Retail Brew // Morning Brew // Update

January 29, 2026

Hello, it’s Thursday, and Amazon is cutting another 16,000 corporate roles. The move comes just months after eliminating 14,000 jobs last October. Despite continued growth, Amazon says the layoffs are about removing bureaucracy and redirecting spending toward AI, suggesting more cuts could be on the table.

In today’s edition:

—Vidhi Choudhary, Jeena Sharma, Alex Vuocolo

RETAIL MEDIA

Buy all means

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Retail media took a backseat at NRF 2026, with only three sessions related to the topic across the three-day conference. However, those giant digital screens with ads—often referred to as in-store retail media—kept coming up when retail executives talked shop.

In particular, consumer electronics retailer Best Buy said its in-store media offering, dubbed “takeover packages,” announced in 2025, are nearly booked for the entire year because of strong demand from advertisers including Ikea, Meta, and more.

To be sure, takeover packages let advertisers control multiple Best Buy touchpoints, from window displays and entrances to checkout counters, TV walls, PC monitors, and interactive screens throughout its stores. At NRF, Lisa Valentino, president of Best Buy Ads, said in-store takeover packages have been the “biggest driver of demand” from advertisers during a panel called “How retail media is navigating its first economic crisis.”

“Our goal was to sell them by month,” Valentino said. “We’re nearly sold out for the year. The creative work that goes into [takeover packages], that’s not a programmatic offering; that’s really about thinking about how we galvanize creative and creative storytelling in a different way.”

Keep reading here.—VC

Presented By The Crew

Retail state of mind

Retail marketing is changing fast, so we’re bringing the smartest people in the room to Rockefeller Plaza to talk about what actually works.

Join Retail Brew for a half-day in New York focused on content that converts, data you can use, and communities that show up and spend money. Expect real examples, honest lessons, and practical takeaways you can actually apply. We’ll cover how brands are turning storytelling into sales, creators into growth channels, and customers into loyal fans.

Come for the insights, stay for the bagels, and leave with ideas worth taking back to your team.

STORES

That Saks

Saks Fifth Avenue

If Saks Global’s bankruptcy has taught us anything, it’s this: Don’t bite off more than you can chew. In this context, we’re referring to its acquisition of Neiman Marcus and the enormous debt ($4.7 billion) the retailer took on, which ultimately backfired.

But is that the sole reason for the iconic retailer’s downfall? Not according to experts. In the past year, we’ve seen a wave of bankruptcies and store closures—most notably at Macy’s and Lord & Taylor—raising broader questions about whether the traditional department store model still works, even at the high end.

“Where Saks really had a struggle was having the demand driving the consumer in, but not having the inventory makes it meaningless, because the consumer then reorients and looks for other channels to find that demand in,” Nora Kleinewillinghoefer, partner in the consumer practice of Kearney, told Retail Brew.

While that certainly eroded the trust between the key vendors and Saks, another major factor, per Kleinwillinghoefer, was competition from brands that have invested in their own DTC channels.

Keep reading here.—JS

RETAIL

State of the heart

Belitas/Getty Images

Consumers are on track to spend $29.1 billion on Valentine’s Day this year, according to survey data from the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics. That’s a record-breaking sum for the love-themed celebration—up from $27.5 billion in 2025—which despite falling in the middle of February pulls its weight in terms of spending. Halloween, for instance, raked in less than half that amount.

On a per budget basis, consumers are planning to drop a record $199.78 on average for gifts, inching past the previous record of $196.31 in 2020 just before the Covid-19 pandemic.

In what is becoming a theme of holiday spending, however, certain demographics are pulling most of the weight.

Keep reading here.—AV

SWAPPING SKUS

Today’s top retail reads.

A familiar smell: Inside Dubai’s thriving fragrance dupe market. (Business of Fashion)

Cash grab: Why Amazon spent $35 million on promoting Melania, a documentary that follows First Lady Melania Trump. (the New York Times)

Just beat it: How Levi Strauss beat Wall Street estimates amid growing DTC sales and consumer demand. (Reuters)

JOBS

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Written by Vidhi Choudhary, Jeena Sharma, and Alex Vuocolo

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