Isaac Hetzroni—or as he’s known to his more than 500,000 social media followers, The Sourcing Guy—may only be in his 20s, but he’s got decades of supply chain experience.

As a kid in Canada, his family owned a dancewear apparel company and he essentially grew up in a factory, learning the intricacies of fabrics and apparel production, he told Retail Brew. Then, when his father moved into electronics manufacturing in China, he, too, traveled to the factory there, developing an “unbelievable fascination” with manufacturing. In college, he started his own gig making merch sourced abroad and brought in more than $1 million in revenue.

Aiming to diversify this supply chain amid the onset of Covid-19, he toured, and began posting content about overseas factories from Turkey to Thailand. But he’s gained the most traction in the last year, as tariffs have “made sourcing and supply chain sexy,” Hetzroni said.

As tariffs have sent brands scrambling to save their margins, global supply chain expertise has not only become a coveted skill in the retail industry, but also, more surprisingly, a viral topic on social media, as Chinese manufacturers piqued consumers’ interest this spring by sharing the behind-the-scenes of where consumer products are made—even if many of those claims were misleading.

With The Sourcing Guy and his own sourcing agency, Imprint Genius, Hetzroni said he’s capitalizing on both, en route to helping build a “unified global economy through manufacturing.”

Keep reading here.—EC

There’s no crystal ball when it comes to predicting a company’s quarterly financial results, but when it comes to Target, foot traffic data from Placer.ai over the last five quarters might be mistaken for clairvoyant.

Target, which has struggled to find its mojo since thriving during the height of the pandemic, and which has faced backlash and a boycott since backtracking on its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in January, reports Q2 financial results on Wednesday.

In the past five quarters (beginning Q1 of 2024), what Placer.ai has reported as Target’s year over year foot traffic changes have differed from Target’s year over year total revenue changes by an average of just 1.2 percentage points. In the first quarter of this year, for example, the analytics firm reported Target’s YoY foot traffic decline to be 4.1%, and Target subsequently reported a YoY total revenues decline of 2.8%, a difference of 1.2 percentage points. (Going back further, to the 13 quarters beginning Q1 of 2022, the difference between the firm’s YoY traffic estimates and Target’s YoY revenues differed by an average of 2.3 percentage points.)

For the second quarter of 2025, Placer.ai reports that foot traffic at Target is down 3.1% YoY. That means that if the correlation between its foot traffic reporting and Target’s total revenues reporting in the previous five quarters is consistent, Target will report a total revenue decline compared to the second quarter of 2024 of between 1.8% and 4.4%.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Most retailers are still adding AI to their carts.

A survey from customer data platform Amperity found that 58% of retailers expect to increase AI investments in the next 12 months. And 26% of the 1,000 retail professionals polled also believe that AI will increase their organization’s headcount rather than slashing it (20%).

But the numbers also show that some retailers may be facing a familiar struggle. Like other adoption reports find, dabbling with AI experimentation is easy (a third of respondents said their companies are either still in this stage or not using AI at all), and regular use around the office is also doable (two-thirds said their orgs used it at least weekly). But full-scale implementations? That can sometimes be more elusive (only 16% said their businesses had fully adopted AI across multiple business units).

Keep reading here on Tech Brew.—PK

Say goodbye to “add to cart” monotony and hello to shopping that feels more like a friendly chat. Join Retail Brew and Bloomreach on Aug. 27 as we explore how conversational AI can bring back the human touch to online shopping, right from your couch. Your virtual cart has never felt so personal. Register now.