The 10 people transforming shopping - from influencer Wisdom Kaye, to fashion designer Tracy Reese

Amber Venz Box, president and cofounder of LTK, has worked in every corner of the fashion world, including as a personal shopper, fashion blogger, and public-relations specialist.

LTK is an app with a large network of influencers and brands to help people discover fashion, fitness, home decor, and beauty products. When LTK creators post about those brands across apps like TikTok and Instagram, they get a commission from the sales they generate.

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Andrew Dudum started the website and app Hims — which expanded to women's wellness and is now known as Hims & Hers — to offer free consultations with licensed healthcare providers who prescribe custom treatment plans and FDA-approved medications, delivered to the user's door. Dudum hopes Hims & Hers will eventually reach almost every household in the US and tens of millions of people around the world in the coming years.

"When you look at the clinical data across the categories we operate in — dermatology, sleep, mental wellness, sexual health — these things really do plague almost everybody in the country," Dudum said.

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Under the leadership of Scott Eckert, the company's senior vice president of next generation retail, Store No. 8 is quietly changing the way people shop at the retail giant. At any given time, Store No. 8 will house five to eight "portfolio" companies, or startups that help Walmart get a jump on new shopping trends.

"We focus on things that are in early stages and need to be tested, iterated, and built into a technology that makes sense for customers," Eckert said. "Then, by the time we have proven it and gotten it ready for scale, we roll it into Walmart."

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Tradeblock has a solution to help people get their hands on hard-to-get sneakers. Unlike resale sites like Goat and StockX, the company lets sneaker collectors trade pairs they have for what they want. So even if collectors don't get the latest release, they might have another sneaker that can be traded for it.

"The biggest pain point here is it's impossible to hit for retail if it's a popular shoe," Ghogomu, CEO and Cofounder of Tradeblock, said. "We felt like it was important to create a different avenue for people to participate."

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Chelsea Hirschhorn, the CEO of the baby-care products manufacturer Frida, is on a mission to make childcare more pleasant and to destigmatize sensitive topics, like postpartum depression.

"I can tie each of our new products to a very specific pain point that I've personally experienced navigating parenthood over the past three years," Hirschhorn told Mama & Tata. "For example, we launched the MomWasher a few months after I gave birth, and realized how awful that hospital bottle was!"

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Wisdom Kaye joined TikTok in January 2020 and soon became so influential, he's reshaped the way Gen Z sees fashion. He is both a connoisseur of high fashion and a down-to-earth, highly engaged influencer. This versatility has made him a coveted partner for both luxury brands like Tiffany and Balmain, and traditional mall retailers like American Eagle Outfitters.

"What sets my page apart, and what has contributed to my growth, is that I show the limitlessness of fashion," Kaye told Vogue in 2020. "I make videos that disprove myths, like you can't wear navy blue and black, or boots with shorts."

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Dilip Kumar, Amazon's vice president of physical retail and technology, is the man in charge of Amazon's futuristic "Just Walk Out" tech. It allows shoppers to pick out what they want and leave the store without standing in line at a checkout counter. Instead, their accounts are automatically debited for the purchase.

"These technologies can improve the shopping experience by saving time and removing friction from shopping trips," he said.

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Tracy Reese has spent decades working in the fashion industry, and celebrities like Taylor Swift and the former first lady Michelle Obama have worn her dresses. Today, the designer is on a mission to make fashion more sustainable.

While being environmentally conscientious is a big part of sustainability, it's not everything, Reese said. "It's also about sustainable communities and respect for labor and handwork for artisans along the supply chain," she said.

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Jaclyn Pangilinan Safley and her colleagues "dreamed up" Nike's latest store concept, Nike Style, over a video call last year, according to a LinkedIn post she wrote.

Nike Style is a critical part of Nike's current business plan, called the Consumer Direct Acceleration, which focuses on direct, digital sales. Nike Style stores aren't broken down by gender. They also include digital experiences such as QR codes linked to augmented-reality features and content studios for creatives.

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Amish Tolia, cofounder and co-CEO of Leap, Tolia is always looking for ways that brands can use data to ensure that their digital and physical retail channels are working together in complementary ways.

Many brands are turning to Leap, a retail-as-a-service startup that secures leases, designs stores, and manages operations for brands in exchange for a monthly fee and percentage of sales.

"For the past 10-plus years, there's been a lot of conversation around the death of retail," Tolia said. "We've seen that as more of the reinvention of retail, or the rebirth of retail."

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