Welcome to The Watson Weekend – a rollicking weekly live conversation (and dance party) about all things retail, tech, and ecommerce! Hosts Rick Watson and Jess Lesesky and guests from all around the ecommerce world cut through the BS and bring you no-nonsense conversation, deep insights, and opinions that aren’t afraid to be contrarian. Join us for the livestream every Friday at noon on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ecommercestrategyconsulting/ and YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMXgOk2gTui7w3ZAZxs95Qz_pcDX17K_cand then listen to the podcast and series a week later.
Hello friends! I have an important update regarding the Watson Weekend. To make it easy for you to keep up with everything happening in commerce, we’re consolidating our shows. We’re officially moving the Watson Weekend into the Watson Weekly podcast feed. This completes our new lineup. Mondays, we contain your essential eCommerce digest. On Wednesdays,…
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The first episode of the new Watson Weekly Friday edition, featuring Rick Watson and Jessica Lesesky, debuts a new format focused on news and commentary related to e-commerce and retail. The new format includes three stories in the “Headline Hangover” section and one main story. In this episode: Amazon’s Luxury Nightmare: Why a $475M investment…
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The first Watson Weekend show of 2026 serves as a post-mortem for the NRF conference, where Rick Watson and Jessica Lesesky recap the live event held at the Asylum in New York City and share “Nostradamus-style” predictions for 2026. The overarching theme for the coming year is “be bold,” urging businesses to move past the…
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The Watson Weekend Festive Jeoparty is a special holiday podcast episode featuring a Jeopardy-style quiz among four e-commerce and retail podcast teams: Team NYC (Rick Watson and Nick Kaplan), Retail Razor (Ricardo Belmar), Future Commerce (Philip Jackson and Brian Lange), and OGs Scott Wingo and Jason Goldberg. The game involves answering questions about retail trends,…
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In this special episode of the Watson Weekend, Rick Watson is joined by Scott Silverman, Co-founder of CommerceNext and Principal of Scott Silverman Associates, to talk about e-commerce leadership themes he is seeing. E-commerce leadership is being structurally devalued Senior digital and e-commerce leaders are increasingly sidelined. Compensation for roles like VP of E-commerce has…
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This week’s Watson Weekend episode features hosts Rick Watson and Jessica Lesesky, who deliver a news analysis in an entertaining Headline Hangover, plus holiday advertising commentary you do not want to miss. The show reflects on a turbulent retail year, previews a memorable holiday Jeopardy-style episode, and features an in-depth interview with James Lang, Head…
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Watson Weekend host Rick Watson is joined by Nick Kaplan for the week’s retail and e-commerce news. The headline hangover contains results from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and Amazon is testing 30-minute deliveries. The company’s AI assistant Rufus continues to make headlines. There is also a discussion on the closing of Omnicom’s IPG acquisition….
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Rick Watson, Jessica Lesesky, and Nick Kaplan warm up the show with jokes about last week’s performance and introduce the episode’s segments. They highlight Jeoparty, Headline Hangover, and the week’s special guest, Kelly Goetsch. Headline Hangover: The team guesses blacked-out words from recent retail and e-commerce headlines. * Levi’s chooses Microsoft to deploy AI- and…
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The Watson Weekend hosts, Rick Watson and Jessica Lasesky, and guest Nick Kaplan discuss retail and commerce trends for Q4 and 2025. This week’s headline hangover includes the resurgence of Toys R Us, Airbnb’s pilot kitchen stocking service with Instacart, and the integration of AI to enhance efficiency rather than replace humans. The Big 2025…
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The Watson Weekend hosts Rick Watson and Jessica Lesesky discuss the most important retail and e-commerce news from the past week. In the Headline Hangover, they discuss retail’s Q4 challenges, AI’s impact on brick-and-mortar stores, and retail media trends. They highlight Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s view that AI will accelerate the decline of physical retail,…
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