For luxury brands today, opening a new flagship store is more than about simply selling products. It’s an experience.

Just look at John Hardy, which recently unveiled a new 1,800-square-foot SoHo flagship as part of its broader effort to modernize the 50-year-old Bali-founded jewelry brand.

Located at 147 Spring Street, the new space replaces the brand’s former Prince Street flagship.

Designed alongside former Coach creative director Reed Krakoff and Studio Vehlen, the store features blond oak flooring, slatted oak walls, a terracotta-toned salon, and a 25-foot handwoven bamboo sculpture inspired by John Hardy’s signature chain motif.

For Matt Tepper, president of John Hardy, the space represents a physical manifestation of the broader transformation the company has been undergoing over the last several years.

Keep reading here.—JS

As consumer prices rise, national brands are in for a battle loyale as shoppers’ brand allegiances waver.

According to a survey of 1,010 US adults conducted by operations software company DOSS this month, 60% of consumers said they stopped buying a brand they were loyal to this year due to price increases, and 70% said they were less brand loyal now than they were last year.

A 16% price hike is the “breaking point” that pushes consumers to trade down to a cheaper alternative or cut back on the volume they buy (though baby boomers on average make the shift at a 12% increase). A 33% bump is the average threshold to not buy the product altogether, the survey found.

Keep reading here.—EC

Google is bringing its agentic commerce tool kit, also called the Universal Commerce Protocol, to more verticals.

At its I/O conference on Tuesday, Google said it is expanding UCP both overseas and across Google surfaces.The tech giant is bringing agentic shopping to YouTube with UCP-powered shopping experiences. Plus, it will soon expand UCP shopping to new markets overseas, including Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

UCP is an open source standard Google announced earlier this year that gives AI agents and systems a common language so they can work together across the shopping journey, from product research to checkout to tracking shipments.

Keep reading here.—VC

As peak season approaches, brands are navigating a customer journey that somehow includes social scrolling, connected TV, in-store browsing, six open tabs, and a cart abandoned at 1:14 a.m. In this session, StackAdapt’s Dana Karlin will break down what it takes to compete in today’s fragmented commerce landscape—from smarter activation and measurement to building strategies that actually connect across channels.