The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

Have you ever opened your Shopify dashboard looking for one answer and somehow ended up with ten new questions?
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly.
Most retailers I work with don't have a lack-of-data problem — they have the opposite. They're drowning in dashboards, apps, reports, spreadsheets and AI notifications, yet they still can't confidently answer the three questions that actually matter: Am I making money? Am I on track? Is my stock healthy? More information hasn't made the decision easier. If anything, it's made it harder.
In this episode I talk about cutting through the noise. I share why “tech creep” quietly drains your bank account and your attention, how new AI tools like Shopify Sidekick are changing the reporting game, and why the answer to feeling overwhelmed is almost never another subscription. Then I get into the small handful of numbers that genuinely tell you whether your business is healthy — and why clarity beats complexity every single time.
If you've been feeling unsure about how things are really going in your shop, this one will help you stop guessing. By the end you'll know exactly which three numbers to check each month, what “good” looks like for each, and how to build one simple place to track them so you can see the health of your business in seconds — without drowning in data. The specific numbers, the benchmarks and the exact formula I use are all inside the episode.

In this episode
(00:00) Drowning in data, starving for clarity — why more tools won't fix it, and how to cut tech creep
(06:45) Number 1 — Am I making money on every sale? Understanding your sales margin
(11:02) Number 2 — Am I selling enough to cover my costs? The power of breakeven analysis
(14:40) Number 3 — Is my stock turning fast enough? Weeks cover and why stock is cash

Links & resources
Free download — The 3 Key Numbers guide: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/numbers
My book, Tame Your Tiger: How to Stop Your Product Business Eating You Alive — where I show you how to calculate your breakeven step by step
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
More episodes & the audio podcast: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/

The shoppers who start researching Christmas earliest are also the ones who spend the most — and most retailers are invisible during exactly that window.
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly.
If you think July is far too early to be thinking about Christmas, this episode will change your mind. I sat down with Hannah Bartlett — founder of Jolly Festive and The Christmas Insider — to unpack why the shoppers who start researching Christmas earliest are also the ones who go on to spend the most, and why that completely changes how you should be building towards your peak season.
Here's the trap most independent retailers fall into: they treat the research window and the purchase window as the same job. Right now, around 60% of shoppers are quietly building their Christmas shortlists — and holding off on actually buying until November. If you only show up when people are ready to pay, you've already missed the moment that decides where their money goes. That window is your opportunity, not your problem — but only if you know how to be in it.
Hannah has distilled her forecasting into six emotional needs and four distinct aesthetic directions for Christmas 2026. In this episode she shares the framework for choosing the one that's right for YOUR business — not just whatever the big retailers are doing. Press play and you'll walk away knowing how to show up in your customers' research phase, how to plan your stock and marketing around emotional connection rather than discounting, and how to set yourself up for your most profitable fourth quarter yet.
Chapters
00:00 — Why the earliest Christmas shoppers spend the most
03:33 — The six emotional needs shaping Christmas 2026
08:02 — The four aesthetic directions to plan around
13:44 — How to choose your direction and bring it to life
Links & resources
Connect with me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
More from Resilient Retail Club — podcast page: resilientretailclub.com/podcast
Hannah Bartlett — The Christmas Insider: thechristmasinsider.com
Discover independent brands to stock on Faire: faire.com
Plan a profitable Q4 with Stock Doctor: stockdoctor.net

Mentioned in this episode:
This podcast uses chapters

We're coming up fast on the halfway point of the year — and if that fills you with dread, don't panic. Here's the good news: a midyear review beats a New Year's resolution every time, because right now you're not working from a theory about how the year might go. You have six months of real data. This episode is how you use it.
Oh, and the episode comes with a free download - https://www.resilientretailclub.com/recap

(Our sponsor Faire are offering 50% off and free shipping on first orders until July 31st. Simply add the code "Resilient50" at checkout)
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. And in this episode of the Resilient Retail Game Plan, I'm walking you through the exact process I've used with members, course students, and clients over and over again: look back honestly at the first half of the year, then use what you find to spring-board into a stronger second half.
The key word is honestly — without blame, without self-recrimination, and without brushing past everything you've actually achieved.
We start with the numbers: your total sales versus plan, your best sellers by value, units and profit, and a "dead weight audit" of what hasn't moved.
But the real value isn't the figures themselves — it's asking why they happened, because knowing why you succeeded is as useful as the number itself.
From there we look at conversion rate, average order value, your sales channels, a social-media audit, and a relationship audit of the suppliers, stockists, and couriers you depend on.
Then we get subjective — and I make no apology for it.
We celebrate your wins out loud, run a start / stop / continue on the first half, and use a 20-minute SWOT analysis as an emotional clearing exercise to get the 3am worries out of your head and onto paper.
Finally, we refocus.
If midyear admin usually fills you with dread, this is the episode that turns it into momentum.
There's a free downloadable workbook to do it alongside me.
Chapter Timestamps
00:00 — Why a midyear recap beats January 1st: you have real data now
01:33 — Revisiting the goals you set in January (without the self-blame)
03:40 — The numbers that matter — and why you should ask why they happened
06:10 — Best sellers: value, units, and profit
08:06 — The dead weight audit: stuck stock and disappointing lines
09:33 — Conversion rate and average order value
10:28 — Sales channels: are you investing where it's actually working?
11:20 — The social media and relationship audits
13:17 — What worked, what didn't, and start / stop / continue
16:29 — How the business feels: SWOT and the 20-year interview
19:31 — Refocusing for half two: set your number and key dates
21:41 — Your homework

Useful Links
Free midyear recap workbook: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/recap
Resilient Retail Club podcast: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly

Mentioned in this episode:
Faire 50% off - use code 'Resilient50'

Right now, as you read this, an AI chatbot is running a real retail store in San Francisco — managing the product selection, deciding what to stock, and curating a customer experience. It sounds like science fiction. It is already open for business. And it is just one signal of how fast the rules of retail discovery are changing.
(Our sponsor Faire are offering 50% off and free shipping on first orders until July 31st. Simply add the code "Resilient50" at checkout)
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. And in this episode of the Resilient Retail Game Plan, I'm exploring one of the biggest shifts I've seen in how customers discover products: agentic AI. This is AI that doesn't just respond to questions — it researches, compares, recommends, and in some cases, actually completes the purchase. For independent retailers and product businesses with an online presence, this changes the rules. The question is no longer just how do you rank on Google — it's how do you become the answer when an AI agent is asked to find the best product for a specific need.
I dig into what agentic AI actually means, how people are already using it to shop, and what that means for the way you present your products online. I share research from the OECD, insights from Andrew Bialecki at Klaviyo, the work of retail expert Jackie Swanson, and a fascinating case study in the form of Andon Market — a real shop in San Francisco that is being managed end-to-end by an AI chatbot called Luna, which was given a three-year lease and told to make a profit.
If you're an independent retailer or product business owner with an e-commerce presence, this episode is essential listening. The shift is already happening. Understanding it now means you can take simple, practical steps to make sure your products are visible in the new discovery landscape — before your competitors even realise the rules have changed.

Chapter Timestamps
00:00 — Are robots taking over shopping? And what agentic AI actually is
02:05 — AI at both ends: retailers using AI and shoppers using AI — the data
04:50 — Luna and Andon Market: the AI chatbot running a real retail store
07:00 — Agent-to-agent commerce: Andrew Bialecki on what retailers need to prepare for
09:30 — What to actually do: getting your data right for AI discovery
11:25 — How customer search behaviour is changing and what it means for your product pages
13:45 — The three things to start with: titles, key info, and natural language
14:48 — The philosophical question: are we handing over too much to AI?

Useful Links
Resilient Retail Club podcast: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
Mentioned in this episode:
Faire 50% off - use code 'Resilient50'

What would it mean for your retail business if — right now, at this very moment — three thousand creators were actively requesting samples to promote your brand? That's not a fantasy for Luke Arnall-Cameron, founder of YASS CLEAN. It's Tuesday. That's just how his business works.
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly.
This episode is brought to you by Faire. As you will hear in the actual show, they're offering 50% off and free shipping against your first order. Use the code "Resilient50"
In this episode, I sit down with Luke Arnall-Cameron — a former John Lewis graduate buyer and marketing director turned TikTok creator and brand founder — to unpick one of the most significant shifts happening in retail right now: discovery commerce. TikTok Shop has fundamentally changed how products reach consumers. Instead of paying for ads, brands are now building creator networks — and the smartest ones are doing it in a way that mirrors exactly what every good retailer already knows about range building, customer loyalty, and repeat purchase.
Luke launched YAS CLEAN in November 2024. His first livestream generated £70,000. Within his first year he fulfilled over 650,000 orders across six countries, sold 10,000 bottles of one product in seven days, and achieved 45% repeat customer rates in December — for a cleaning brand, in the hardest trading month of the year. He also won TikTok's Breakout Seller of the Year Award.
But what makes this conversation genuinely useful for any product business owner isn't the headline numbers. It's the retail logic behind every decision he made — why virality isn't a strategy, how to think about product range in a world driven by social selling, and what discovery commerce means for anyone selling physical products. If you want to understand whether TikTok Shop belongs in your channel mix, this episode is for you.

Chapter Timestamps
00:00 — The hook: 3,000 creators waiting to promote one product
01:26 — Luke's retail career: From John Lewis buyer to TikTok creator
04:12 — YAS CLEAN launch: £70K first livestream and 650,000 orders in year one
10:02 — Building a product range vs chasing viral moments
15:45 — Discovery commerce explained: How TikTok Shop's creator model works
19:34 — Live shopping as real-time customer feedback

Useful Links
YAS CLEAN on TikTok: @yasclean
Get 50% off and free shipping with Faire - https://fairewholesaleinc.sjv.io/APj4ax
Resilient Retail Club: www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Catherine on LinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
Mentioned in this episode:
Faire 50% off - use code 'Resilient50'