The Retail Pilot

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Neil Saunders, Managing Director of GlobalData: Inside Retail's Winners, Losers & the Back Half of 2026

August 04, 2026

There's a common assumption in retail right now that the top of the market is the only thing growing. Neil Saunders, Managing Director of GlobalData Retail and one of the industry's most-followed analysts, doesn't buy it. "Every broad income group has contributed to the increase in retail sales," Saunders tells Ken. The K-shaped economy is real, he argues, but it's hiding in the volume numbers, not the dollars. It's one of many contrarian reads he brings to this wide-ranging conversation on t...

Vuori Founder Joe Kudla: From Garage Startup to $5Billion+ Activewear Brand

July 21, 2026

When Joe Kudla launched Vuori out of a Southern California garage in 2013, he was betting against his own track record. He'd already tried the apparel business twice and failed both times. He had a comfortable life, a thriving financial consulting firm he'd built to hundreds of employees, real financial independence, the kind of success that came from humble beginnings near Seattle. And he walked away from it. What pulled him back was a men's activewear gap nobody else was serving and a creat...

James Reinhart, Co-Founder & CEO of Thredup: Building the Future of Resale

July 07, 2026

When James Reinhart walked into a Cambridge consignment store with a bag of business school clothes in 2008 – a J.Crew cashmere sweater, a Brooks Brothers coat – and was told they had no resale value, he didn't accept the answer. "I can't believe this cashmere sweater is worth zero," Reinhart tells Ken. That moment became Thredup. Sixteen years later, the company he co-founded as a broke ex-teacher earning $24K a year is a public marketplace approaching $400M in annual revenue, with 25M+ item...