PHE Inc. (Adam & Eve)

Ginger Vickrey

Customer Commerce Champion

Every retailer is chasing the same thing right now: growth that survives a market that won’t sit still. Tariffs are reshuffling supply chains. Customer acquisition costs keep climbing. And AI has moved out of the pilot phase and into the daily operation of the business. In that environment, my job comes down to one discipline — getting the right product from concept to cart, and making sure it actually sells once it gets there.

I lead product for a category that lives or dies on trust. Nobody adds a sexual wellness product to their cart because of a clever ad. They buy because the product is right, the claims are honest, and the experience feels safe. That standard is a gift. It forces a level of rigor that every retail category is about to need, whether they sell wellness, apparel, or groceries.

The click is not the conversion

Here is the trap I watch teams fall into: they celebrate traffic. Clicks, sessions, add-to-carts — all up and to the right. Then they quietly ignore the abandoned cart sitting right next to it. My view is simple. The click tells you the marketing worked. The conversion tells you the product worked. Those are two different scoreboards, and most retailers only manage the first one.

When customers click but don’t buy, they are telling you something specific. The price didn’t match the perceived value. The product detail didn’t answer the real question. Or the trust wasn’t there yet. The retailers pulling ahead in 2026 treat every abandoned cart as a product brief, not a marketing miss.

Build from the customer in, not the product catalog out

The best product decisions I’ve made didn’t start in a planning meeting. They started with consumer feedback — reviews, returns, search terms, and the questions customers ask before they buy. That input is the cheapest R&D you will ever get, and most companies leave it on the table.

A practical version of this looks like:

• Read what customers abandon, not just what they purchase. The gap is your roadmap.
• Treat product reviews as unfiltered market research — they name the feature you missed before a focus group ever will.
• Kill your darlings early. Some products never make it to cart because they never should have. Say no faster.

Good product management is as much about what you don’t launch as what you do. Discipline at the top of the funnel protects margin at the bottom of it.

AI is now a shelf you have to stock

The shift I’m watching most closely is discovery. A meaningful share of high-intent buying now starts inside an AI assistant, not a search bar. When an AI agent compares products on a shopper’s behalf, the things we’ve leaned on for years — packaging, brand emotion, a beautiful hero image — don’t get a vote. What gets the vote is accurate, structured, machine-readable product data: price, availability, ingredients, claims, and specs.

“ The click tells you the marketing worked. The conversion tells you the product worked. Those are two different scoreboards, and most retailers only manage the first one. ”

That reframes product management as a data discipline. If your product information isn’t clean enough for a machine to trust, you are already losing the fastest-growing part of the funnel. Personalization has moved past “you might also like.” In 2026 it touches pricing, layout, timing, and post-purchase — tuned to the individual, not the segment.

Online and in-store are one decision, not two

I manage products that sell across websites, with distributors, and franchised retail. The mistake is treating those as separate businesses. They’re one customer making one decision through different doors. What performs online should inform what we stock in-store, and what customers touch in-store should sharpen how we merchandise online. The retailers who map that full journey — phone, chat window, social feed, physical shelf — are quietly outperforming their category averages.

What I’d tell any retail leader in 2026

If I had to compress a decade of merchandising and product work into a short list, it’s this:

• Manage the second scoreboard. Conversion, not clicks, is the number that pays the bills.
• Make your product data machine-ready. AI-led discovery rewards accuracy over aesthetics.
• Let the customer write the roadmap. Reviews, returns, and abandoned carts are free strategy.
• Protect trust like margin. In any category, it’s the thing that converts and the thing you can’t buy back.

The fundamentals haven’t changed — attract the customer, earn the sale, keep the trust. What’s changed is the speed and the scrutiny. The retailers who win in 2026 won’t be the ones with the most clicks. They’ll be the ones who own the assortment, champion the customer, and drive growth by getting the product right, making it easy to trust, and moving it from concept to cart without friction.