How REI Is Rebuilding Around the Customer Without Losing Its Soul

Most retailers say they are customer-centric. Very few of them can tell you exactly what that costs.

At REI, the price is quantifiable. It means holding sustainability standards so strict that some products cost more than competitors. It means watching customers shop elsewhere for a cheaper sleeping bag because the co-op will not compromise on sourcing to hit a price point. It means absorbing that tension as a deliberate strategic trade-off, not a failure.

That willingness to lose a transaction in service of a value system is rare. It is also the central tension running through REI’s current transformation, a three-year plan called Peak 28 that aims to put the customer at the center of every decision without abandoning the principles that earned customer trust in the first place.

At eTail Palm Springs 2026, Kristin Shane, REI’s Chief Merchandising Officer, joined Ron Thurston of Retail in America for a fireside conversation that unpacked what this actually looks like on the ground, from store floors to sourcing offices to the weekly tariff math that now dominates every merchant’s calendar.

Trust is not a brand value. It is 10,000 micro decisions.

Shane, approaching her one-year anniversary at REI, opened with an observation that reframed how the room should think about trust. REI’s customer base holds the company to a standard she had not experienced in previous roles at Guitar Center, PetSmart, or Target. When REI’s decisions drift from its stated values, members let the company know.

“Trust isn’t this big overarching thing that we think it is,” Shane said. “It’s literally all the micro decisions that we make and making sure they’re aligned with our values.”

For senior marketers, this is a useful provocation. Most brands treat trust as a communications outcome. REI treats it as an operational discipline, one that starts in sourcing, runs through merchandising, and surfaces at the register.

The three-tier plan starts with things customers do not notice

Peak 28 is structured around three priorities. The first is the least glamorous: retail fundamentals. In-stock rates. Shipping speed. The operational plumbing that customers only notice when it fails.

Shane was blunt about the industry’s underinvestment. Retail in general, she said, has not invested as it needs to in fundamentals. Peak 28 is designed to close that gap first.

The second tier is service, anchored by REI’s famed green vests, the store associates whose product knowledge functions more like outdoor guide expertise than retail assistance. Shane told a story about walking into the Flagstaff, Arizona, store anonymously and asking a green vest for trail running advice. The associate pulled out a map and walked through trail-by-trail terrain, elevation, and hydration recommendations.

That is consultative expertise delivered at the point of need. And it is the kind of experience that no amount of personalization technology can replicate without a genuinely knowledgeable human behind it.

The third tier is what Shane called an “authentic, culturally leading assortment,” the idea that REI should not just equip customers for the outdoors but inspire them to progress within their activities. Her team built a merchandising strategy called Craft the Campsite, designed to move customers from buying basics to imagining an elevated experience, complete with French presses and portable pancake makers.

The consumer is moving faster than the organization

When asked what has changed in merchandising, Shane drew a clear line. Two things, she said, have not changed: deep empathy for the customer, and the fact that retail is a team sport. Everything else is different.

AI is moving faster than anything she has seen in her career. Tariff math changes weekly. And the consumer now has access to more research, more products, and more purchase channels than ever before, including buying directly through ChatGPT.

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[Shane’s observation that consumers now research and purchase across an expanding set of channels, many of which are invisible to last-click attribution, connects directly to the measurement challenge Fospha solves. When customers discover products through social, video, or AI-powered channels before converting elsewhere, legacy attribution misses the upstream influence entirely. Fospha’s full-funnel measurement captures the impact of every impression, view, and click, giving brands the ability to understand where demand is actually created, not just where it is captured.]

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Shane’s leadership instinct in response was not to chase every new tool. It was to protect her team from overwhelm. “Those are the ingredients to overwhelm the team,” she said. “And it’s really about helping your team understand that we’re all in it together, and it’s okay if we don’t have the answers.”

Ninety percent of revenue comes from members, and that changes everything

REI’s membership model is not a loyalty program in the traditional sense. Ninety percent of revenue comes from members. That concentration creates an unusually rich feedback loop, but also a trap Shane is careful to navigate.

She described what REI calls the “say/do disparity,” the gap between what members report in surveys and ethnographic research and what they actually purchase. In her third month on the job, Shane’s team conducted in-home ethnography, visiting customers to observe and discuss their outdoor gear.

The insights were valuable in both directions. When survey data and behavioral data aligned, it confirmed strategy. When they diverged, it opened the harder, more important questions. Are customers doing this elsewhere because REI is not serving the need? That kind of intellectual honesty, Shane suggested, requires curiosity, not just analytics.

Sustainability has a price, and REI is choosing to pay it

The sustainability question at REI does not look like it does at most retailers. Shane said the say/do disparity barely registers in REI’s own data, because the company will not stock products that fail its sustainability standards regardless of commercial pressure.

But that rigidity has a cost. Higher price points push some customers to competitors. Shane acknowledged the trade-off: they are not going to create product that does not align with sustainability standards to hit a price point.

This is a genuinely difficult position for a merchant to hold. The temptation in a tariff-heavy, price-sensitive environment is to find compromises. REI is instead doubling down on sourcing innovation, investing in smaller sustainable suppliers, and maintaining overseas offices to solve for cost within its standards rather than around them.

What this means for senior marketers

Shane’s closing advice distilled the session’s real argument. The constant is change, she said, and the only way to navigate it is with agility, curiosity, and a willingness to fail. She shared a story about a mentee paralyzed by the fear that a high-profile project might not succeed. Shane’s response: you will not be judged on whether the project fails. You will be judged on how you react to the failure.

For marketers navigating AI adoption, tariff volatility, and fragmenting customer journeys, the REI session offered a deceptively simple framework. Get the fundamentals right first. Invest in people who can deliver expertise at the point of need. And when your values cost you something, pay the price, because the customers who stay are the ones who actually trust you.

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EVENT COVERAGE SPONSORED BY FOSPHA