Agentic Hype, Bathroom Pitches, and a Ghost from the Fjord: eTail 2026 Recap

You know, we get back from retail Thursday and Friday.

I didn't really do a good job at going to bed early because I just had so much to do.

Friday night, I went to bed at a decent time and I got over seven hours of sleep.

My sleep score went down die.

I got a 61.

So then last night, I got an 80 and I feel great.

I can tell.

Don't be jolly.

I got a 91 on Thursday night.

Are you kidding me?

Nope.

Welcome back to Type A Unhinged, the podcast for the architects of order and the masters of chaos.

Welcome back to Type A Unhinged.

Welcome, welcome.

I'm Nate.

I'm Ty.

I'm still rubbing the sleepies out of my eyes from our week away.

For those that don't know, we're officially back from retail Palm Springs 2026.

I don't know about you, Ty.

I'd say like the polite panic has subsided, but maybe our minds and our to-do lists are still like at that peak post-show panic phase.

Absolutely.

I think, you know, from the expo floor to the agentic AI hype, the nine course Michelin dinner that we had is a lot that I just want to like dive right into.

But first.

We have to talk about the ghost that nearly caught us on the hook.

Oh, you mean our friend from the fjord?

Yes, exactly.

Just as we were getting ready to head to the airport, an email came in that was quite honestly so perfectly aligned with our brand that I almost changed our flight so that our destination was Norway instead.

It was too good to be true.

It really did feel that way, doesn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

We were reading it.

I honestly felt like the little girl on Little Miss.

The sunshine as she's getting the voicemail that her like, you know, they're in because I just started getting more and more and more excited.

The more that I read, like it was insane.

I want you to imagine the most type A fisherman on the planet.

This email came from a man named Lars, a self-described salmon fisher and efficiency enthusiast.

Hello, type A. Unhinged.

Warm greetings from the west coast of Norway.

My name is Lars Henrik Ustby.

I am a salmon fisher and also a devoted listener of your podcast about being type A.

He didn't just want to talk about fish.

He wanted to talk about systems.

He told us that in salmon fishing, the tide must be studied, the knots must be exact, and even the thermos must be positioned for maximum efficiency.

I mean, it was like he was listening to our task list.

I can never say that.

Task list apocalypse episode, you know, on repeat.

He had to have been.

He even offered to join us.

Yeah, like he he offered to join us to discuss precision net deployment and how to maintain excellence while slightly.

Damn, I mean, the details, mate.

So we immediately started revising our roadmap to make room for this, you know, bait shop special.

And so, of course, we hit reply as quickly as possible, ready to coordinate.

And immediately the system spoke back.

The email account you tried to reach does not exist.

Does not exist.

Sad.

Ours was a ghost, a highly specific, perfectly calibrated LLM generated ghost.

They used their own language of organized chaos to to get through to us.

Yeah, we won't let that happen again.

Nope.

OK, so now that we're through the trickster fisherman, the Lars LLM.

What was your favorite part about retail?

I really enjoyed networking with other retailers and vendors, actually.

I feel like once you get to know some of the vendors.

And not just here.

It's a lot easier to understand the product and its purpose in the business that you really need to get under the hood and ask the questions to identify whether or not it's going to be a fit.

And it's nice to be able to do that there versus having a million circle back calls when you get back to all those connections.

And on the retailer side, too.

I couldn't believe there's a product that I use instant hydration.

It's a hydration powder.

And I sat next, not next to, across from the head of e-commerce for it at dinner one night.

No way.

We were going around, you know, where are you from?

Where are you from?

What do you do?

You know, and she said that.

I was like, I just had the mango pineapple before I came here.

And she couldn't believe it.

I love it when that happens.

Just those little things were kind of funny.

Yeah.

And then, of course, I ran into a gal named Courtney, whom I loved.

And she recruited one of my best managers.

And now good friend, Lori, to work for her at another company.

Yeah, that was really surreal.

It was like small world.

I think the most interesting part of that, like, interaction, like, that was crazy that that all unfolded.

But then she explained how she found Lori.

And my brain melted.

Do you want to walk us through that quick?

Absolutely.

So Courtney was working at Pink Lily at the time.

And she was searching for someone to run their CRM channels.

And she says she.

She does not remember which tags she inputted into LinkedIn.

But she put a bunch of tags in there that were related to the work.

Lori popped up.

She saw Lori was engaged with the brand and actually followed them on LinkedIn and commented or liked some posts.

Then she looked her up in their system and saw that she was also an avid customer.

Yeah.

And it just reached out to her on LinkedIn.

And that's how that all happened.

And it was a great fit.

It was a great fit.

And I told her she would be ridiculous.

Not that I would be mad at her if she didn't take it.

It was clearly a next level up for her.

And I'm actually thinking back to a previous episode of ours where we talked about.

The art of like growing and letting go.

Right.

And sometimes as you develop a person.

Leaving is their next step.

And it worked out how it was meant to work out.

But how crazy was that to happen full circle?

And then we took a picture and we texted it to her while we were there.

She is so great.

Absolutely.

I think I want a plus one to your networking.

Being a highlight from this year to from both ends, vendor and retailer.

I felt like this year more than even last year.

Just did a really great job at finding really cool, inspiring people from both ends to network with and become LinkedIn friends with.

And I feel like now more than ever, I have like a group of people that I can go ping pong ideas off of or hit up for advice.

And that's a really cool feeling.

Right.

Yeah.

What I love, too, about this is we have a purpose to reengage with them.

By having them on our show.

Yes.

Normally you see them at the conference and you probably maybe talk to them one more time.

Only if there's something that comes up and you're like, oh, they would be a good resource.

Right.

And then you don't see them again until the following year.

But now we're able to go, hey, like, let's have you on the show.

Let's talk more.

Let's dive deeper.

Yes.

Hundred percent.

The other thing I loved about networking with the other retailers is talking about everybody's kind of passion projects.

I cannot believe how many people have these like side things.

Yeah.

Maybe now their job and that that's what they're actually there for.

I mean, we met that one guy, Matthew Chen, who's started Lawrence.

Right.

Just self-taught initially.

And you guys vibe.

That was insane.

Yeah.

So that was honestly like inspiring.

Right.

Like I had never met another person like me who's relatively self-taught, made a cool app and is running with it.

And then here is Matt with an Amazon PPC business that's like taking off and he's there to continue getting more clients for it.

It was super cool.

And it reminded me of kind of my journey with the hangout spot.

And there's a there's a lot of instances like that at e-tail, though, which is really cool.

Right.

Even outside of just that one example.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

There are a couple of big fans.

I remember somebody brought up something about parties and getting together with folks.

And I was like, you know what would work for that?

Yes.

That was insane.

What?

They were like, how does this work?

Oh, my gosh.

Showed them the interface.

And they're like, I can't wait to use this.

It's powerful.

It doesn't work.

This doesn't work.

And yeah, that was pretty cool.

All right.

So we did a lot of interacting with retailers.

Let's talk a bit about the expo.

First off, we had our bingo, which I lost.

It's OK.

It was actually harder than I expected.

Yes.

Because we were so busy.

It was hard to be constantly on the on the problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It became secondary.

But it was fun.

And every once in a while to just kind of check in on that.

So how many agentic AI boxes did you actually cross off?

I'm pretty sure I only had about eight.

And I did not get five in a row.

Sadly.

I got the middle row horizontally.

And I was one shy on that one.

Which one were you shy on?

The wardrobe malfunction.

You got that one?

I did.

So outside of that middle row, I also had spot the floor office.

Oh, yeah, I have a picture of that one whole aisle as people go between the hotel area and the area for the show that everybody is like on the back to the wall, like on the floor with their laptops.

Let's discuss now kind of all of the agentic things that we saw.

We saw lots and lots of agentic.

Right.

And what does agentic really, really mean?

How is it actually useful?

There's so many different layers and levels to it.

But I felt like the new tech that I was seeing for that was a little bit lackluster.

Most of the ones after I started asking some questions, I found out were actually just in beta.

There's a little bit of a roller coaster, right?

Because they were selling it as this is available now.

Yes.

Which is definitely a thing that happens at the show a lot.

I feel like they do have a product, but it's not necessarily fully fleshed out.

Yeah.

And the one thing that I kept hearing over and over again that I, I don't know if the vendors are just tone deaf or we just do things so differently, but I kept getting, oh, your Monday report.

I even saw a whole presentation on this in the AI summit that I spoke in.

It was like saving yourself from the Monday report and just having this LLM do it for you.

You type in what you want to know and it will just recap everything for you.

I was like, well, I mean, you could just download stuff and do that without paying.

There's an extra price for it.

Number one.

Number two, who's spending that many hours on a Monday?

And they were telling us more, right?

They're like, don't you spend six hours on a Monday?

It's like, whoa, I spend a lot of time on Monday pulling numbers, but not six hours.

Like, yeah.

Oh, deaf ears for me, for sure.

And I feel like that was the biggest thing that I was seeing on the CRM e-commerce side.

There was one piece of the puzzle on the CRM side that would save quite a bit of time, which is like.

Like audiencing with an LLM.

But I feel like that's coming for all of them anyway.

So I don't know exactly that it's a different differentiator at this point.

And again, I thought that was super cool, too.

Right.

Being able to just type in quick and have you make an audience for you.

However, I don't know that creating an audience is the most lengthy time suck to begin with.

Correct.

So again, yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

There was some cool stuff for sure, but I didn't feel like this was a big revolutionary year as far as tech goes.

No breakthroughs.

Yeah.

And even on like the PPC or performance marketing side of things, like again, there was some cool stuff, but it felt like AI driven data stitching companies.

So you can take your omni channel approach and kind of unify it.

Yeah.

There weren't really many breakthroughs that I saw at this show.

At least maybe there's some sleeper ones, but none that I was like, absolutely.

But we have to share the quick interview we had impromptu at lunch with a gal who had quite the run in with.

Oh, my gosh.

Unreal.

I could not believe it, guys.

Let's let's check it out.

Let's cut to the clip.

What is the most unhinged that you've gotten today?

Walked out of a talk probably two hours ago, was charging for the bathroom because needed to do that.

And.

This girl walking next to me was like, how are you enjoying that was like, oh, you're talking to me, didn't realize that I literally on a mission, followed me into the bathroom to try to sell me her subscription service, waited for me to get out of the stall, not just followed me to stand in line once I went into the stall, was waiting for me by the sink to finish her pitch.

We stood there for five minutes because I didn't want to tell her to politely fuck off, but I was feeling it.

And then I was like, OK, scanned my thing.

And I was like, I'm probably going to block her on LinkedIn.

Because that's in the back, in the yeah, in the bathroom.

OK, so can we just take a moment?

What in the world in the restroom?

That's a whole, whole new level.

I really hope that that was somebody very, very early on in their career and just like wanting to get after it.

And I don't know, maybe their job was on the line.

How would you react?

How would I react?

I would probably be like, I I'm sorry.

No, I don't feel like this is the right time to be.

I don't feel like chatting or like, could you give me like some privacy?

I don't know.

It's hard because I'm that Minnesota nice, too.

So I might just like let them and then tell the story after.

Be like, at least I got a good story out of it.

I am trying to decide if I'd approach it with Minnesota nice.

I don't know if I'd even be able to react because I'd be like, are you for real?

This isn't happening, right?

Am I in a dream?

Like you just squatted outside of my stall door.

Yeah.

It's awkward enough when you're to talk to somebody when you're in.

The restroom, like unless you're putting on putting on lipstick or something like that,

but to like carry out a whole conversation.

I don't know, man.

They had some numbers to make.

They had some scans to do.

Nate, they're not going to fail.

I guess.

I wanted to ask one other thing, which I don't think we have on our list of topics today.

But when it comes to AI adoption, when I went to the retail in Boston back in August, I spoke on it.

We had an AI panel there and we started off asking people how often, like, if you've used AI in the last week, raise your hand kind of thing, very, like, I'm going to say 1% of the audience raised their hand and I don't know if it's just because I spoke this time in the AI summit, but it seemed that adoption was a lot higher.

However, I want to say people are still keeping it at arm's length to somebody was speaking on.

They were talking about how.

You can prompt and change your product image, which was on white to be on a person.

And they had this like gift already clipped up and everything.

Right.

So they think they're clicking their slides through and it generates the image.

And the gal next to me was like, I don't like that.

And I was like, oh, what, what do you see that's wrong with it?

She's like, oh, it's just creepy.

We're here talking about AI, how we're using it to save time and hours for our employees.

So they can work on higher levels.

They can work on multiple things or work on other projects that they have a passion for within the business, have greater effectiveness.

Right.

And at the same time, there's people out there that are just like, I don't know, but it gives me the.

So they're not embracing it, which is kind of hard to believe because, like, it's here and it's very clear it's not going away.

So if we're not adopting it, you will be behind.

I agree 100 percent.

And I'm trying to figure out how to get through to those people, help them get on board with it.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

Like, I was so, so astonished at the adoption rate, but also the fact that people are like, it's here, but I don't really want to use it.

I do think the adoption rate is like a big part of this, though.

Right.

And I think it's changing quickly because I agree.

One, I sat through a couple of sessions that were around getting your website ready for AI.

Like, are you getting cited?

Are you generating AI traffic and how just to be ready for that?

Right.

And one of the pushbacks was how do I allocate resources to growing?

A chunk of traffic that's less than one percent of my site traffic right now.

And my rebuttal to that is like, look, rewind to three months ago.

You maybe would have asked your friends how many of you have used AI in the last week and you would have gotten some hands, but maybe not all.

But only three months later today, you ask that same question.

I bet you that answer is double.

So it's I feel like the AI adoption itself is just exponentially growing.

And pretty soon that half of a percent of traffic is going to be three percent of traffic.

And then all of a sudden you're behind.

Right.

OK, so lots of time spent networking on the expo floor in sessions, filling our brain with tons of knowledge and are putting our task lists or to do list set capacity.

But a part of this was also spent doing some self-care or, you know, speed triage, arguably one of the most exciting parts.

Absolutely.

And I have not done that in years past at ETL.

And it was definitely.

A win this year to take, I don't know, was it maybe like two hours throughout where we had a little bit of self-care and big thanks to Klaviyo here for sponsoring a beautiful villa with.

OK, first of all, first of all, first of all, let's talk about the villa that they rented.

OK, this had a pickleball court, which, of course, we were the only two that played.

And of course, my favorite.

Because the gal from Kenya that's like, I'm Kenyan and I'm not even doing that.

And we were running.

Like it was a competition.

Debbie was great.

I loved her.

Pickleball, bocce ball, some mini golf.

A sand bocce ball court, you know?

Yes.

Like a six hole mini putt course.

It was insane.

They had like little soccer balls and nuts.

Then there were the hammocks.

And then there was the lazy river and the pool and the waterfalls coming over the bridge.

I mean, so beautiful.

And then they had the sound bath.

Oh, the sound bath.

I'd never had one before.

Me neither.

And that's what everyone heard at the beginning.

Had to do a brief recording while I was sitting there, of course.

But it was definitely necessary to have that kind of reset during our four day sprint there.

Agreed.

The night before, Nate was like, go, go, go.

Attentive.

The pit stop hosted their amazing party.

The pit stop loved their branding throughout the entire show.

That was such a cool party.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Their party was sweet.

The F1 simulator with like the chair that moved based on how you were driving.

The life-size track racing where you pulled the trigger and the car goes around the track.

The In-N-Out burger truck.

Yes.

And the taco truck and the churro truck and the caviar and champagne station, which sadly

I did not partake in.

They really, they really showed up.

That's for sure.

And before that, we were already at a nine-course Michelin-trained chef dinner.

Mm-hmm.

That was wonderful.

The comache was my favorite.

I know you didn't partake in that because you don't like the raw fish, but that was

so good.

I mean, everything else was so good.

And really, really great retailers that were there.

It was a wonderful mix.

Yeah.

And the great discussion.

Like that whole dinner was just an awesome experience.

Yes.

We also, prior to the show really kicking off, had a little bit of time on Sunday.

And so we did the Kilo Mini Golf course at the JW.

That was fun.

I know we, I just, I think we discovered that last year and I had no idea that it was even

there, but we ran into Armand from Ometria, who we had met the year prior and we had become

fast buds last year.

Mm-hmm.

So got to hang out with him a little bit and get his take on some unhinged.

AI while we beat him at mini golf.

We did, we did.

But then he, he beat us at pool real bad.

Yeah, he did.

That's insane.

That he hustled us.

That is insane.

So yeah, let's cut to the clip of his take on unhinged AI.

Sales pitch.

Yeah.

So like, what do you think?

The most unhinged, like the most unhinged AI pitch.

I think it'll be the AI that convinces you that they can do your job.

But AI companies have to be more aware of what they're doing because sometimes they're

pitching to people and not realizing that they're trying to fully replace the person

who's making that decision.

Yeah.

Or, or they're pitching to somebody who's already done what they've done within their

own team.

Yes.

Like I don't, I literally had that on the way down to that half an hour.

I was like, yeah, I've actually already done that.

So I don't need your support.

Companies may lose sight of who they're talking to when trying to talk about that.

Well, there you have it.

All in all, I'd say it was a super successful e-tail.

I don't know about you, Dai, but I think for me personally, it was maybe a little bit more

about the connections this year than the tools, but that's okay because you have to have a

mix, right?

Yep.

I'd agree.

I do think that there are probably some sleeper tools in there, but yeah, it was really about

the connections this year.

And we do still have some like circle back meetings to go through.

So that could change too.

Circle back.

Should we set a challenge out there, Nate?

Why don't we just ask our listeners?

What's the most unhinged AI pitch they've gotten this year?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I want to hear that.

Yeah.

And if somebody can beat the bathroom pitch, I want to hear it.

We will feature you.

Yes.

We will feature you on our show.

Yeah.

Well, until next time.

Stay tight, babe.

And a little unhinged.

Stay tight.

Stay tight.

And a little unhinged.

Now it's time to get to work.

Make sure to hit subscribe so you never miss a system update.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.