Retail Runway @ ICSC

Retail Runway @ ICSC
Spent an interesting couple of hours today at Retail Runway here at ICSC. Eight retailers (Auto Zone, Pinkberry, Dollar General, Dunkin Brands, Wal-Mart, Collective Brands, Panera, Darden Group) presented their "for consumption" strategies and plans to grow their store counts and businesses. For the most part - this was not what was interesting.
What was interesting was listening to what they - in general - didn't say. They didn't say they were concentrating on growth outside the US because they are overstored here. They didn't say that they were growing stores and cutting staff to reduce costs and improve margin.
Another very interesting dynamic was how Dana Telsey, retail analyst, was much more impressive than her co-host Jeff Newman(Esq). Especially in the last 5 minutes when Dana showed an impressive command of data points off the top of her head when Jeff freelanced questions.
Kate Anketill, GDR Creative Intelligence Ltd, presented a number of cutting edge retail concepts that included social websites such as YouTube and MySpace whom she suggested were seriously considering what she termed 3D stores to monitize their concepts. Free sites have a revenue problem it seems.
All things considered, you'd be smart to pay attention to Dana and Kate.