Talk Commerce

Live from eTail Boston, Polywood Chief Digital Officer Benjamin Spiegel on just-in-time manufacturing across 150,000 SKU variations, why this is the best time to be a creative, and the AI focus group his team trained to critique its own work.

Show Notes

Recorded live at eTail Boston, August 10 through 12, 2026.

Benjamin Spiegel is the Chief Digital Officer at Polywood, the outdoor furniture maker that turns recycled plastic into lumber and lumber into furniture on its own floor. The model is just-in-time: a checkout on the website triggers the lumber run in the right color, the build, the box, and the shipment, with no finished inventory in between.

In this conversation: why vertical integration cuts freight as much as it cuts waste, why Spiegel thinks this is the best time to be a creative, the difference between big-C creative ideas and small-c asset production, how his AI bill tripled while the creative headcount stayed flat, and the five consumer-persona agents his team shows work to before a human ever does.

What is next: helping people design outdoor spaces, a problem Spiegel says no AI tool handles yet because outside has no walls.

Learn more about our at-event interviews at talk-commerce.com/events.

What is Talk Commerce?

Talk Commerce connects the commerce community through conversation, with host Brent W. Peterson talking to the founders, developers, agency leaders, and merchants who build and run eCommerce businesses on Shopify, Magento, Adobe Commerce, and B2B platforms.

Two segments run alongside the full interviews. Agentic Commerce episodes run 10 minutes or less and take on one topic at a time, from AI shopping agents to the product data those agents read. Running Commerce covers the running and athletic industry and the brands, retailers, and race organizers who make it work.

Episodes also cover eCommerce marketing, retail, and growing a team, along with live reporting from events like eTail, Shoptalk, and The Running Event. Read the show notes and the daily blog, and sign up for the newsletter, at https://talk-commerce.com