THE DIRECT 60 LIST Of 2025

Colleen Waters

VP, Ecommerce | Steven Madden, Ltd.

PREVIOUS COMPANIES: Victoria’s Secret, Hudson’s Bay Company, Bloomingdale’s

Insights

“I think the most exciting thing is the user shift to AI chatbots and what the future of online shopping looks like. Especially as many of these are introducing browsers, tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT are becoming de facto homepages, rather than people directly visiting individual websites. Holiday 2025 is going to be very interesting. We’re seeing the adoption of AI for research and discovery happening end-to-end, perhaps quicker than anticipated. This influences how we think about our website, as fewer people might directly see it. However, ensuring we have the right information and are set up to appear for customers where they are shopping is going to be crucial. We’re doing a lot to prepare for this, and we’re open to trying new things in this space.”

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