I have a theory. It goes like this: retailers’ willingness to share about their challenges and strategies to address those challenges is inversely proportional to how obvious or public those strategies are. In other words, while it’s difficult to replicate (and to some degree identify all the assets involved in) supply chain design, for example, it’s ridiculously easy to see what a retailer’s up to in its stores – you just go shopping. So retailers tend to be fairly willing (on a relative scale) to talk about what they’re up to when it comes to supply chain, but somehow insist on being incredibly tight-lipped about what they’re doing in stores.

I won’t hazard a guess as to why this inverse relationship exists, but I’ve seen it happen over and over again. And when WBResearch, the organizers behind the Future Store conference I attended last week, called me last year to ask about the feasibility of a store conference, one of the first things we talked about what this theory.

It is nearly impossible to get retailers to talk about their store strategies. And the current hyper-focus on stores doesn’t make it any easier. There is a lot riding on the future of the store, and retailers are scrambling to figure out how to respond to the multiple pressures reshaping the store even as we speak – everything from mobile-enabled shoppers to omni-channel expectations, to store as fulfillment point in the supply chain and what role store employees should ultimately play in the customer experience.

This was the inaugural year for the Future Store conference, but even given that constraint, there were far more retailers speaking about what they are doing in stores than I actually expected to see. I hope they are able to repeat the performance next year.

That said, I think the conference faces a challenge that stores in general face. And to solve that problem, vendors are going to have to take a much more strategic stance than they did at this conference this year.

Here’s the deal. While a lot of retailers’ in-store challenges may ultimately lead to technology investments, and some retailers may even tell technology vendors (and us) that they have huge priorities for investing in stores, right now most are still focused on the conceptual phase of the future of the store. They’re still trying to answer the basic questions about what they want the in-store customer experience to be. It’s sort of jumping the gun to start talking about technology solutions when retailers are trying to decide if they should price online and store the same or differently, or if they should start considering ship-from-store. Technology decisions are steps 15 through 20 while retailers are still talking through steps 1 through 5.

This is a problem for any event focused on the store, because these kinds of events are made possible primarily through the sponsorship of technology vendors. It’s difficult to sit through a product pitch for a solution that turns out to be only one symptom of a much larger and more complex problem – a complex problem that retailers are only in the initial stages of figuring out.

So what needs to be done? I think vendors need to set aside their lead generation goals and their expected return on marketing investments and help support store conferences that focus primarily on discussion and working groups. The going-in questions should take on issues like how to manage cross-channel incentives for store employees and how to deal with price transparency and mobile price comparison at the shelf. Where and how to deal with in-store pickup from online orders, and whether store inventory should be leveraged to meet online orders. Whether social and behavioral information captured from online shoppers can be used to improve the in-store experience. What role store employees will continue to play in that experience. How stores can be leveraged to provide a compelling local face to the retailer’s brand.

The point is, there are a million questions that need to be answered before retailers can realistically be expected to move on to making technology decisions. Vendors can avoid conferences like Future Store because they feel like retailers aren’t ready yet, or they can make the strategic investment that helps retailers get to the technology decisions faster.

Stores take a long time to change. And technology, especially in consumers’ hands, is now moving at a pace that is far beyond the pace that stores can maintain to keep up. That means the longer it takes for retailers to decide the role that stores will play in an omni-channel future, the larger the gap will be. I hope that Future Store has a future – because stores will need all the help they can get.