Oct 20, 202638 minS3
If AI decides who gets found, what happens to the independent store with the best people in town? New research Lightspeed commissioned from Vaer AI found that AI recommends big retailers over local businesses 9 out of...
business
Retail in America
Hosted by Ron Thurston · business · EN
About this Podcast:
RETAIL IN AMERICA is a conversation about running stores and leading people.Ron Thurston talks with the executives, founders, and frontline retailers shaping where the industry goes next: what they're building, what they got wrong, and what it takes to grow a business at store level. Retail leadership, store operations, customer experience, culture, and the technology underneath it.Season 3 is about the human edge of selling — how the best retailers win with people, presence, and craft.Ron Thurston is an NRF Retail Voice, a Top 100 Retail Technology Influencer, a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert, and a two-time #1 bestselling author. New episodes regularly.
Pitch Analysis
Required Pod Score for this podcast. PitchCentric checks your profile against host openness, topical fit, and audience signals before you generate a pitch.
Contact path
Verified email
Booking probability
33%
Guest openness
Selective
80/100
Required Score
Sign up to generate a grounded pitch for Retail in America.
Signup to Generate a PitchQuestions about Retail in America
What is Retail in America about?
RETAIL IN AMERICA is a conversation about running stores and leading people. Ron Thurston talks with the executives, founders, and frontline retailers shaping where the industry goes next: what they're building, what they got wrong, and what it takes to grow a business at store level. Retail leadership, store operations, customer experience, culture, and the technology underneath it.
Who hosts Retail in America?
Retail in America is hosted by Ron Thurston. The show has published 56 episodes to date.
What has Retail in America covered recently?
Recent episodes include "Prompt Local: How One Word Changes Who Gets Found, with Dax Dasilva from Lightspeed" (20 October 2026, 38 minutes), "Stop Saying AI: How to Stand Out Among 500 Vendors, with Vicki Cantrell" (13 October 2026, 35 minutes), and "Connection Is a Performance Multiplier with Blake Devillier" (29 September 2026, 42 minutes).
How often does Retail in America publish?
Retail in America publishes roughly every two weeks, with episodes averaging 24 minutes across 56 episodes.
How hard is it to get booked on Retail in America?
Booking probability for Retail in America is 33%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. Retail in America requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. Retail in America's contact route on record: verified email.
Who should pitch Retail in America?
The strongest fits for Retail in America are Pet, Art & Other Specialty Retail. Retail in America has a business audience and around 150 subscribers on YouTube.
About the host
Ron Thurston hosts Retail in America, a business podcast with 56 episodes published.
Verified host email: ████████@████.comSign in to unlock →
Recent episodes
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
Oct 13, 202635 minS3Every January, hundreds of solution providers walk into the Javits Center to sell to retailers. Most don't understand how a retailer actually buys. Most retailers don't understand how a vendor has to sell. Vicki...
Sep 29, 202642 minS3Blake Devillier thought he'd work at the Gap for six weeks. He needed a summer job. He stayed twenty-eight years. What changed everything was one sentence from an acting district manager named Julia: if you were...
Sep 22, 202637 minS3Somewhere between 50 and 70% of people who walk into a store leave without buying anything. Eighty percent of them walked in with an AI-generated answer already in their pocket. Juan Molina built his career on the...
Sep 8, 202636 minS3AI can write an email that sounds exactly like you. It can personalize at a scale no sales team ever could. And that is precisely why the inbox stopped working. When every message sounds human, none of them get read...
View More
Jul 21, 202641 minS3S3E4 — Balance Is Bullsh*t: Cut Your Life From 25 Things to 5 with Loretta Soffe Retail in America · Season 3: The Human Edge of Selling She pulled into her driveway with her hands still on the wheel and couldn't get...
Jun 30, 202646 minS3The Human Edge, Amplified — with Tulsi Keshkamat (Microsoft Teams for Frontline) What if the technology to transform your frontline already exists — and you're already paying for it? In this episode of RETAIL IN...
Jun 16, 202633 minS3The entire retail sales-training industry is built on scripts and closing techniques. Daria Tcherkachina threw both out — and built a career proving they were never the point. In this episode, Daria and Ron make the...
Jun 2, 202629 minS3The more we shop with algorithms and let AI agents shape our decisions, the more valuable one thing becomes: a human who actually knows how to sell . That is the thesis of Season 3 — and there is no better person to...
May 4, 202618 minS2EPISODE 21 — How to Stand Out as a Candidate When Everyone Uses AI Special Series: The Human Edge in the Job Market (Part 4 of 6) In 2024, Insight Global surveyed over a thousand U.S. hiring managers and found that 88%...
Apr 30, 202614 minS2EPISODE 20 — From Facts to Impact: The Art of Storytelling in Interviews Special Series: The Human Edge in the Job Market (Part 3 of 6) The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 surveyed over a thousand...
Apr 27, 202620 minS2EPISODE 19 — Empowering Your Job Search: Three Essential Questions Special Series: The Human Edge in the Job Market (Part 2 of 6) Job applicants in 2025 were 12% less likely to reject a job offer than they were in 2023...
Episode #18
The Three Edges You Already Have
Apr 20, 202616 minS2EPISODE 18 — The Three Edges You Already Have Special Series: The Human Edge in the Job Market (Part 1 of 6) Right now, more than 28 million people have the Open to Work banner on LinkedIn. If you're one of them — or...
Episode #17
The Retail Manager is the Moment.
Apr 15, 20269 minS2Episode Summary Retail didn't have a middle management problem. It had a leadership investment problem — and solved it the fastest and worst way possible. In this episode, Ron breaks down what actually happens when you...
Apr 9, 20269 minS2Episode 16: Compliance Is Not Development Your training is working. Your people are still leaving. In this episode of Retail in America , Ron Thurston breaks down the critical difference between completing a training...
Apr 7, 20267 minS2Episode 15: The Happiness Report & Retail The World Happiness Report 2026 was just published. 136 countries. Hundreds of thousands of respondents. Decades of data. And buried inside it is something every retail...
Mar 31, 202616 minS2Gen Z is walking into your stores on purpose. They came for connection, community, and a human experience they can’t get from a screen. The question is whether the people you hired are ready to meet them. Most retail...
Mar 27, 202613 minS262% of Gen Z shops in physical stores — more than any generation before them. They came for community, connection, and a human moment. And the industry’s response is to automate the experience that brought them there...
Mar 23, 202614 minS2Forrester Research is calling this moment ‘peak ambiguity.’ Rising bankruptcies. Falling consumer sentiment. Geopolitical uncertainty. And when strategy is unclear at the top — it’s the frontline that absorbs it first...
Mar 19, 202612 minS265% of consumers trust AI to compare prices. Only 14% trust it to place an order on their behalf. We’re in the most aggressive AI deployment cycle in retail history — and most customers don’t trust it where it matters...
Recent guests
Recent guests on Retail in America. Study who booked and why before you pitch.
D
Dax Dasilva
Founder of Age of Union and Lightspeed Commerce, Lightspeed Commerce
F
Fr. Juan Molina
Presidente de Comisiones de protocolo y Comunicación del Misteri d´Elx, Mexican American Catholic College
R
Ron Thurston
best-selling author of Retail Pride and Human Pride, former senior retail executive, podcast host, Retail Pride
D
Dave Glick
Senior Vice President of Enterprise Business Services, Triad Psych, P.C.
Best industries to pitch Retail in America for
PitchCentric classifies Retail in America under these industries. Guests from them are the closest fit, and each links to the best podcasts in that industry.
Similar Podcasts
Shows with the most semantically similar episode content. Pitch one, pitch all; producers cluster.
FRONTLINE FRIDAYS with Ron Thurston
22~318 listeners85% similar
Retail Gets Real
37~524 listeners81% similar
The Retail Pilot
29~412 listeners81% similar
The Retail Podcast
33~467 listeners80% similar
Tell Me Something Good About Retail
30~433 listeners79% similar
The Retail Razor Show
28~401 listeners79% similar
Podcasts like Retail in America
Is this podcast yours and you'd like to remove or correct details? Request removal or email privacy@pitchcentric.com.
Questions about the free trial? See the pricing FAQ