A gaggle of retail’s top leaders turned up Thursday on the second day of Goldman Sachs twenty ninth annual Global Retailing Conference to defend their turf, point to opportunities and acknowledge — type of — just how scary the patron landscape is.

From a deep dive on e-commerce penetration from Shopify to a take a look at the promotional environment from Macy’s, the day’s sessions made clear that the industry feels well prepared, but that the changes will keep coming within the second half. 

Here, some key takeaways.  

When the pandemic hit, locked-down consumers logged on — spurring an e-commerce boost that appeared to fade as stores opened back up.

But Shopify president Harley Finkelstein said the digital dynamic has indeed modified. 

“But in the event you just take a look at e-commerce growth by itself, we’re going to hit $7 trillion by 2025,” Finkelstein said. “The e-commerce growth curve is back to where it was in 2019 but on a much higher base. And I feel that gets lost a little bit bit in a few of the graphs and the noise.”

Macy’s Inc.

Macy’s Inc. chief financial officer Adrian Mitchell, giving a report card on the business, said, “Those occasion-based categories, the dressy categories, the shoes categories, the fragrances categories, those are really on fire. So there’s a composition element that we expect is definitely quite vital without delay. So we’ll proceed to lean into freshness as we get into the back half of the 12 months.”

Mitchell said promotions industrywide are going to be “intense” this fall, but added that Macy’s will enhance margins as best it might probably, and has some latest tools involving a more scientific approach to pricing, including markdown optimization, by style, category, store and channel, in addition to personalization.

At Nordstrom Inc., performance by category and channel has been a mixed bag. “Our core categories, women’s apparel, men’s apparel, shoes, beauty, designer, all had double-digit increases within the Nordstrom banner,” said chief executive officer Erik Nordstrom. “We proceed to see a whole lot of strength in the client there. 

Nevertheless, Nordstrom’s private label business has been “an actual soft spot for us and that’s on us.” But there’s been leadership changes within the private label operation, and “we do have less percentage of our inventory in our own product for the back half of the 12 months than we’ve had in the primary half of the 12 months,” Nordstrom said.

Regarding inventory excess, which Nordstrom and most of the remaining of the retail industry has been grappling with, CFO Anne Bramman, said, “It’s going to take a few quarters to get through it….We expect the second half goes to be very promotional in comparison with 2019.”

John Idol, chairman and CEO of Capri Holdings, took to the stage on the conference to underscore his company’s higher-end positioning. 

“Capri is now a luxury group,” Idol said. “We’re very happy with the acquisitions that we’ve remodeled the previous few years with Versace and Jimmy Choo, and we’re also happy with what we’re doing with Michael Kors by way of elevating the brand.”

The CEO said business was generally good, but he was also careful to acknowledge the economic realities of the moment.

“I don’t want anyone on this room to think that we’re searching through rose-colored glasses,” he said. “We all know that there’s potentially things on the horizon that may be difficult.”