On this bonus episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Leo Martinez. Leo is the Program Director of eTail Palm Springs, London, and Toronto, and he curates one of the most influential events in retail. We talk about the biggest Ecommerce trends shaping 2025, how eTail delivers high-value networking and insights, what first-time attendees need to know to maximize their experience, the role of AI and personalization in modern retail, and so much more!
Leo Martinez, Program Director for eTail Palm Springs, London, and Toronto, curates one of eCommerce’s most influential events. He drives high-impact content, recruits top industry leaders, and ensures eTail delivers actionable insights for today’s fast-changing retail landscape.
For 26+ years, eTail has been more than a conference, it’s a community where executives from DTC startups to Fortune 500 brands connect, share strategies, and drive real growth. Under Leo’s leadership, eTail continues to evolve, covering AI-driven personalization, omnichannel innovation, and next-gen customer experiences.
Leo’s expertise in networking, trend-spotting, and facilitating valuable discussions keeps eTail a must-attend event for retail leaders looking to stay ahead.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
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Leo Martinez
As cliche as it sounds, eTail is a community at its core. That's part of the recipe of success for eTail as a brand and Palm Springs as well.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct to consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results. I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business. Let's get on with the show.
Chase Clymer
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm bringing to the show Leo Martinez. He is the program director over at the most awesome conference, eTail. He oversees Palm Springs, London and Toronto. Welcome to the show, Leo.
Leo Martinez
Chase, thank you for having me and looking forward to seeing you at the Hotel Palm Springs next month. It's literally right around the corner.
Chase Clymer
I know. I'm excited. We're recording this on January 8. I don't know how quickly it will come out. Hopefully within a week or so. But there is 8 inches of snow here in Columbus, Ohio. Just tell the folks that have never even been to Palm Springs how awesome the event is out there, especially the weather.
Leo Martinez
Well, yes. With the weather. First and foremost, it is a destination in itself. By nature, a lot of the attendees take advantage of that. It's a networking event, we tell Ecommerce show, but also take time to wind down, enjoy Palm Springs, the downtown area, the amazing JW Marriott Resort, which is the host venue for the event. So yes, definitely take some time, which most folks do while in Palm Springs.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. This year, I will be golfing. Every year I go, I wish I brought my clubs. This year, my partner and I are bringing our golf clubs. I'm very excited to get out there and do that. So quickly, a program director for a conference like eTail , what's your job in eTail? What's your day to day like?
Leo Martinez
Oh, I'm going to order again. Well, at its core, as a program director, I work alongside my colleagues in production. Kristin Choinstein, who's the chief of staff. Liz Robillard, who's a portfolio director for eTail as well, in terms of doing research. With any and every one of our events, specifically eTail Palm Springs, literally months and months of research goes into place, about six months or so, just interviewing retail executives in the industry.
Okay, what are your major initiatives? What trends do you see shaping the industry over the next six months? What keeps you up at night?
We also interview and do research with our technology providers in the industry. What are the pinpoints that the clients are coming to you and that they're facing, right? And obviously, of course, important to the eTail program and its atmosphere and the event experience, we also conduct research calls with our attendees. What worked for the program last year? What didn't? How can we improve? So yes, in essence, as a program director, we do a lot of research to develop the content, the topics, and recruit the speaker faculty. But also most important for us as a program director is to keep a pulse on the industry.
Chase Clymer
Amazing. Now you talked about your recruiting people and helping to build out those sessions and the content that people are going to see. Are you allowed to share maybe some of the featured sessions or keynote speakers that people should be looking forward to?
Leo Martinez
Yes. We have several amazing keynotes coming in next month. For example, we have the Senior Vice President of Ecommerce from Sam's Club, the Global Chief Marketing Officer of GSW, the EVP of Fashion at Walmart, the Head of Digital for H&M, the President of Office Depot, the CMO of Michaels, the SAP of Ecommerce from Lowe's, and several others.
For this edition, the 26th edition of E-Tail Palm Springs, this is the largest speaking faculty we've had in place. Over 240 speakers on the program across the four days. It's definitely a record-breaking year for us in terms of the speakers and the quality speakers on the program.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Yeah. It's always very educational when I attend. But outside of education, it's also a huge networking opportunity. Can you try to explain, just what to expect for someone that hasn't attended a conference like this before?
Leo Martinez
Yes, networking is king. It's all about networking. As you know, Chase, the retail industry is a relationship-driven industry. The beauty of eTail Palm Springs and why it has been successful for over 26 years now is because we do put together a curated networking experience.
For first-timers who've never been to eTail before, we do have our eTail first-timers meetup. That's taking place on Monday, where we pair a small group of first-time attendees with an eTail veteran, just to give you some tips on how to maximize your time on site, get to meet folks before the main conferences kick off, and other new things coming in for the program this year as well. We do have a meet your eTail crew, informal networking reception at the end of day one, just to get to know folks in the industry. Also new for this year.
By request of attendees, we have our career building workshop. Moving forward, you'll see a lot of that professional development aspect and content and experiences within the program. Team exercises, design thinking, how to integrate new technologies, building your personal brand, you name it. It's taking place within eTail.
At the same time, you also have new obviously AI. We have a full day of AI summit with not only AI panel discussions and keynotes, but also technology demos, AI case studies as well. We also have our one-to-one meetings that's taking place next month, new for eTail Palm Springs. So several new components from an experience standpoint that are taking place beyond the content itself.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. Now, if I'm listening to this podcast and I'm on the fence. I don't know if this is for me or for not, or if it's not. What should my title be at my job? Or what types of people find value in attending a conference like this?
Leo Martinez
Really good question. By design, eTail Palm Springs is not a trade show. If you look at the content that we have in place, they are very deep dive types of sessions. It's not a high level industry overview. It's no fluff.
In terms of the audience that we cater to and that comes to eTail Palm Springs are the folks who are actually in the trenches per se, doing the work with their teams at their respective companies.
The heads of marketing, brand management, Ecommerce obviously, product innovation, customer experience, customer loyalty, the folks who are actually doing the work are the ones who come and who benefit the most in terms of attending eTail.
Again, we do have those professional development workshops. We do have those retailer only roundtable discussions. From a content perspective and the makeup of our speaker faculty as well, I do wanna emphasize that by design. We do have those big box retailers in attendance and speaking on the program and those big brands as well.
But we also have those industry disruptors, these emerging young brands that are growing at a fast pace, especially with social media nowadays. It's that balance so that they both can learn from each other. The young brands can learn from the large retailers and vice versa. Anyone in digital marketing, customer experience, loyalty experience, product innovation, that is the core of the retail audience.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Now, if you've got me hooked, and I want to go. I'm going to be a first-time tips or advice that would help me make the best of the event?
Leo Martinez
I always emphasize to first-time attendees to take priority in terms of putting your strategy into place, maybe at least two weeks out. Don't wait until the weekend before attending eTail Palm Springs. What I mean by that is identity. Look at the program, the online agenda. Identify the sessions that you do want to attend across the four days. But also if there's any specific topics that stand out to you from a roundtable discussion, put it on your calendar as well, right?
Identify the networking activities you want to attend as well. Most importantly, the people you want to meet on site. Right? We do have mobile apps, so that's another avenue that you can use for networking purposes, but also leverage us as a staff on site to facilitate those conversations and those introductions, because time after time, as an event organizer, I see where people wait last minute and they get on the same thing.
They're like, okay, like deer in headlights. They definitely set a strategy in place. What are your goals? Who do you want to meet? What do you want to learn? When you go back to the office, you have those golden nuggets per se or those actionable insights to actually implement and show the value to your leadership. Okay, this is what I meant. This is what I learned. This is what we can implement from the eTail experience on Springs.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely, Leo. I would say that making a plan beforehand.
Even for me, I just got into the conference scene maybe five years ago or so. Showing up without a plan is the worst way to do it. I truly agree with that. Another thing I would like to highlight that I often do that now I force myself to do is make sure to schedule time for yourself. Like food, like time for lunch or whatever, or just downtime.
Because there is just so much going on and you can forget to eat and you can forget to do the things that you need to do because there is just so much going on at these types of events. I always like to mention that to people that haven't really gone to as many as I have.
Leo Martinez
Absolutely. To add to that Chase, what I do see, especially at the eTail Palm Springs event, we're at a resort in the middle of the Palm Desert. There's always attendees. I'm not one of them. But there are several attendees who wake up early at 5, 6 a.m. and they go running around the park. There are several polls on site as well. Several folks get together to do yoga in the mornings as well.
Mental health and wellness has been an important part of the conference experience to your point. Definitely take time to enjoy the show but also at the same time, to focus and prioritize yourself as well as important.
Chase Clymer
Amazing. Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think resonate with our listeners here and things you want them to know about eTail?
Leo Martinez
Well, eTail itself as a brand has been around for 26 years. I feel like especially for first timers who haven't been there before, it's important for them to understand and know that as cliche as it sounds, eTail is a community at its core. That's part of the recipe of success for eTail as a brand and Palm Springs as well.
Whether we're talking about in 1999, the dot com bubble burst with Amazon, whatever we're talking about, the 2008 recession, the financial crisis, the global pandemic that we went through recently, right? eTail has been through it, we've seen it in the weather, there were storms, and we're still around, right? Part of that is because we've been there for the community. I can share with you, Chase, countless stories of executives who've grown with eTail throughout the decades, literally.
Nine or 10 years ago, when I was a production assistant on eTail Palm Springs, working with marketing directors, now the Chief Marketing Officer of a major brand out there. Or several folks have left the company and now they're launching their own brands. They're doing their own podcasts, they're publishing their own books. So many stories I can share with you about how executives have grown in the industry and also have grown with eTail. And we've also adapted to their needs as well.
So it is a community-driven show and brand at its core, eTail. Again, it's not a trade show experience, right? Time after time, when we do conduct interviews and research calls with attendees after the show takes place, we hear eTail Palm Springs, amazing, the quality of the conversations, but high value of the content. Again, these are not high level industry overviews.
You can get that anywhere pretty much. But if you actually want to hear from the executives, okay.
Not only were these my successes, but these were also my failures. This is what you need to keep an eye out for. So we make sure that when we onboard each speaker, they are actually sharing valuable insight to our audience. Again, eTail as a brand, as long as folks continue to shop online, eTail will be around and it is changing a lot. I will say it from a content perspective.
Yes, life shopping and social commerce has changed significantly how customers purchase products and discover new products online, right? However, the overarching theme that we're seeing, especially for this year at Palm Springs, is personalization. It doesn't matter if you're talking about leveraging data, gen AI, your social media strategies, storytelling, your customer retention or loyalty programs, personalizing the customer experiences.
Critical more so nowadays because that's what the customer expects, right? We also research with the retail customers. You know, at Palm Springs next month, we have a panel with Gen Zers, right? These are the retail customers. How do they discover these products? Time after time we do hear, okay, we're getting so much social media fatigue. We're getting bombarded with ads, emails, text messages.
Instead of zoning them out, understand who your customer is. Again, that's why personalization, regardless of the topic, you will see a pepper along with AI as well. It's such a big trend nowadays across the content for the four days of the eTail conference.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Now, there are going to be some listeners, they're like, all right, you guys sold me. I want to check this out. Where do they go? What do they do?
Leo Martinez
eTail. We just launched our own TikTok platform as well, our channel, I should say. We're on Instagram. And we also launched our own podcast, etounplug. Again, we connect with the community year-round, not only at Palm Springs, because we love to see when our attendees are doing amazing things out there in the industry.
So if you're writing a new book, doing a podcast, if you got a promotion, if you move to a different company, we highlight those stories and feature them on eTail and Plug because it's important for us to highlight and feature the brand. The humans, I should say. The humans behind these brands. Because at the end of the day, it takes a whole village to get the ball rolling.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Chatting up eTail with me and I'm looking forward to meeting you next month.
Leo Martinez
Well, thank you, Chase. Looking forward to meeting you in February. Yes, everyone looking forward to meeting you all at Palm Springs in sunny California.