Catching the Next Wave: Adora Heads to RetailClub AI Festival

Retail is changing rapidly. Later this month, over 2,000 retail and brand leaders will convene in Huntington Beach, California to explore what the future holds at RetailClub AI Festival. The event is built on a premise that most retail conferences avoid: skip the checkbox AI strategies and tired adoption roadmaps and have the harder conversations about what happens as AI moves the ground under the industry.

Catching the Current

If you’re attending the show, swing by the AI Current stage on Wednesday, September 23rd at 2:45pm for the “Next Wave AI: Marketing & Advertising” session, which will put founders and CEOs for breakout AI startups back-to-back, including Adora’s very own CEO and co-founder Marco Matos.

During the session, each startup will walk through how their product works, how it’s helping retailers and brands understand and reach their customers, what implementation actually takes, and proof that it works. 

Folks joining us on the stage will include Doug Tallmadge from Gradial, Andrej Kiska from Kontext, and Janvi Shah from Hue.

Other Notable Sessions

While the event agenda is packed, here are a few other sessions on our radar:

• The New Challenger Brands: How AI-Native Consumer Businesses Will Disrupt Retail (Tue, Sept 22, 2:50–3:10 PM PT, Ocean Stage) — a panel on how AI-native consumer businesses are built differently at every level, from operating model to customer experience, and what it means for incumbents as the competitive landscape shifts.

• How We Trained AI to Sound Like Our Brand (Wed, Sept 23, 1:15–1:50 PM PT, AI Current) — Minted COO Sarah Veit Wallis on training AI to hold a brand's voice across interactions: the tools, the evaluation, and what it takes to move from inconsistent output to something teams can rely on.

• The AI-First Marketing Organization (Thu, Sept 24, 9:45–10:05 AM PT, Ocean Stage) — Retail and brand CMOs on what an AI-first marketing org actually looks like: new roles, new workflows, and scaling content and personalization without losing brand voice or customer trust.

Hellos in Huntington

Marco and Madden will be on the ground for the full festival. Ping them to schedule a chat, or swing by the AI Current Stage on Wednesday. 

About RetailClub AI Festival

RetailClub AI Festival brings together more than 2,000 retail and brand leaders, AI operators, and founders in Huntington Beach, California, September 22–24, 2026, for three days built around the harder AI conversations most retail conferences skip. Learn more at retailclub.com.