Checking In: Hilco’s Rob Gorin on Merchandising’s Art-Science Balance, Building Adaptable Strategies and Retail’s AI Opportunity

Checking In is a series of conversations with Hilco executives to consult their subject matter expertise.

Rob Gorin, executive director - restructuring (Getzler Henrich) in the Professional Services division at Hilco Global, brings more than 30 years of client-centric focus to business strategy and operations through his work in corporate turnarounds, process design and improvement, corporate mergers and acquisitions and management consulting.

In this Q&A, Gorin discusses tips for navigating and emerging from a retail bankruptcy, why companies need to be disciplined in their assortments and the impact of transferring shopping actions to artificial intelligence.

Retail RX: Corporations have long been using a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis to determine focus areas and positioning, but you’ve said this is no longer sufficient in today’s market. Why is the SWOT falling short, and how should companies be evaluating their strategies instead?​Rob Gorin: SWOT has been a useful framework for a long time because it forces companies to step back and take a structured look at their position. But the challenge today is that this analysis is often fundamentally static, while the environment companies are operating in has become much more dynamic and interconnected.
A traditional SWOT assumes you can clearly define strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats at a point in time and then build a strategy around them. The problem is that many of those factors are now shifting too quickly. A strength—like a low-cost global supply chain—can become a vulnerability almost overnight due to geopolitics or regulation. An opportunity in a new market can quickly turn into a risk if customer behavior changes or capital conditions tighten.
It also tends to oversimplify. Labeling something as an “opportunity” or “threat” doesn’t capture the degree of uncertainty, the speed of change or how different factors interact. For example, customer behavior, cost pressures and technology adoption—especially AI—aren’t independent forces; they reinforce and amplify each other in ways a simple four-box framework doesn’t fully capture.
From what I’ve seen, companies that are navigating this environment well are moving toward a more dynamic, forward-looking approach.
That often includes a few shifts. First, there’s more emphasis on scenario planning—not just asking “What’s our position today?” but “What happens if key variables move in different directions?” Second, companies are focusing more on identifying the few critical value drivers in their business, including elements like pricing power, cost structure flexibility or customer retention, and stress-testing those under different conditions. Third, there’s a greater focus on speed and adaptability, building strategies that can evolve, rather than assuming you’ll set a direction once and follow it for years.
Underlying all of that is a mindset change. Strategy is becoming less about finding the “right answer” and more about building a system that can respond to change, whether that’s shifts in the customer expectations, economy or geopolitical dynamics.
In the end, SWOT isn’t obsolete, but on its own, it’s no longer enough. It needs to be complemented by tools and thinking that reflect how quickly the ground is moving underneath most businesses today.​Retail RX: You have three decades of experience in corporate turnarounds. What is your advice for companies that are currently navigating the bankruptcy process?
R.G.: Bankruptcy is not just a financial process; it’s an operational and leadership test under extreme pressure. The companies that navigate it successfully are the ones that recognize that early and act accordingly.
The first piece of advice is to focus relentlessly on liquidity. In a bankruptcy situation, time is defined by cash. You need absolute clarity about from where cash is coming, where it’s going and what levers you can pull quickly. That often means making difficult decisions early, such as tightening working capital, rationalizing costs and prioritizing the parts of the business that truly generate cash.
At the same time, it’s important to stabilize the core business. There’s a tendency to become consumed by the legal and financial mechanics of the process, but if operations deteriorate, value erodes quickly. Customers, suppliers and employees are all watching closely, and confidence can slip fast. Maintaining service levels, protecting key relationships and communicating clearly can make a significant difference in preserving enterprise value.
Another key factor is being realistic and decisive about what the business should look like going forward. Bankruptcy creates an opportunity, even if it’s often a forced one, to reshape the company. That might mean exiting underperforming divisions, renegotiating contracts or resetting the cost structure. The companies that do well are the ones that make those calls proactively, rather than trying to preserve everything, which can actually result in a weaker organization.
Stakeholder management is also critical. You’re dealing with lenders, creditors, advisors, employees and customers, all with different priorities. Transparency and credibility go a long way. Even when the message is difficult, being clear and consistent helps build trust and can create more flexibility in negotiations.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, is leadership mindset. Bankruptcy can feel like a purely defensive process, but the goal isn’t just to survive, it’s to emerge as a viable, competitive business. That requires shifting from a reactive posture to a forward-looking one: what will this company look like post-restructuring, and how will it win?
The companies that navigate bankruptcy best are the ones that balance both sides of that equation, managing the immediate pressures while actively building the foundation for what comes next.
Retail RX: It’s a challenging retail climate. We’re seeing declining consumer confidence, and with prices for necessities such as gasoline and food on the rise, apparel retailers are going to have to fight harder for discretionary dollars. How can brands set themselves up to compete in this landscape? What will separate the winners from the losers?
R.G.: It’s obviously a difficult environment, but it’s also one that tends to separate disciplined operators from the rest.
What’s different right now is the combination of pressures. On one hand, consumers are becoming more selective and value conscious as essentials like food and fuel take up more of their wallet. On the flip side, their expectations around convenience, experience and brand relevance haven’t gone down. That tension is what makes this moment so challenging for apparel retailers.
The brands that navigate it well tend to focus on a few key areas.
First, there’s a much sharper emphasis on value clarity. That doesn’t just mean being the cheapest. It means being very clear about what the customer is getting for the price. Whether a brand is positioned as premium or value, it has to explicitly justify itself. The middle ground, where the proposition is less defined, is where a lot of brands struggle.
Next, winners are more disciplined around inventory and merchandising. In a softer demand environment, overbuying is one of the fastest ways to destroy margin through markdowns. The better operators are tightening assortments, reacting quicker to demand signals and being much more precise about where they place their bets.
Finally, there’s a renewed focus on loyalty and customer retention. When consumers are pulling back, it’s far more valuable and cost-effective to create deep relationships with existing customers over constantly chasing new ones. Relationship building can be through more targeted marketing, better personalization or simply a more consistent brand experience.
Another big differentiator is operational flexibility. The environment is shifting quickly, so companies that can adjust pricing, promotions and inventory in real time have a significant advantage. That often comes down to having the right data, analytical approaches and decision-making processes in place.
Additionally, there is cost discipline, but done thoughtfully. The goal isn’t just to cut costs, but rather it’s to protect the areas that matter most to the customer while taking inefficiencies out of the system. Brands that cut too broadly risk damaging the very experience they need to compete.
Ultimately, what separates winners from losers in this kind of climate is focus. The winners are very clear on who their customer is, what they stand for and where they create value; and they align their operations tightly around that. The losers tend to get pulled in too many directions, whether that’s chasing volume through discounting, overextending assortments or reacting too slowly to changing demand.
In a tighter consumer environment, there’s less room for ambiguity. The brands that are most intentional and disciplined in how they operate are the ones that tend to come out ahead.
Retail RX: Agentic commerce was the big topic at this year’s NRF Big Show. What is your take on the AI opportunity in retail? How will this change shoppers’ journeys and stores’ engagement with them?
R.G.: While agentic commerce is a meaningful shift, I think it’s important to separate what’s hype from what’s actually changing behavior.
At its core, the AI opportunity in retail isn’t just about better recommendations; it’s about outsourcing parts of the shopping journey to software. Instead of customers browsing, comparing and deciding themselves, they increasingly rely on systems that can search, evaluate and even purchase on their behalf. That has a few critical implications.
First, it fundamentally changes the top of the funnel. Today, brands compete for attention with ads, search placement and storefronts. In an agentic world, they’re increasingly competing to be selected by an algorithm, not just seen by a consumer. That shifts the focus toward things like structured product data, real-time availability and pricing and reviews, performance and return rates. In other words, your “customer” is partly the AI layer making decisions upstream.
Second, the shopping journey compresses. What used to be a multi-step process of discovery, consideration and comparison can collapse into a single prompt or automated workflow. For routine purchases especially, the experience becomes more about delegation than exploration.
That said, it won’t apply evenly. You’ll likely see a split: High-frequency, low-emotion purchases such as basics or replenishment will be heavily automated, while high-consideration, identity-driven purchases—such as fashion and luxury—will still be human-led, but also AI-assisted.
For apparel specifically, this creates an interesting tension. AI can handle sizing, recommendations and even outfit curation, but taste, identity and brand still matter. Thus, the role of AI becomes less about replacing the experience and more about enhancing confidence and reducing friction.
Third, engagement models will shift from reactive to proactive and personalized at scale. Retailers won’t just respond to customer actions; they’ll anticipate needs including offering replenishment before you run out, personalized drops or styling suggestions and dynamic pricing or offers based on behavior. But this only works if the data and infrastructure are strong. Otherwise, it just becomes noise.
Where I think the biggest opportunity is, especially for retailers, is on the operational side, not just the front end. AI can drive better inventory allocation, faster demand sensing, smarter markdown optimization and more efficient customer service. That’s where you get real margin impact, not just a better interface.
As for what separates winners from losers, it won’t be who adopts AI fastest, but rather it’ll be who integrates it most effectively into both the customer experience and the operating model. The winners will treat AI as a core capability, not a feature; build clean, usable data environments; and balance automation with brand and experience. The losers will either over-automate and lose what makes them distinctive or underinvest and become invisible in an increasingly algorithm-driven marketplace.
The headline is: AI won’t just change how people shop, it will change who or what is doing the shopping, and that has pretty profound implications for how retailers compete.
Retail RX: Merchandising is a mix of art and science. How can companies balance data-led insights with human intuition to put together consumer-centric assortments?
R.G.: It’s appropriate to frame merchandising as both art and science, and that tension is exactly where the best operators differentiate themselves.
The mistake many companies make today is swinging too far in one direction. They either over-index on data, becoming overly reactive and commoditized, or they rely too heavily on intuition, which can miss shifts in customer behavior. The goal isn’t to choose between the two; it’s to define the role each plays in the decision-making process.
The most effective approach I’ve seen is using data to inform the “what” and “when,” and human judgment to shape the “why” and “what’s next.”
Data is incredibly powerful when it comes to identifying demand patterns and emerging trends, understanding price elasticity and sell-through and optimizing size curves, inventory depth and timing. It gives you a clear, objective view of what’s working and what isn’t and often does it faster than merchants can see it on their own.
But where data falls short is in anticipation and differentiation. Data is inherently backward-looking. It can tell you what sold yesterday, but not always what will resonate next season, how to create something that feels new and compelling and/or to predict an unexpected trend.
That’s where human intuition comes in as it provides understanding of subtle shifts in taste, culture and aesthetics, how a collection fits together as a story and what will emotionally connect with the customer.
The best merchants use intuition not to override data, but to interpret it and push beyond it. In practice, the companies that get this balance right tend to do a few things well.
They build a tight feedback loop between data and merchants. Insights aren’t handed down in static reports; they’re integrated into the daily decision-making process, allowing teams to adjust assortments in real time.
They also create guardrails, not prescriptions. Data might define the boundaries, including how much to invest in a category and where to take risk, but within those boundaries, merchants still have room to make creative bets.
And importantly, they’re deliberate about where to be data-driven versus where to take creative risk. Core, repeatable categories can be highly optimized. Fashion-forward or brand-defining pieces often require more intuition and willingness to test and learn.
Ultimately, consumer-centric assortments come from understanding that customers don’t shop based on spreadsheets but rather they respond to products that feel relevant, cohesive and emotionally engaging. Data helps you stay grounded, but intuition is what allows you to create something worth choosing.
The companies that win are the ones that treat data as a tool to sharpen judgment, not a substitute for it.​​