The Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss left that fashion-tech start-up last year to launch another company, Code Eight, a subsidiary of Walmart.
"I think there's so much exciting stuff happening in the world of Walmart right now," said Fleiss in an interview Tuesday on Cheddar. "The personalized shopping space I think is one of the next big trends that you will see, and it needs to happen in e-commerce."
Code Eight uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a highly personalized online shopping experience that will hopefully mimic the traditional relationship between customer and salesperson, optimized for a digital world. Fleiss said that Code Eight uses Walmart's data to build its own retail platform.
Walmart also announced a redesign of its own website on Tuesday. The new Walmart.com will aim to create a more personalized shopping experience like the one Fleiss described. The homepage will highlight top-selling items in stores near the customer. The new site is scheduled to be live in May.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/how-rent-the-runway-inspires-the-next-generation-of-female-founders).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
