For over a century, merchants built retail empires through margin discipline, inventory velocity, and vendor relationships. Today, those skills no longer guarantee relevance. In this episode 🎙️, Maya speaks with Christine Montard, Director of Markets and Events at IADS, about groundbreaking research from the 2025 IADS Academy cohort—an intensive 30-year-old programme that has developed 200+ retail leaders, including 4 current CEOs 🎓.
Over nine months, high-potential leaders from IADS member companies tackled a critical question: how do merchants balance intuition with data-driven decisions? Christine breaks down their surprising findings—department stores aren’t failing because they lack data, they’re struggling because Finance, Buying, Operations, and Marketing optimise for conflicting outcomes 📊. From 8-stage lifecycle frameworks to Customer Lifetime Value metrics, discover why merchant excellence demands transformation from product curator to Experience Architect, when to trust analytics versus gut feeling, and how leading retailers are building decision-driven (not data-driven) organizations. Is this the roadmap that saves department stores from becoming retail’s dinosaurs? Tune in to find out why the future belongs to merchants who master integration, not choice 📲.
👉 Click here to read the full 2025 Academy Exclusive!
For more updates, follow us on LinkedIn at International Association of Department Stores - IADS, check out our Substack, visit our website at www.iads.org for additional resources, and learn more here!
