Geofences, Grocers, and a Google Cart

A&F listens at the door, Google builds the cart, and tariffs become an ops problem.

May 28, 2026

Hello Reader,

Welcome back to Behind the Counter. We’re adding two new sections to the newsletter this month. On the Ground brings you a practical, inside look at the retail technology conferences we attend, written for leaders who could not be there. Supply Chain Spotlight expands the conversation beyond the store and into the operational networks that increasingly define retail competitiveness.

Both are below, along with everything else we've been watching this month, from A&F's geofencing rollout to Google's Universal Cart..

A&F Swings for the Geofences

Most customer feedback programs are built around the people who buy, which means retailers end up with a pretty incomplete picture. Abercrombie & Fitch Co. decided to do something about that gap by deploying geofencing through its mobile app to identify and survey customers who visited a store but left without making a purchase. With customer consent and location access enabled during app setup, the system detects when a shopper enters and exits a store, then sends a push notification about an hour after their departure asking for feedback on the experience. That insight gets routed directly to store managers in near real time, helping teams quickly identify patterns around things like fitting room wait times, assortment issues, or pricing perception. To keep response rates healthy, the brand offers loyalty points as a thank-you.

Expert POV from Jason Todd: Interesting take on geofencing from Abercrombie & Fitch. What really stands out is how they tied the success of this program to the trust they'd already built with their customers. They had the app ready, they'd done the relationship work, and then they were able to capitalize on all of it with real, direct feedback. And I get the concerns around geofencing and privacy. But they did this right. Opted-in, targeted only their most engaged customers, and used it to genuinely listen. The fact that customers wanted to participate says everything. That's the lesson here. If you're exploring loyalty programs or any technology designed to influence customer behavior, start with one question: Do your customers actually trust you? Relationships take work, and it's great to see a brand put in that work and reap the rewards.

The Store Edge Imperative

Kitestring's Chief Strategy Officer Eugene Park published a new article this month that every operator running a large store footprint should read. Retailers with hundreds of locations have a Broadcom problem, a truck roll problem, and a timing problem. Broadcom's acquisition of VMware roughly tripled licensing costs for many operators. Truck rolls have been bleeding millions out of multi-store fleets for years with no clean fix. And the technology to solve both has arrived at the same time, on the same platform, with AI capabilities attached. Eugene makes the case for edge computing using KiteStop, a fictional 500-store convenience chain whose pain points will feel familiar to anyone running a real one.

First Sale, Second Thoughts

Retailers navigating elevated import costs have been leaning on a decades-old customs rule called the First Sale valuation method, which allows importers in multi-tier supply chains to pay duties based on the earliest transaction price rather than what they paid their vendor. Target disclosed its use of the method in its most recent annual filing, and adoption has been climbing as tariff rates have increased. The program has caught the attention of the U.S. Senate: the Last Sale Valuation Act would require duties to be based on the final pre-export sale price instead. Supporters call it closing a loophole; the National Retail Federation (NRF) calls it a legal, transparent program that actually adds supply chain visibility.

Our View: The bigger story behind this article is that tariffs are evolving from a procurement concern into a full-scale operational strategy issue for retailers.  Rising import costs are now impacting everything from pricing models and merchandising decisions to supply chain architecture, inventory flow, store operations, and even technology investments.  Retailers can no longer rely on traditional sourcing approaches and simply absorb cost increases, they are being forced to rethink how efficiently their entire business operates.  This is where operational visibility, integrated systems, and agile decision-making become competitive differentiators.  The retailers best positioned to navigate ongoing economic uncertainty will be the ones that can rapidly analyze cost impacts, adapt sourcing strategies, optimize inventory placement, and make smarter enterprise-wide decisions across finance, supply chain, and store operations. In many ways, the tariff conversation is becoming another example of how modern retail success increasingly depends on operational intelligence and the ability to respond quickly to constant market disruption.

On the Ground

We're adding a new section to Behind the Counter, called On the Ground, where we provide a first-hand look at the conferences we attend each month, written for retail leaders who couldn't be there.

Progressive Grocer’s GroceryTech

GroceryTech 2026 had a recurring message that showed up in virtually every session. The industry has exhausted the pilot phase of AI and is now under real pressure to show return on investment. Two-thirds of retailers are actively piloting or implementing agentic AI, yet only 5% consider themselves mature. The gap is driven by data quality issues, legacy system constraints, and the hardest variable of all, people and change management.

Another hot topic was 2D barcodes. The 2D barcode transition (Sunrise 2027) is closer than most retailers have internalized. Most organizations are hardware-ready but software-unprepared, and the embedded data these barcodes carry, including expiration dates, lot numbers, and real-time product identity, unlocks automated freshness management, instant recalls, and waste reduction that early international adopters are already seeing in double digits.

GK Retail Innovation Summit

By: Vicente Yañez and Brent Wells

The GK Retail Innovation Summit centered on one theme: retail innovation starts with the store platform. The biggest conversations touched on Point of Sale (POS) modernization, flexible architecture, loyalty and promotions, inventory, payments, AI, edge computing, and real-time integration. GK's value proposition came through not just as a software platform, but as a broader ecosystem of software, hardware, services, and integrations designed to work together for modern store execution.

On the product side, GK Engage for customer insights and loyalty, GK Vision Self-Checkout (SCO), and GK AIR for price optimization were among the highlights, alongside POS updates for automatic platform loading. A significant theme was the shift toward open, Application Programming Interface (API)-first, and machine-ready architecture that blends enterprise AI with third-party applications via Software Development Kits (SDKs). GK also signaled the upcoming launch of GK DevHub, a developer self-enablement platform expected in Q3 2026. AI conversations were notably grounded, focused on balancing AI-driven speed, such as automated testing and code generation, against strict governance and security standards to avoid technical debt.

On the Ground coverage is based solely on the firsthand notes and observations of Kitestring staff who attended these conferences. This content has not been reviewed or approved by conference organizers or presenting companies, and should not be taken as a comprehensive or official account of the events covered.

Podcast Pick: Behind the Counter with Irfan Butt

In this month’s episode, we sat down with Irfan Butt, Director of Store Technology and Asset Protection at Catalyst Brands, to talk about what retail technology transformation actually looks like from inside JCPenney. Irfan covers the mobile-first strategies driving the company's modernization, why listening to your store team is non-negotiable when making big operational changes, and his predictions about where retail is headed next.

When AI Becomes the Front Door to Commerce

At Google I/O, the company unveiled a Universal Cart that works across retailers including Target, Walmart, Wayfair, and Sephora, and across Google surfaces including Search and Gemini, with YouTube and Gmail integrations planned. Powered by Gemini, the cart tracks prices, flags out-of-stock items, surfaces potential discounts, connects loyalty programs and payment methods through Google Pay, and can even catch compatibility issues with planned purchases. Google also introduced Gemini Spark, a personal AI agent that will eventually be able to make purchases on a shopper's behalf when pre-set criteria like brand, item, and price limit are met, using a new Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to create a digital approval trail for each transaction. Google says it does not currently take a cut of sales, describes its role as "matchmaker," and the broader Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) it introduced in January has since attracted Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Stripe to its UCP Tech Council.

Our Take: The question "would you let a robot spend your money?" sounds futuristic. But the real shift is not AI shopping. It's that retailers are losing control of the moment of discovery. For years, brands fought to earn traffic, app downloads, and foot traffic. Now an AI agent may decide what products get seen, which retailer gets chosen, and where the transaction happens, before a customer ever visits a storefront. That changes everything: how you think about customer ownership, loyalty, payments, and digital strategy. If AI becomes the primary interface to commerce, you may no longer be competing for eyeballs. You may be competing to become the preferred supplier to the algorithm.

Supply Chain Spotlight

Matt Waller co-founded the Gartner-ranked number-one Supply Chain Management program in North America and is one of the most widely cited supply chain scholars working today. We partnered with him on a three-part white paper series for ArcBest that explores how distribution and logistics operators can build a competitive advantage through smart workforce networks, and how to make the business case for it internally. The series covers human-in-the-loop automation and remote labor pooling as a source of competitive advantage, how to quantify the portfolio effect of network-wide labor pooling across distribution and cross-docking operations, and how to translate those concepts into a business case using commercial models, pilot design, payback period, and net present value.

This white paper was produced by Kitestring and authored by Matt Waller as part of a paid engagement with ArcBest. ArcBest reviewed this paper for factual accuracy related to its products and provided supporting information. The views expressed are those of the author.

From the Stadium to the Ecosystem | Del estadio al ecosistema

🇺🇸 An opinion piece in El Financiero argues the sports industry is going through the same digital transformation that retail, banking, and entertainment have already lived through, moving from a transactional model centered on tickets and merchandise to a unified, relational digital ecosystem. The biggest structural barrier, the author argues, is fragmentation: fans interact across disconnected ticketing, content, commerce, and membership channels that rarely talk to each other. The article points to cashless stadiums and biometric payments as key enablers, and sees an opportunity for U.S. and Latin American markets to skip over legacy infrastructure entirely and build integrated systems from the ground up.

Our Perspective: U.S. sports culture is as rich and passionate as any in the world, and this year it gets to add one more landmark: the FIFA World Cup, hosted across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. With international visitors arriving in waves, the modernization of the fan experience becomes both urgent and very public-facing. But the lesson here extends well beyond stadiums. Creating seamlessness that crosses the physical boundaries of individual businesses, connecting restaurants, retailers, venues, and other organizations into what the article calls a "sportainment" channel, is a systems challenge as much as a technology one. That kind of integration only works with a strong, flexible backend and a level of data governance built on security, privacy, and integrity.

🇲🇽 Un artículo de opinión en El Financiero sostiene que la industria deportiva está atravesando la misma transformación digital que el retail, la banca y el entretenimiento ya vivieron, pasando de un modelo transaccional centrado en boletos y mercancía hacia un ecosistema digital unificado y relacional. La principal barrera estructural, argumenta el autor, es la fragmentación: los aficionados interactúan a través de canales desconectados de boletería, contenido, comercio y membresías que rara vez se comunican entre sí. El artículo señala los estadios sin efectivo y los pagos biométricos como habilitadores clave, e identifica una oportunidad para los mercados estadounidenses y latinoamericanos de saltarse la infraestructura obsoleta y construir sistemas integrados desde el inicio.

Nuestra perspectiva: La cultura deportiva de los EEUU es tan rica y apasionada como cualquier otra en el mundo, y este año agrega un hito más: la Copa Mundial FIFA, con sede en los Estados Unidos, México y Canadá. Con la llegada de visitantes internacionales, la modernización de la experiencia del fanático se vuelve urgente y muy visible. Pero la lección va más allá de los estadios. Crear una experiencia fluida que cruce los límites físicos de los negocios individuales, conectando restaurantes, comercios, recintos y otras organizaciones en un canal de "sportainment", es tanto un reto de sistemas como de tecnología. Ese nivel de integración solo es posible con un backend sólido y flexible, y una gobernanza de datos fundamentada en seguridad, privacidad e integridad.

Thanks for Reading!

The common thread this month is straightforward. The retailers moving fastest are the ones that built the right foundation before the pressure arrived. Clean data, integrated systems, customer trust, and operational visibility are no longer nice-to-haves. They are what make it possible to move quickly when AI, tariffs, edge infrastructure, supply chain disruption, and customer expectations all start changing at once.

Enjoyed this issue? Forward it to a colleague and share the insights!