Over 1,300 attendees converged at the Lead Summit at the Brooklyn Expo Center to learn from and connect with the brands, retailers, digital natives and tech start-ups that are defining tomorrow’s industry.
The two-day festival featured more than 100 stand-out speakers from across the fashion-retail-commerce value chain, delivering inspiring and informative keynotes, panels and problem talks across three stages, according to a company statement.
The summit began with a keynote by Noah Gellman, co-founder and CEO of the Lead, followed by “the Digital Native Brand of 2022” with Neil Parikh, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Casper moderated by Lauren Thomas of CNBC as well as the panel “Creating a Culture for the 21st Century Workforce” featuring David Heath, co-founder and CEO of Bombas; Alexa Geovanos, brand president, North and South America, of Chloe; Devon Pike, Gap’s former chief merchandising officer; and Rebecca Minkoff, moderated by Bryan Zaslow, founder, president and CEO of JBCHoldings.
Three sessions took place throughout the first day, totaling in nine possible events to attend.
The summit’s agenda consisted of topics ranging from financing to corporate culture and supply chain to personalization. Speakers discussed what will be next for the fashion and retail industry to a captivated audience of brands and retailers, digital natives, start-ups, investors, entrepreneurs, analysts, real estate operators, enterprise tech leaders, industry influencers, and media.
The open, airy and inviting atmosphere fostered one-to-one connections while offering attendees the opportunity to experience new technologies and innovative solutions across fashion, retail, and commerce in one place.
The center of The Innovation Village featured pop-ups from today’s leading digital native vertical brands — Ayr, Hatch, Greats, The Knot Standard, Rebag, Snowe, and UNTUCKit.
These “brands of tomorrow” are category leaders experimenting and innovating at every stage of the value chain. The thriving digital natives, showcased their products, their brand identities, and their pioneering business models.
Chapter partners included IBM, Intel, Project Verte and SAP Software solutions. Leading partners included Activant Capital, Fashionphile, Foley Hoad, HSBC Bank, JBCHoldings, Piper Jeffrey, Rosenthal & Rosenthal, Snapchat and Zenni.
Innovation partners included Affirm, Afterpay, AspireIQ, Attentive, Bluecore, Bolt, BrandBox, Charge It Spot, Chat Kit, Custora, Dôr, Flow, Forter, Happy Returns, Hero, Impact Analytics Kibo, Material ConneXion, Meta Pack, Narvar, NewStore, Perksy, Pixlee, Sezzle, Shopin, Shopping Gives, Spring Board Retail, Status Labs, and Unbxd.
Emerging partners included Endear, Lily AI, Metricstory, Newmine, Ohio, Pebble Post, Perch, Perfitly. and Radius8. Industry partners included MG2, Wiland and Zivelo.
Community partners included FactoryPR, the Fashion Scholarship Fund, Retail Industry Leaders Association, Plug and Play, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the New York Fashion Tech Lab, Worldz, the Robin Report, Fashinnovation and Grit Daily.
