Shoptalk for planning teams: Spring, Fall, and which to pick

Two editions, honestly compared

The two editions run on the same premise at very different scales, and the difference matters more for a planner than for the commerce crowd. Spring is the industry’s meeting point: the widest vendor floor, the broadest programming, and — by Shoptalk’s own figures — the highest concentration of senior decision-makers in one place. Fall, which moved from Chicago to Nashville in 2026, is roughly a third of the size and trades coverage for conversation: fewer parallel demands on everyone’s calendar, so the meetings you do get run longer and the people you want are easier to actually pin down. Current agendas are on the event sites: spring.shoptalk.com and fall.shoptalk.com.

What a planning team gets from a commerce conference

Start with the honest version: Shoptalk is not a planning conference, and walking in expecting a planning curriculum is how the trip disappoints. The content pillars orbit commerce, marketing, digital, and retail technology. Do not go looking for a track on receipt phasing or markdown cadence; sessions that mention inventory tend to treat it as a supply chain topic rather than a merchandising one. Planning-dedicated events exist for that — PI’s RE:PLAN series is built specifically around merchandise planning in fashion — and they serve the craft better.

What Shoptalk does offer a planner is three things a planning-dedicated event is not built to give. First, the vendor landscape in one place: planning, forecasting, and inventory vendors exhibit alongside the commerce stack, so a team running a platform evaluation can compress months of discovery calls into two days of floor walk-ups and scheduled meetings — and see how each vendor positions against the systems it will have to integrate with. Second, the AI programming. Retail AI claims are easiest to calibrate when you watch retailers describe deployments rather than vendors describe products, and Shoptalk’s scale means both are on stage in the same week. The same founding team’s new RetailClub AI Festival (first edition, September 22–24, 2026, Huntington Beach) signals how much of the industry conversation has shifted to exactly this.

Third — and easiest to undervalue — cross-functional exposure. Planning sits downstream of decisions made in commerce and marketing: a new channel, a loyalty push, a personalization program that changes demand shape. Hearing those roadmaps firsthand, in the room where your own commerce colleagues are hearing them, is worth more than reading the recap deck a month later. If the plan has ever been surprised by a promise the commerce org made in Q2, this is where those promises get made.

The Meetup program is the planner’s main tool

For a planning team, the densest value at either edition is not on stage — it is Shoptalk’s Meetup program: pre-matched 1:1 meetings between retailers, brands and tech providers, as Shoptalk describes it. Treat walk-ups as discovery and scheduled meetings as qualification. The floor conversation tells you a vendor exists and roughly what it claims; the scheduled meeting is where you run the same rubric against every candidate and disqualify fast.

Arrive with the rubric written. For a planning platform, the questions that expose the differences are structural: what grain the data model holds (style, style-color, SKU, size), how open-to-buy connects to in-season trading rather than living beside it, what the integration surface looks like against your order and inventory systems, and what the standard implementation actually involves. A short meeting answers those four faster than a quarter of discovery calls — and the vendors who cannot answer them crisply have told you something too. Before the meetings, it is worth being fluent in what a planning system costs to own so the conversation starts past the pitch.

Who should go to which edition

Pick Spring when the year is an evaluation year: a platform decision is live or coming, the team needs the widest possible read of the vendor and AI landscape, and one trip has to cover it. The C-suite density Shoptalk cites for Spring also makes it the edition where your own leadership is likelier to be in the building — useful when the planning system decision needs an executive sponsor who has seen the landscape too.

Pick Fall when the shortlist already exists and the goal is depth: fewer vendors, longer conversations, and a room small enough that follow-ups actually happen the same week. For most planning teams the right shape is one senior person — a planning director or VP with the rubric — rather than the whole team; the team’s time is better spent on the season, and a written rubric travels back better than impressions do.

A preparation checklist that survives the floor

• Book scheduled meetings before you travel — the Meetup program is the highest-density hour of the event; walk-ups are for what you did not know existed.
• Write the vendor rubric first — data grain, OTB-to-trading connection, integration surface, implementation model. Score every vendor against the same four, in the meeting or straight after.
• Split the agenda deliberately — landscape coverage early, qualification meetings once you have seen the floor; do not let session FOMO eat the meeting slots.
• Divide sessions with commerce colleagues — agree who covers what, and swap notes the same day while the detail is still attached.
• Capture same-day — a vendor conversation not written down against the rubric by that evening becomes an impression, and impressions do not survive the flight home.
• Leave slack — the unplanned senior conversation is a real fraction of the value, especially at Fall’s scale.

• ✓Shoptalk runs two editions: Spring in Las Vegas (March 22–24, 2027 — Shoptalk states 10,000+ attendees, about 1 in 3 C-suite) and Fall in Nashville (September 29 – October 1, 2026 — a stated 3,500+ leaders, moved from Chicago in 2026).
• ✓It is a commerce conference, not a planning conference — a planner goes for the vendor landscape, the AI programming, and cross-functional exposure, not for planning curriculum.
• ✓Spring is the industry meeting point and suits a broad evaluation year; Fall is smaller and more conversational, and suits focused vendor qualification against an existing shortlist.
• ✓Shoptalk’s Meetup program — pre-matched 1:1 meetings between retailers, brands and tech providers — is the planner’s main tool: walk-ups for discovery, scheduled meetings for qualification, one written rubric run against every vendor.
• ✓Send one senior person with the rubric rather than the whole team, book meetings before traveling, and capture every vendor conversation the same day.

• Retail planning conferences — the full calendar compared →
• What a planning system actually costs to own →
• Run the numbers with the planning ROI calculator →
• Retail planning benchmarks →
• How to measure forecast accuracy →
• Browse all planning guides →

Frequently asked questions

When and where are the next Shoptalk events?

Shoptalk Fall 2026 runs September 29 – October 1, 2026 in Nashville — the edition moved there in 2026 after running in Chicago in 2024 and 2025. Shoptalk Spring 2027 runs March 22–24, 2027 in Las Vegas. Agendas, speaker lists, and registration for each edition are published on the event sites, fall.shoptalk.com and spring.shoptalk.com, and the two editions run on the same commerce-and-retail-technology premise at different scales.

What is the difference between Shoptalk Spring and Shoptalk Fall?

Scale and texture. Shoptalk states the Spring edition in Las Vegas draws 10,000+ attendees and 180+ speakers, with about 1 in 3 attendees at C-suite level; it bills Fall in Nashville at 3,500+ leaders with 350+ sponsors and exhibitors. Spring is the industry meeting point — the widest vendor floor and broadest programming in one trip. Fall is smaller and more conversational, which favors focused vendor conversations over maximum coverage. The programming premise is the same at both.

Is Shoptalk worth it for a merchandise planning team?

It depends on what the team needs that year. Shoptalk offers no merchandise planning curriculum — the programming skews commerce, marketing, and digital. It earns a planning leader’s time when the team is evaluating planning or inventory vendors, needs a current read on how AI is landing across retail, or wants direct exposure to the commerce roadmaps that the plan will have to absorb. For deepening the planning craft itself, a planning-dedicated event is the better spend.

How does Shoptalk compare to NRF Big Show for a planner?

NRF Big Show (January, New York) is the bigger cross-industry gathering — NRF states 41,000+ retail professionals from 100+ countries — while Shoptalk is more concentrated on commerce and digital, at a scale where scheduled meetings are easier to get. A planner choosing one trip for vendor evaluation gets more structured meeting time at Shoptalk, via its Meetup program of pre-matched 1:1 meetings between retailers, brands and tech providers; NRF offers the broader industry read and the larger expo floor. They are better treated as different tools than as substitutes.

Did Shoptalk Fall move from Chicago?

Yes. Shoptalk Fall ran in Chicago in 2024 and 2025 and moves to Nashville for 2026, running September 29 – October 1 at a stated scale of 3,500+ leaders and 350+ sponsors and exhibitors. The edition’s positioning is unchanged: a smaller, more conversational counterpart to the 10,000+ attendee Spring event in Las Vegas, on the same commerce, marketing, and retail technology premise.