Whew! Another year, another beautiful location, another round of fresh retail strategies, tools, ideas, technology, and hey-did-you-hear-about-this tips to put into action.
The sixth annual Summer Camp, Zipline’s annual customer experience, brought an incredible group of retail pros to Denver for two days of connecting and learning with some of the smartest, warmest, and most driven people we’ve had the pleasure of sharing that crisp mountain air with.
Summer Camp is a celebration of the retail community and commitment to supporting each others’ success, as a whole. So we curated a reader-friendly version of the IRL experience, with some of the most relevant takeaways from expert speaker sessions, panel discussions—anything retail leaders and store teams should know as we round out 2025—with a few attendee highlights to boot.
Read on for key insights from the pros doing the work at brands like DoorDash, Helzberg Diamonds, TravisMathew, and more, shots from the ground floor, and a peek at some topics we’ll be expanding on soon (because two days just wasn’t enough).
Takeaways from the Stage
Throughout a stellar lineup of retail communications and operations leaders sharing their stories, a consistent theme emerged:
Meaningfully supporting store teams is what fills the tank that fuels business success.
And there are so many ways, big and small, tangible and conceptual, directly and indirectly, tech and human, to help store and frontline employees do their best work. Which can be implemented whether you’re a Zipline customer or not. Here’s a handful of nugget picks:
Retail is storytelling—inside and out.
We couldn’t have said it better than Mike Cantwell, Senior Retail Communications Leader at TravisMathew (and Zipline University graduate!), when he told the audience to make employees feel like they’re “part of the story.”
He learned that lesson himself when he joined TravisMathew and set out to boost their so-so employee engagement. Managers and HQ were logging into Zipline daily and showing decent readership and activity rates, but store supervisors and associates—their two largest employee groups—were MIA.
“Retail is storytelling,” he said. “As we know, it’s not just the products that captivate customers, it’s the story behind it, behind the brand.” So he took that approach internally.
Mike customized the employee experience throughout the platform to match their brand story, leveling up each touchpoint using Zipline’s branding packages. From more vibrant colors to multimedia assets to tailored dashboards to interactive videos from brand ambassadors like Reggie Bush, TravisMathew employees were getting the same brand experience customers were.
The result? YoY growth in unique daily logins, with a representational increase from frontline teams, and nearly 100% on general readership and execution scores.
“When we have more eyes on the platform, we get better results,” he summed up. “Better engagement with comms, closer alignment with company goals, increased knowledge sharing between teams and locations…with tangible positive impact on customer experience and selling, because of a better employee experience.”
There’s a lot more to this storytelling story! Get a step-by-step rundown of how Mike revived frontline engagement—and execution—directly from him in our upcoming webinar, Real Retail Stories: Practical, Agile, and Creative Solutions From Top Brands.
One-and-done isn’t really done.
“Change starts with behavior, and behavior change requires structure,” Alisa Ingwersen of DoorDash emphasized as a panelist on Beyond the Message: Launching Initiatives that Stick.
As Change Management and Communication Associate at DashMart, a relatively new part of DoorDash with “stores” that curate items like snacks, household items, and local favorites for delivery, she had to introduce better communications and operations processes for DashMart teams and Dashers. A patchwork of resources and disconnected tools “built for tech, not for local operators” wasn’t working, and had no chance of scaling with their fast growth.
Choosing Zipline to centralize communications, streamline work, and tailor information to local teams was one thing—getting everyone to fully adopt it was another. Alisa focused on planning, clarity, and repetition as her strategy, showing employees how to use the new processes and technology, and most importantly, how and why they’re going to benefit them.
“Like launching an internal campaign,” she explained. Starting with an intentional, tiered rollout of information, complete with resources for information and playbooks for action. Then continuing to reinforce, iterate, and repeat communications for that behavior change.
Fellow panelist Ryan Holm, Divisional Vice President of Retail Innovation and Operations at Helzberg Diamonds, shared his own “rinse and repeat” success story—starting with his own comms failure.
He showed the audience a message he’d sent to store teams about a new tool they’d requested and he knew would be excited about. The message was enthusiastic, thorough, proofread…and got almost no engagement.
“Can anyone guess why this was a failure?” he asked. “It was just one message! We put all of our eggs in one basket…and in retrospect, this feels so obvious. Store managers are busy, stores are busy, people take vacations…of course it failed.”
Rather than reposting the message, Ryan put his creative thinking cap on. He asked himself what kind of communications, in his own life, did he get a ton of without getting bored or annoyed?
The answer was natural for a diamond retailer: weddings.
He started modeling employee communications after a typical wedding cadence, like save-the-dates, invitations, day-of details, and thank-you notes, to drum up excitement for announcements, give everyone relevant information, and gather feedback. And included easy-access resources in Zipline, like library links for learning, associated tasks, etc., for a continual and cohesive messaging rollout.
“The best part about this is we’re using all of the features across the entire platform of Zipline, to make sure stores are feeling supported and enthusiastic about the change,” he shared (much to our delight, of course).
Both Alisa and Ryan will be joining us for the Real Retail Stories live webinar and Q&A, where they’ll divulge key details and action items—like the “four levers” of change—for launching initiatives with staying power.
Adaptive communications lead to smoother operations.
Whether you’re managing a fleet of 5 stores or 500, no team is exactly alike. And if you don’t work with that, it’ll find a way to work against you.
Several Summer Camp speakers shared stories of dispersed teams with unique needs, chaotic communications, ad hoc tools, and flatlining engagement and execution because their processes couldn’t adapt or scale. With each solution coming down to centralization, then customization.
Like the Manager of Employee Experience and Communications at a leading global commerce platform. He recalled the “fragmented knowledge access” created by their extensive network of sites and teams, and the days of relying on Linktrees to host things all over the place.
“Each site had their own vendor routes, safety procedures, and ways of doing things, but no unified, secure way to store and surface information,” he shared with the audience of retailers nodding in familiarity. They were doing the best with what they had, until they rolled out Zipline—and customized site “hubs.”
Every hub had dedicated tools, resources, and information specific to that team and location. Things like vendor instructions, contact info for upper leadership, new-hire details, anything relevant to that individual hub. All under the umbrella of a secure, cross-organizational platform accessible to everyone.
Meanwhile, the Manager of Store Communications at a nationally widespread clothing retailer had a problème to solve with language customization. They’re a Canadian company operating in two official languages—English and French—with thousands of employees, many of whom speak French predominantly.
Before Zipline, she was redoing all communications through a translation service. Which was expensive, timely, and totally unsuitable for the fast-paced world of retail. But beyond Quebec language laws, ensuring all employees feel seen, valued, and able to be themselves was non-negotiable.
That communications gap, however, led to a “disconnected employee force and lack of consistency when it came to readership, execution, and engagement.” Then Zipline’s auto-translation integration, Total Translation, entered the chat.
“Not only did we have the chance to produce content in English and French in one platform, but also to engage with our employees in their language, with each other, across the entire country.” A seamless experience that translated into skyrocketing employee engagement rates, endless hours saved, and happier employees delivering an even better customer experience.
“If you work with more than one language, your employee and publishing experience can be truly transformed to ensure that you meet the needs of your team members,” she finished.
When it comes to what we learned at Summer Camp, this is just the tip of the mountaintop. Check out all the 2025 speakers and register to get on the mailing list for 2026 updates.
Takeaways from the Floor
Not all of the gold-nugget moments were on stage. Here’s a roundup of highlights from Zipliners and attendees—we hope you can feel the magic!
Takeaways from the Future
We can try our best to do blog-post justice to the overwhelming amount of learning, actionable tips, and strategic direction we got at Summer Camp. But there’s nothing like hearing it straight from the real, friendly, funny, passionate, ambitious, whip-smart experts themselves.
That’s why we’re taking a selection of sessions on the (virtual) road with our Summer Camp Encore webinar on July 31 at 1pm EDT!
Real Retail Stories: Practical, Agile, and Creative Solutions brings 3 of the speakers featured here back for a live discussion and Q&A on driving more retail success out of fewer resources (something we’re all navigating in an especially tricky year). You’ll get the full package of Alisa Ingwersen, Ryan Holm, and Mike Cantwell’s Summer Camp insights and a chance to ask them your direct questions.
RSVP to save your spot and get the recording to turn to anytime you need. We hope to see you there—and at Summer Camp 2026 (stay tuned)!
