Nitin Mangtani has pivoted a company more than once. He built PredictSpring in a garage in 2013 as a white label mobile app platform, watched it work with brands like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, then made the hardest call of his career: kill the model that was working and rebuild the company as a point of sale platform. That second act took PredictSpring to Crate and Barrel, Under Armour, Steve Madden, and eventually a September 2024 acquisition by Salesforce. Fourteen months later, Mangtani is running commerce for all of Salesforce. "You have to be prepared to pivot every five years even after you have reached scale," he tells Ken. He knows because he's lived it.

In this episode of The Retail Pilot, Ken sits down with Nitin Mangtani, EVP and GM of Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Retail Cloud, to unpack how retail commerce is being rebuilt for the agentic AI era. They explore his journey from Google to PredictSpring to Salesforce, the pivot from white label apps to POS that saved the business, the three pillars of true unified commerce, why the checkout cart will eventually disappear, how agents are live on brand sites like Shark Ninja, Williams Sonoma, and Pandora, and the Zoomin acquisition powering conversational commerce.

In this episode you'll learn:

• The 30-year arc of digital commerce and why the industry pivots every 5 years
• Why Nitin pivoted PredictSpring from white label apps to POS, and the metrics that forced the decision
• Why PredictSpring won by being mobile first, omnichannel first, and customer 360 first from day zero
• What actually happens in the 90 days after a startup gets acquired by Salesforce
• The three pillars of true unified commerce: e-commerce, POS, and Order Management (OMS)
• Why most competitors have only two of the three, and what that means for total cost of ownership
• Where agentic commerce is live today: Shark Ninja, Williams Sonoma, Pandora, and more
• Why Nitin believes the checkout cart will eventually disappear from the shopping journey
• The Zoomin acquisition and why conversational search is the new default for websites
• Working with Marc Benioff: leadership lessons from a hands on founder CEO
• The advice Nitin gives retail executives on how to actually work with technology startups
  

This episode is for you if: you're a retail CIO or CTO evaluating commerce platforms, a founder in retail tech, a merchant curious how agentic AI is changing product discovery, a brand leader mapping your unified commerce roadmap, or anyone tracking how the biggest platforms are rebuilding for the AI era.

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Retail Pilot podcast for more conversations with retail industry leaders and visionaries shaping the future of commerce.

If you missed our last episode, where Shea Jensen, President of Urban Outfitters North America, unpacks the strategy behind the brand's comeback, be sure to tune in.

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