Target Furniture went to NRF APAC. What they learned could change everything.
- Kristian Reinbach
- Jun 17
- 7 min read
Guest Article | Kristian Reinbach
Kristian Reinbach, General Manager at Target Furniture New Zealand, recently joined RX and our delegation to Singapore to explore NRF The Big Show APAC 2025. Kristian is a bold retail leader and a new valued voice within the RX community. With a sharp eye for customer experience and a hands-on approach to transformation, Kristian has been instrumental in Target’s evolution, from a traditional ‘stack-and-sell’ model to a fully integrated, digitally enabled, sensory-rich shopping experience.
We love his energy, his pragmatism, and his willingness to share what’s working (and what’s not) in modern retail. So as a champion of customer-centric innovation, we have asked Kristian to share his thoughts on what he saw and how tech should enhance, not complicate, the buying experience.
I’m a pretty practical guy. I like tools that work, insights that lead to action, and conversations that move things forward. That’s why heading to NRF APAC in Singapore this year wasn’t just about soaking up inspiration, it was about figuring out where retail is going, and how we at Target Furniture can stay not just relevant, but ahead of the curve.
We're a 100% Kiwi-owned furniture retailer with over 30 years in the industry (and no, we’ve got nothing to do with Target Australia or the US – that question comes up all the time). Our business has been on many journeys and one of these commenced about six years ago when I attended NRF in New York for the first time. Back then, the big topic was omni-channel retailing, what we now call unified commerce. That trip kicked off a major rethink for us. We visited three continents, pulled apart our entire approach, and started the long road of transformation from a traditional “stack ‘em high and watch ‘em fly” model to something much more customer-first.
From building our own tech stack from scratch to reimagining our physical showrooms that includes scent, sound, lighting, digital screens, coffee stations. Fast-forward to today, and while we’ve done the hard work; new store experiences, in-house digital platform, and a mindset shift, but the job is never done. Retail keeps evolving, and we’ve got to evolve with it.
That’s why I joined the RX Group delegation to NRF APAC in Singapore this year. I went looking for what’s next. And spoiler: it’s not a single trend. It’s a whole new operating system for retail with AI is at the centre of it.
What I found valuable were the real-world applications that a business our size could actually implement. Here are the five takeaways that stuck with me the most.
1. Autonomous commerce is coming fast
One of the most confronting moments for me at NRF APAC was hearing about Amazon’s latest development its "Buy for Me" AI agent. At first, it sounds convenient: a voice assistant that can purchase products for you. But the real disruption goes deeper.
Here’s how it works: the AI listens to a customer’s request, something as simple as “Buy me a stylish dining table,” and without the customer ever clicking through to a store, it scans the internet, selects a product (even from a brand not listed on Amazon), completes the purchase, and arranges delivery. All while keeping the shopper fully inside the Amazon ecosystem. It’s frictionless. It’s fast. And it completely rewires the way customers interact with retail.
As someone who’s worked hard to build an engaging store experience and an easy-to-navigate ecomm platform, this was a bit of a gut-punch. Because what happens to all the effort we put into brand, content, customer journey, and visual merchandising if the AI skips all that and just chooses for the customer? That’s where this gets real.
This kind of tech shifts decision-making from the customer to the algorithm. You’re no longer convincing a human shopper, you’re trying to rank with their AI. And that brings up some pretty tough questions for all of us in retail:
Are our products visible to algorithms?
Is our content optimised for AI to understand?
Are we building our websites for people, or for both people and machines?
We need to ensure our product data is AI-ready. This means clean, structured metadata, compelling product descriptions, well-tagged imagery, strong customer reviews, and consistent formatting. We need to stop thinking of this as back-end housekeeping and start seeing it as front-line marketing. Because if your product doesn’t show up in that AI-driven search? You don’t exist.
2. Data enrichment isn’t a nice-to-have anymore
At NRF, one thing became crystal clear. In the world of AI-driven commerce, your product data is your visibility. It’s not enough to have great products or beautiful photography, if the algorithm doesn’t understand what you’re selling, it won’t recommend it. And if it doesn’t recommend it, your customer never sees it.
That’s where data enrichment comes in. Think of it as translating your product range into a language that machines can read, interpret, and prioritise. And increasingly, that language is what determines whether your product gets surfaced in an AI-curated recommendation, search result, or automated shopping assistant.
Platforms like Trustana stood out to me because of how far they’ve come in this space. Their AI can take a single product image and automatically generate rich, structured content: product titles, feature descriptions, search tags, metadata, category logic - even tone and format adjustments that fit different channels. It’s not just product copywriting; it’s algorithmic fluency.
For a mid-sized retailer like us, data enrichment offers three big wins:
Discoverability: The better your data, the more likely AI will surface your products to the right customers at the right time.
Efficiency: Automating the creation of enriched data saves hundreds of hours of manual effort and helps maintain consistency across all platforms.
Performance: Enriched product data improves everything from search ranking to conversions, making each product listing work harder for you.
It also shifts the way we think about product onboarding. It’s not just about entering SKUs and uploading images anymore. It’s about preparing every product to succeed in a world where AI is the merchandiser, the salesperson, and the customer journey all rolled into one.
3. AI Is taking the guesswork out of retail planning and giving us back control
One of the most immediately useful takeaways for me at NRF APAC was seeing how far AI has come in retail planning. Platforms like RELEX are reshaping the way we forecast demand and plan our operations. What impressed me most was how AI can now combine dozens of dynamic data points; seasonality, past sales trends, local events, promotional calendars, regional differences, even weather forecasts- and use that to build real-time, predictive models for demand.
That’s a massive shift from how planning has traditionally worked. Retail planning has always involved a certain amount of gut feel. You go off what happened last year, layer in your best guess about upcoming trends, and combine that with a whole bucket of experience and skill.
Now, with AI in the mix, we can start seeing what’s coming with much more accuracy.
Imagine knowing three weeks ahead of a long weekend that your outdoor category is about to surge. Not because it did last year, but because the data suggests there’s a run of good weather, a local event happening nearby, and a recent spike in online searches. That level of foresight lets you position inventory proactively, not reactively.
This means making smarter buying decisions, reducing waste, protecting margin, and optimising stock flow, all while improving the customer experience by making sure the right products are available when and where they’re needed. And just as importantly, it frees up headspace.
AI isn’t here to replace planners. It’s here to supercharge them, with clearer signals, faster decisions, and better outcomes. And for a business like ours, that’s exactly what we need.
4. Synthetic audiences let you test before you invest
Of all the concepts at NRF APAC that had me rethinking how we operate, synthetic audiences were right up there. In simple terms, synthetic audiences are AI-generated customer groups that you can use to test marketing campaigns, creative ideas, pricing strategies, or even new product launches, before you roll them out in the real world.
In retail you don’t always have the luxury of time or budget to get it wrong. Whether you're tweaking a product headline, testing a new offer, or deciding whether to discount or bundle, every decision counts. Synthetic audiences give you a fast, low-risk way to experiment and get directionally strong feedback without committing big spend or real-world exposure too early.
At NRF, we heard that ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, runs over 2,000 A/B tests a day - with more than 30,000 running simultaneously. It showed me that we could be doing so much more in this space. What if we could run dozens of micro-experiments in the background? What if we could test our messaging for a product refresh, trial a promo concept, or experiment with creative layouts before we push them out?
And because synthetic audiences are AI-based, they can simulate responses based on historical and behavioural data, so it’s grounded in logic, not just theory.
5. The simplest of innovations – The Customer Hub
Not everything that impressed me at NRF was AI-powered or algorithmically brilliant. In fact, one of the most refreshing ideas was something incredibly simple, thoughtful, and customer-focused: the customer hub.
The example that stuck with me came from Klaviyo, who showcased a beautifully clean, intuitive interface where customers could manage everything in one place from loyalty points, personalised offers, order tracking, saved preferences, communication preferences, and even support chat.
Nothing revolutionary. But also absolutely game-changing.
As retailers, we spend so much time thinking about how to attract customers that we often forget how important it is to support them once they’re already in. A smart customer hub doesn’t just look good, it removes friction, builds trust, and gives the customer confidence in their decision to shop with you.
Retail moves fast and NRF helps you move smarter
If there’s one thing I’d say to anyone considering NRF APAC for next year it’s simple: go.
Not just to see what’s new, but to challenge how you think. To get uncomfortable (in the best possible way). To step outside your day-to-day and take a proper look at where the industry’s heading and where your business fits in.
For me, NRF was a circuit breaker. It gave me the space to ask the big questions:
What’s changing in retail, not just globally, but for our customers here at home?
What’s coming next, and what can we start doing now to be ready?
And how do we keep evolving, without losing the heart of what makes us who we are?
You don’t have to be a multinational or a tech giant to take something meaningful away from NRF. You just have to be open to learning, to thinking differently, and to being a few steps ahead of the curve.
Kristian Reinbach
General Manager,
Target Furniture NZ
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