Michelle Sherrier
263 episodes listed below
Retail reality from the sales floor up.
The Retail Whore follows retail life from the sales floor outward: dead spaces, product turns, customer experience, resale, scent, food sampling, and buying reports. Its tone is practical and conversational, with solo field notes alongside interviews with people working across stores, shows, and retail work.
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The Retail Whore is a practical, highly personal retail-business show about what actually happens inside stores. Its center of gravity is retail: buying, merchandising, floor planning, customer experience, profit margin, seasonal resets, and the constant pressure to make merchandise move. Michelle Scherrier appears throughout the excerpts as the recurring voice and producer, moving between solo episodes, interviews, show-season recaps, and work-travel updates. The show has a working diary quality. One episode might focus on a dead space that customers refuse to enter. Another might turn to open-to-buy planning, line-item costs, tariffs, freight, and how to tell whether sales are really up. The conversations are concrete and often operational. Retail is not treated as a branding exercise; it is treated as fixtures, reports, taste, timing, stale inventory, food expiration dates, staff realities, and the hard call to change what is not working. The show also makes room for the emotional side of store life. Creativity, burnout, travel, community, and the friendships that form through retail conversations all surface in the recent episodes. Guests and topics range across customer experience, resale, scent and memory, mass production, main street retail, treasure hunting, and buying shows. The pacing is loose and conversational, but the advice stays grounded in stores, products, numbers, and customer behavior. It is not sterile business coaching. It sounds like someone coming directly from a floor reset, a trade show, a store visit, or a long drive with fresh observations still in mind. That gives the show its texture. Listeners hear what went wrong, what sold, what sat, what needs bundling, and what has to be reworked. The Retail Whore is best suited to retailers, buyers, merchandisers, shop owners, and people close to retail work who want candid field intelligence from someone close to the work. Its value is the mix of lived retail judgment and practical curiosity. The show keeps asking the question every store eventually faces: what has to change so the numbers, the floor, and the customer experience work together?
Made for: For retailers, buyers, merchandisers, store owners, and people close to retail work who care about floor flow, product turns, buying decisions, and margin pressure. It also suits operators who like candid shop talk rooted in real stores rather than abstract business theory.
What sets it apart: The show stands out for its field-note immediacy: solo store-floor reflections, car-recorded show recaps, and guest conversations all stay close to the operational details of retail. It connects creativity and community with numbers, reports, tariffs, freight, dead spaces, and sell-through.
Welcome to The Retail Whore by me, Michelle Sherrier: a podcast of stories and lessons from a life in retail. After decades spent in the retail industry, I’ve seen and done it all. Join me every week as I interview people from all walks of retail, the service industry, the wholesale gift industry, and more. We’ll talk about what drives them, the things they love, and some of the biggest lessons they have learned along the way. Brace yourself for The Retail Whore, a show that entertains and educates!
A dead store corner becomes a retail reality check, with Michelle Scherrier moving fixtures and excuses.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical look at dead spots, floor planning, and cleaner year-over-year sales reads.
Michelle Scherrier turns a familiar retail pain point into a clear discussion of dead spots and floor planning. She treats the issue as more than a matter of looks, showing how product, display, and fixture changes can still miss a stubborn space.
A grounded retail discussion about freshness, turnover, and what keeps product moving.
Michelle Scherrier keeps the conversation grounded in retail work: inventory turns, perishables, sampling, and the constant push to keep merchandise moving.
Real talk for veterinary practice leaders.
Sales systems for serious electrical contractors.
Salon leadership coaching with profit in view.
Michelle turns cookbooks, food ornaments, ribbon, and bells into Christmas merchandise without relying on Santa imagery.
Michelle Scherrier replays her interview with Barbara Mooney of Daisy's Mercantile, whose retail background began with learning payroll, purchase orders, and FIFO inventory before age 15.
Michelle Scherrier uses Lucy's and Anthropologie to show how dead retail spaces can survive fixture changes, product swaps, and months of testing.
Michelle Sherrier introduces a return to guest interviews focused on practical tools for retailers, featuring an open-to-buy specialist.
Michelle Scherrier opens with a travel-heavy update that includes Vegas, Arizona, California, and an upcoming ASD show appearance with Susan from Repertoire and Shelf Talk Live.
Michelle Sherrier shares her experiences working in retail stores in California, including setting up for spring and reworking a store with new European pieces.
Michelle Sherrier returns to the mic after a break to introduce an interview that reignites her creativity and sense of community.
Michelle Sherrier shares a solo episode recorded in the car, recapping her experience at a trade show for Lucy's and discussing how she approached the event.
Michelle Sherrier interviews industry professionals about their experiences and lessons in retail, wholesale, and service industries.
Michelle Sherrier discusses the impact of tariffs and changing retail climate on gift shows and store profitability, encouraging open-minded adaptation.
Michelle interviews Natalie about managing two separate POS systems in a shared retail space and the challenges of inventory and revenue separation.
Michelle Sherrier reflects on the end of the year, astrology, and her upcoming 60th birthday, sharing personal insights and lessons from a life in retail.
Michelle Sherrier shares her experience installing holiday decor for Bristol Farms stores, discussing the challenges and excitement of working overnight shifts.
Michelle Sherrier shares her gratitude for being home after a tough gift show in Las Vegas and introduces an interview with a store owner about taking risks in wholesale.
Michelle Sherrier interviews Andrea Hoffer about streamlining hiring and building strong sales teams in the current retail environment.
This episode features an interview with Sarah Vascoff and her daughter Bailey Weaver, who run Hands Gallery, an artist studio shop in San Luis Obispo, discussing their mother-daughter business partnership and holiday planning strategies.
This episode introduces a new monthly segment called Shelf Talk, where the host and a fellow merchandiser discuss design, merchandising, and display topics in a casual conversation format, inviting listener questions.
Host Michelle Sherrier discusses the challenges of continuing the podcast without sponsors and introduces guest Dan Jablons, an open-to-buy specialist.
Michelle Sherrier interviews Liz Fiera, owner of Sweet Bay Shop, about her vintage and floral shop business.