Retail Brew // Morning Brew // Update

June 16, 2026

Welcome to Tuesday. Chicago’s tourism board announced a partnership with Amazon to offer hotel discounts during the upcoming Prime Day sale. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a very important trip to book, but here’s some retail news to keep you busy.

In today’s edition:

—Andrew Adam Newman, Vidhi Choudhary, Alyssa Meyers

E-COMMERCE

Room to grow

A collection of home decor items including vases and bookends are arrayed on shelves.

Marriott International

Fine hotels have long sold the luxury beds, sheets, and bathrobes featured in their rooms to guests, including Marriott International, whose brands include W Hotels, The Ritz-Carlton, and Westin. Now, Marriott is expanding its retail offerings far beyond bed and bath, with a line of decor, furniture, and art it’s calling Design Shop.

The collection is launching with more than 75 pieces that are identical or similar to items found in Westin or W Hotels rooms. A wall sconce like those in rooms at the W Hotel location in New York’s Union Square, for example, retails for $210 and promises to do no less than transform “any wall into a moment of urban sophistication.”

Other items you might not expect to be ordering along with slippers and a scented candle from your favorite hotel include the bench at the foot of beds in the W Hotel in Union Square, made of wood and vegan leather (vinyl), priced at $2,890. Both of those pieces were designed by the Rockwell Group, the architecture and design firm that completed a $100 million renovation of the hotel in 2025, after originally designing it in 2001.

Offerings from Westin in the new design collection include an oak nightstand ($1,500) and a wool-covered down throw pillow ($518).

“We’ve always sold the basics: sheets, beds, towels, [and] candles,” Peggy Roe, EVP and chief customer officer at Marriott International, told Retail Brew. “This expansion is more to represent the lifestyle and design of our hotels…People get inspired when they stay with us, and they want to buy the things that they see in the hotels.”

Keep reading here.—AAN

Sponsored By Impact.com

Partner up

When consumers are ready to shop, they turn to AI-powered search, creators, and trusted content to discover products. Whether you’re running a small business or you’re a household name, authenticity is the key to showing up online.

impact.com sat down with Seth Hagerty, senior director of performance marketing at Best Buy, to learn how partnerships can help brands maintain authenticity and discoverability in the AI age.

Tune in to the Partnership Economy podcast to learn how Best Buy leverages partnerships and influencers across the full customer journey. You’ll get the scoop on how AI and partner discovery are linked, how to diversify your partner strategy, and more.

Listen here.

STORES

A big unlock

A collage of different steps of the Walmart supply chain process: a crane loading goods onto a truck, the facade of the Walmart office building in Silicon Valley, and a person looking at logistics on an iPad.

Illustration: Morning Brew Design, Photos: Adobe Stock

The conversation around AI these days is reshaping retail as much as it’s reshaping everything else.

Walmart is changing, too. One way the retailer is keeping stores relevant is with technology and automation. Lately, Walmart has been experimenting with in-store tech and devices to help associates complete tasks faster and be more productive.

During Walmart Associates Week in Bentonville, Arkansas, executives showed some of the tech the company has been testing in both Walmart and club chain Sam’s Club stores.

Keep reading here.—VC

MARKETING

Trust issues

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Trust is sticky, like an adhesive bandage. But that gooey residue rubs right off with some soap.

Dawn Dish Soap held onto its place as the most trusted brand in America for the second year in a row after dethroning Band-Aid, which held the title from 2022 to 2024 but is now No. 2 in the rankings, according to Morning Consult’s annual Most Trusted Brands report.

The report is based on a series of surveys conducted from January 1 through May 15 of this year asking consumers how much they trust brands to “do what is right.”

Keep reading here on Marketing Brew.—AM

Sponsored By Celigo

C’mon, c’mon, do the automation with us. You can now connect Amazon’s fulfillment network directly to your ERP. That means no manual reconciliation, no stockouts, and no integration headaches. Join Celigo and Amazon on June 17 to see how leading merchants can automate inventory, orders, and financials across every channel.

SWAPPING SKUS

Today’s top retail reads.

Binge watch: Fox buys Roku, maker of plug-in streaming devices, for $22 billion. (CNBC)

Out of water: Fishing supply retailer West Marine announced it’s closing about 60 stores as part of its bankruptcy filing. (USA Today)

Top hats: Dick’s Sporting Goods will open 100 Lids shop-in-shops this summer. (Retail Dive)

Authenticity sells: As AI-generated content and search grow, consumers are looking for authenticity from brands. impact.com spoke with Best Buy’s Seth Hagerty to learn how partnerships help boost authenticity + discoverability in the AI age.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

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