empty

Continue shopping
Kristin Schoenstein and Elizabeth Robillard, program directors at eTail, on the Honest Ecommerce podcast.
Jan 25, 20245 min read

eTail Palm Springs 2024: Networking, Trends & 25 Years of Retail

From 100 Attendees to 2,500: What 25 Years of eTail Reveals About Retail

eTail Palm Springs started with 100 people in a room. This year it crosses the 25-year mark with over 2,500 attendees and more than 200 confirmed retail speakers, with the last remaining panel slots filling as program directors Kristin Schoenstein and Elizabeth Robillard sat down for this conversation. That trajectory says something meaningful about how the retail industry has come to treat peer-to-peer learning as a non-negotiable part of staying competitive.

The 5 Trends Shaping the 2024 eTail Program

Kristin and Elizabeth conduct research every year to build the program from the ground up. For 2024, five themes kept surfacing across their conversations with retailers and their advisory board.

AI topped the list, but not in the vague, theoretical way it tends to dominate headlines. The sessions at eTail are built around department-level, practical applications: how specific teams are actually using AI today, not where it might go in five years.

Social commerce and live shopping came in close behind. TikTok Shop and Instagram commerce are generating enough real revenue and operational complexity that retailers need dedicated time to compare notes. Live shopping, while it can sit inside the social commerce bucket, is substantial enough to warrant its own track.

Partnerships were the fourth major theme, and the examples here are worth paying attention to. Minted's head of social built a holiday partnership with Jason Kelsey and his family in 10 days after identifying a media moment around the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey story. That session was added to the program just days before this conversation. Target is presenting on partnerships as well, and P-Volve, the at-home fitness brand, will discuss their Jennifer Aniston collaboration. The throughline is speed and cultural relevance: brands that can move fast and attach to the right moment are seeing outsized returns from partnership plays.

Why Live Conferences Still Outperform Content Alone

It is easy to argue that any keynote or panel can be watched on YouTube. Kristin and Elizabeth push back on that framing, and their reasoning is grounded in what attendees consistently report back.

The most valuable moments at eTail are not the keynotes. They are the lunch table conversation, the roundtable with eight people facing the same logistics problem, the hallway exchange that surfaces a small operational fix someone had not thought to try. With 2,500 people in the room, all of them working in ecommerce or retail, the density of relevant peers is simply not replicable anywhere else.

To make that networking less overwhelming, the team builds structured formats into the program: women in retail gatherings, a C-suite retreat, retailer-led roundtables, and revenue-based roundtables that group attendees by company size so the conversations stay relevant. Fireside chats with executives from Michaels, Lowe's, PetSmart, and Sam's Club round out the mornings, covering everything from digital transformation to career path.

How to Get the Most Out of a Large Industry Conference

One practical piece of advice came up repeatedly: do not go alone, and do not try to see everything. If you can bring a team, divide and conquer the program, then debrief together afterward. Trying to attend every session solo is a fast way to leave exhausted and under-networked.

Planning your schedule in advance, identifying the two or three sessions that are non-negotiable, and leaving intentional white space for unplanned conversations will return more value than a packed calendar with no room to follow up on a promising exchange. For a closer look at what the eTail experience looks like on the ground, an earlier episode covering eTail Palm Springs networking strategy offers useful context alongside this conversation.

The diversity and inclusion session with VF Corp's VP Lauren Guthrie is one example of a session that goes beyond the tactical. Her presentation focuses on how VF has operationalized D&I across all of its brands, moving from stated commitment to documented action plans with community involvement. For operators thinking about brand values and team culture at scale, that kind of session offers frameworks that translate across company sizes.

Key Lessons From This Episode

  • eTail grew from 100 to 2,500 attendees over 25 years, reflecting how seriously the retail industry now treats structured peer learning.
  • The five major trends driving the 2024 program are AI at the department level, social commerce, live shopping, brand partnerships, and diversity in action.
  • The Minted-Kelsey family partnership was assembled in 10 days around a cultural news moment, demonstrating how quickly a well-timed collaboration can come together.
  • Attendees consistently rate networking above content as the primary reason to attend in person, and the most valuable exchanges happen in small, informal settings.
  • Structured formats like revenue-based roundtables and vertical-specific gatherings make large conferences more accessible and productive for attendees at every level.
  • Bring a team, divide the program, and leave room for unplanned conversations. That combination produces more value than any single session on the agenda.

Hear the full conversation with Kristin Schoenstein and Elizabeth Robillard, including more on the 25th anniversary programming and what is coming to eTail East, in the transcript below.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

  • [00:49] Intro
  • [01:21] Being a program director for industry conferences
  • [02:28] Trend #1: the role of AI in retail businesses
  • [03:09] Trend #2: Social commerce and live shopping
  • [03:32] Trend #3: Launching partnerships to expand reach
  • [05:04] Conferences bring like-minded people together
  • [06:10] Creating opportunities for people to network
  • [07:21] Curating relevant content from outstanding speakers
  • [08:22] Inviting panels across different fields
  • [09:12] eTail’s 25th anniversary: walk down the memory lane
  • [09:56] A fun time for both attendees and staff members
  • [10:40] Don’t do everything, divide and conquer

Resources:

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Share

Transcript

Kristin Schoenstein

Lots of great panels. I think the dynamics on the panels are always fun to see different people come together. Panels on leadership and social commerce.

Chase Clymer 

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show. 

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. 

Today, I'm bringing to the show not one, but two amazing women. 

Kristin Schoenstein and Elizabeth Robillard are the program directors for eTail Palm Springs, an amazing conference that I personally am going to here in a couple of weeks. 

Shawn is also going, if you know my business partner. 

And this is a wild one. They're celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. 

Kristin and Elizabeth, welcome to the show. 

Kristin Schoenstein

Thanks, Chase. Thanks for having us. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Thank you. 

Chase Clymer 

I'm excited to get into it. 

So I'm going to try to direct these questions to each of you so we can keep from talking over ourselves because I know we're so excited about this conference. 

So Kristin, quickly. Talk to me a bit about your job. 

What are you supposed to do for the conference? How does this relate to the industry as a whole? 

Kristin Schoenstein

Sure. I'm the program director for the show along with Liz, so we co-produce the event. 

And basically, our role is to conduct research every year, get a feel for what's going on in the retail landscape, and use that information to write a program. So we put together all the program content and recruit the speakers for the show, and just work with our advisory board and develop the event every year. 

So, we handle all kinds of pre-planning related to the program. And then on site, we're doing a lot of speaker wrangling and just making sure the show runs smoothly and all the presentations are what they're supposed to be. 

So, yeah, it's an interesting role. It's fun. It's great to just be able to talk to so many different people in the industry and then see it all come together, of course, in a couple of weeks. 

We're like six and a half weeks out. So we're getting really close.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. 

So Elizabeth, Kristen just mentioned that you look at the trends and it helps you figure out what the conference is, some of the talk tracks, etc., who's going to talk about these things.

What were some of the trends that you guys noticed this year? 

Elizabeth Robillard

Yeah, I think we've got 5 major trends that we're seeing. And Kristen can talk about a couple of them too. 

But obviously, AI is all across the board. And I think not just... 

Kristin Schoenstein

No surprise. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Yeah, no surprise.

Not just kind of like the general concept of it. I feel like there's a lot of just chatter about just kind of big sky thinking about the concept, but really dialing down to every different department, how they can use it, how they are actually using it. 

I think we've got a lot of practical information that we've taken in that will be interesting. We've got sessions on that at the event, but definitely AI, I think, first big one. 

What else? Social commerce.

Lots going on in the social world. Obviously, we've got some cool sessions on the program that's going to cover a lot of that. Anything having to do with TikTok shops, you know, obviously anything under the sun or having to do with Instagram, that kind of stuff. 

So those are two. Kristin? 

Kristin Schoenstein

Live shopping. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Yeah, live shopping. Yes.

Kristin Schoenstein

It can fall in that bucket. That's a big one. 

Partnerships is again, another big area. So many different collaborations. I'm sure, maybe when you think of partnerships, you might think of Mattel and the Barbie partnerships that we saw everywhere this year. 

But yeah, retailers are really taking advantage of that. And we do have some sessions highlighting very cool partnerships. 

I just added one to the program this week that we're excited about. She used the word ‘newsjacked’ a media moment and the media moment was the Kelsey-Taylor Swift thing that happened and this was in October. 

This is Minted. 

So the head of social for Minted is going to be talking about a partnership that they did with the Kelsey family with Jason Kelsey and his family and how they talked about their, you know, holiday season. 

And so she'll talk about that whole partnership that they put together in 10 days with the Kelsey family. So that's one example of a partnership that we're excited to share. 

We just added that to the program. 

Liz has one too, I think. Liz, don't you have the... Target's going to be talking about partnerships too? 

Elizabeth Robillard

Target's going to be talking about partnerships, which is great. And then we've got one with... I don't know if you've seen the ads for P-Volve. It's that at-home fitness thing, but they partnered with Jennifer Aniston. So she's all over their ads. 

So they're going to be talking a little bit about that partnership too. But yeah, anything partnerships. We got lots of it. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. 

Now, if I'm a listener to this show, I work in Ecommerce, why should I go to conferences? What's in it for me? What are the cool things I should be getting out of it? 

Elizabeth Robillard

That's a great question. For me, I think one of the best things about conferences, while we do have a lot of great content, I think the one thing that you get at a live show that you wouldn't get anywhere else is the opportunity to chat in small groups with people. 

I think what we always hear is that the most valuable part of the event is really that sort of quick moment you have with someone at lunch or that moment at a roundtable. There's 2,000 people there that you could meet that are going through the same issues that you're going through, that might have some small fix that you haven't tried, some little fine tuning that you could do to up your game. 

So I would say that networking piece might seem overwhelming with the amount of people that are there, but we always try to make sure that there's really opportunities for some of those more small, quiet moments. 

I don't know why I keep saying ‘quiet’, but in those more intimate moments, you can have a really good conversation with a new person. So that's what I think. 

Kristin, what do you think? 

Kristin Schoenstein

I agree. 

I mean, we spend a lot of time making sure we include different formats on the program and different opportunities for people. 

Like, we have women in retail and we have something specific to the C-suite, like a C-suite retreat. 

We have these round tables that are just retailer-led round tables. We have round tables based on revenue. 

So we try to come up with lots of different opportunities for people to meet and network and just exchange ideas outside of just your traditional general session, keynote scenario. 

And of course, the expo is always buzzing and lots going on there. Opportunities to meet vendors. You know the expo. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, if you want a free knockoff Stanley Cup, I'm sure you're going to get a dozen there. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Free stuff.

Kristin Schoenstein

Yeah. Lots of free stuff. That's for sure. 

Chase Clymer

I would love to see your guys' data on... Because I know every time I go, you ask me what I got out of it at the end. 

Number one is networking. I can personally tell you that the people you will meet and interact with, that's the reason to go. 

But the content is also super exciting, and you mentioned some stuff about the partnerships and the content. Is there any other kind of content that you're allowed to speak about that you're excited about? 

Elizabeth Robillard

Yeah, absolutely. I think...What are some of our other exciting sessions? We've got a great session with VF Corp, the VP of Diversity and Inclusion, VF. 

Lauren Guthrie, she's going to be talking about their big mission to take D&I and put it in action, not just talk about it, but really how they've managed to, across all of their brands, which is a lot of brands, they've managed to create this action plan, get involved with different communities. 

So I'm super excited about that session. What else do we have going on?

Kristin Schoenstein

Just lots of fireside chats with executives, which is fun. So bringing in media and having them do an interview and talking about everything from career path to digital transformation, whatever it is, that's always a fun format to see an executive chat through what they're doing. 

So we'll do a bunch of those. We have one with Michael's, one with Lowe's, one with PetSmart. We have Sam's Club coming to do that. 

Busy mornings are filled with those types of sessions. 

And then lots of great panels. I think the dynamics on the panels are always fun to see different people kind of come together. Panels on leadership and social commerce, of course, lots of topics. 

The program is jammed. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Very full.

Kristin Schoenstein

Yeah, and our panels are very full this year, which is good. We have over 200 retail speakers confirmed and more that are trying to speak. 

As of today, I was sending the last two panel spots that I have left. 

So it's a packed program. Lots to do and say, that's for sure. 

Chase Clymer

That's exciting. And it's also just wild to me that the event itself, legally, can now rent a car. This is the 25th anniversary of this thing. But I guess the Internet's been around for a while.

So with it being the 25th anniversary, is there anything that you can share about that? 

Kristin Schoenstein

Sure. We have a few surprises. 

But I think just knowing that the event is 25 years old, and we've had people who have been coming to the show for 10, 15, 20 years, we're going to play some fun kind of games just to kind of see the history of the show, who's been coming and recognize those people and just have some fun with looking back to over the history of the show and seeing how we've evolved and how the industry's evolved. 

And it started with 100 people in the room. So 100 to 2,500. It's a long time, a lot of progression. So we're going to have some fun with that.

 Elizabeth Robillard

We have some staff members that have been working on it for 20+ years as well. So just getting everyone together, it's a pretty long standing team. So it's kind of a fun little reunion for us every year too, because there's people that we don't get to see all the time.

It’ll be kind of fun for our team as well. But also, yeah, lots of fun stuff happening for attendees as well. 

Chase Clymer

Well, you forgot that you're excited to meet me in real life, Elizabeth. 

 Elizabeth Robillard

Absolutely. Yes, definitely, Chase.

Chase Clymer

Kristin, when she's in show mode, she's looking... It's crazy, but she's very nice. So you can say that to all of us. 

Kristin Schoenstein

I'm moving quickly. 

Chase Clymer

Yes. And there's a podcast booth this year that they've told me is amazing. So you will find me lurking about there.

But no, I'm super excited about it. 

If there's one thing that you wanted a retailer to keep in mind about 2024, what would that be? 

Kristin Schoenstein

Maybe don't overdo it. We always say, sometimes you can go to the show and you want to do everything, but you really do have to plan your time and make sure... 

And it's always good to divide and conquer too. So bring a group. That's the best. Because then you can all go in different directions and then come back and collaborate. 

 Elizabeth Robillard

I would agree with that. Yeah. I think that that's good. 

Chase Clymer

Elizabeth, Kristen, thank you so much for coming on. 

For everyone listening, I will be in attendance at that conference. I think it's very useful for anyone that is in this Ecommerce industry to get out to network to learn. 

It's going to be an amazing program. There's gonna be a bunch of information in the show notes. And I'm sure I'll have you guys back on in a couple months and we'll talk about the one that's going to be on the East Coast. 

Kristin Schoenstein

Awesome. Thanks, Chase. 

 Elizabeth Robillard

Awesome. Thanks so much, Chase.

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestecommerce.com to get each episode delivered right to your inbox. 

If you're enjoying this content, consider leaving a review on iTunes, that really helps us out. 

Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.

Until next time!

Read more

Michael Nguyen, founder of Fire & Brilliance, on the Honest Ecommerce podcast
Fire & Brilliance: Growing a Niche Jewelry Brand on YouTube

Michael Nguyen built Fire & Brilliance by spending two years on eBay and Etsy before launching on Shopify, then growing through YouTube content about lab-grown gemstones before the topic had an...

Callie Christensen and Kelly Oriard, co-founders of Slumberkins, on the Honest Ecommerce podcast
Slumberkins: From $200 Craft Fair Start to Apple TV+ Brand

Callie Christensen and Kelly Oriard built Slumberkins from a $200 craft fair side hustle into a venture-backed DTC brand with an Apple TV+ series. They share how delaying their own salaries fueled ...

Don't Miss an Episode

By signing up, you agree with our privacy policy.

Honest, Actionable, Ecommerce Advice