Protected: Lowe’s CONSTRUCT Demo Day | Future Of Consumer-Driven Merchandising

| 4 min readExecutive Summary Mike Maples, Jr., founding partner of Floodgate and one of Silicon Valley’s most successful seed investors, doesn’t play the conventional game of venture capital. He doesn’t look for small wins or safe bets. Instead, he seeks out what he calls “Thunder Lizards” — radical, future-shaping startups that redefine categories or create entirely new […]

| 4 min readWhy the real cost in retail isn’t operations — it’s making and moving products no one wants. Introduction: The Unspoken Cost Crisis in Retail In today’s volatile retail landscape, many leaders obsess over optimizing operations, reducing logistics costs, and streamlining marketing spend. But what if the biggest cost drain lies elsewhere? What if the true […]

| 4 min readFuture-Proofing Retail in a Volatile Trade Landscape Executive Summary: Redefining Retail Strategy with Resilient Assortment Planning The global retail ecosystem in 2025 is being redefined by trade volatility. With tariffs of 10% to 25% now affecting goods from critical global markets, traditional assortment strategies anchored in historical sales or competitor replication have become strategically insufficient. […]