Street Talk with Arthur Z

Ep. #025: 'Circularity is Where You Begin' — Adam Baruchowitz, Return to Vendor

Adam Baruchowitz, co-founder and chief recycling officer at Return to Vendor, has spent 20 years inside fashion's waste stream. His company is building a circular materials platformanchored on monomaterial nylon design — and his argument for why circularity keeps failing is the clearest you'll hear. On this episode of Street Talk, Arthur Zaczkiewicz and Baruchowitz get into the economics of textile recycling,the structural reasons corporate circularity departments have no budget, and what brands actually need to change in their sourcing and design process to make closed-loop fashion viable. From fishing nets to recycled feedstock, from New York City Green Markets to the EU eco-design framework — this is the backstory behind one of the more serious circular economy companies in the fashion space right now. 00:00 — Introduction: Who is Adam Baruchowitz and why does his background matter? 03:08 — Why circularity keeps failing — and what the industry keeps getting wrong 05:18 — How the economics of textile recycling explain everything 06:11 — Fast fashion's overproduction problem: is the model structurally broken? 09:33 — How e-commerce free returns made fashion waste worse 12:33 — Why corporate marketing budgets never reach circularity departments 14:21 — How monomaterial design works — and what simple changes brands can make now 16:07 — Where circular economics work first: hospitals, uniforms, and closed-loop systems 20:32 — What 20 years of clothing collection taught Return to Vendor 23:31 — Recycling vs. circularity: why the distinction changes everything

Ep. #024: ‘The Funnel isn't Dead. It's Gone!’ — Angelica Reyes, Skeepers

Newsletter signup CTA: Get the Street Talk newsletter — retail intelligence for C-suite decision-makers. Subscribe free:https://street-talk-studio.kit.com/ Angelica Reyes, Global CMO and US General Manager at Skeepers, joins Arthur Zaczkiewicz for a direct conversationabout why user-generated content has moved from marketing tactic to retail infrastructure. The traditional purchase funnel has collapsed. Discovery, trust, and transaction now happen in a single scroll — and the brands winning are those that have figured out how to generate,manage, and activate authentic content at scale. Reyes walks through the data:70% of Gen Z uses social as their primary search engine, UGC is two to three times more trusted than brand content, and TikTok Shop is growing 80% year-over-year. She also makes the case that most organizations are sitting on untapped voice-of-customer data — and that the silo problem is the real obstacle to using it. •      00:00 — Introduction •      00:30 — What is Skeepers, and how does UGC work at scale? •      01:58 — Why cutting through the noise is harder than mostbrands admit •      03:36 — How consumer trust shifted from brands to peers —and why UGC is now 2-3x more credible •      05:11 — What’s really driving the rise of micro and nanoinfluencers •      08:00 — How TikTok Shop collapsed the purchase funnel inreal time •      09:04 — Why most retailers are misusing the UGC data theyalready have •      13:53 — Where the shopping journey begins today — and why the answer is “anywhere” •      14:35 — What AI personalization means for the nextgeneration of retail

Ep. #023 'The Frontline Intelligence Layer' — David and Jodi Harouche, Multimedia Plus

David and Jodi Harouche, co-founders of Multimedia Plus, have spent 29 years building technology for one of retail's most underinvested assets: the sales associate. On this episode of Street Talk, they explain how their platform Insight turns in-between-customer time into competitive advantage — and why storytelling, not product specs, is whatseparates a great associate from a forgettable one. They also preview MMP AI Studio, a tool that generates branded product video in under 20 minutes from a single URL. Plus: the story of JZIPs, the nonprofit they launched after their son Jordan's cancer diagnosis — 20,000 units and 52 hospitals in, and still going. •      00:00 — Introduction •      02:00 — How Multimedia Plus went from video productionto the Insight platform •      05:00 — Why in-between-customer time is retail's mostunderused training window •      08:00 — What AI can't replicate: the case for passionand storytelling over product specs •      12:00 — How content strategy changes from dollar storesto luxury brands •      15:00 — Why 29 years across every retail vertical is adifferent kind of advantage •      18:00 — MMP AI Studio: how a product URL becomesbranded video in under 20 minutes •      20:00 — What fashion, apparel, and retail technologymeans to each of them •      22:00 — JZIPs: from Jordan's diagnosis at 15 to 20,000units in 52 hospitals

Ep. #022: 'Paid Media is Propaganda' — Matt Maher, M7 Innovations

Matt Maher, founder of M7 Innovations, joins Street Talk to cut through the noise around agentic commerce — separating what retail brands need to act on today from what remains a directional future. With 900 million weekly users on ChatGPT and 2.5 billion daily AI-first search queries, the search landscape has already shifted. But end-to-end agent transactions? Still early. Maher maps the consumer spectrum from toothpaste to luxury handbags — explaining where agents will take over and where humanidentity keeps control of the final decision. Practical, specific, and unusually clear-eyed for a topic drowning in hype. Worth the 25 minutes if you're navigating AI strategy at the C-suite level. 00:00 — Introduction 00:47 — What does M7 Innovations actually do — and who are the Meryl Streeps? 02:08 — How agentic commerce went from zero to hundreds ofmillions of searches in 18 months 03:38 — Why AI-first search is already critical mass — and whyend-to-end agent transactions aren't 04:37 — How to read the AI timeline: aspiration (2024), action(2025), assessment (2026) 06:21 — Why paid media is invisible to AI agents — and whatbrand visibility looks like now 08:45 — How the invisible consumer journey changes attribution and brand strategy 11:09 — How agents parse product pages — and what PDP signals surface brands higher 13:04 — The nine competing commerce protocols: how to spread your bets without losing the game 14:48 — Who carries the liability when an agent buys the wrongthing? 16:46 — The consumer spectrum: where humans hand off to agents — and where they don't 19:00 — How CIOs can make the AI investment case to a CFO who wasn't at NRF 21:33 — Why fashion and luxury have a structural moat againstfull agentic commerce

Ep. #021: 'Fashion Doesn't Speak Tech' — Marcelo Guimarães, Fashinnovation

Marcelo Guimarães, co-founder and CEO of Fashinnovation,built one of fashion's most active global innovation communities from a single event in New York in 2018. It now operates across more than 100 countries. On Street Talk, he and Arthur get into the real frictionbetween fashion's creative culture and the tech world's operational logic, why most brands aren't ready for AI adoption, and the 'turtle and the sun' — a leadership philosophy built on direction over velocity, consistency over noise. If you're building something in this industry, this one'sworth the time. 00:00 — Introduction 00:23 — What Is Fashinnovation — and What Gap Did MarceloSee in 2018? 02:15 — Why Fashion and Tech Are Still Speaking DifferentLanguages 03:44 — How Do You Scale Community Without Losing theRoom's Energy? 06:00 — What Actually Happens at Founders' Table: DealsWithout Pitch Decks 07:05 — The Turtle and the Sun: A Leadership Philosophyfor Founders 08:42 — Why Mentorship Is Risk Reduction, Not Just GoodAdvice 13:30 — Sustainability: As Fast as You Can, Not as Perfectas You'd Like 15:33 — Is Fashion Ready for AI? Marcelo's Honest Answer 20:08 — What 'Connecting the Dots' Means at theIntersection of Fashion and Tech