Digital Retail and Global Ecommerce Trends

The CommerceNext Growth Summit is an annual NYC gathering of the digital retail community. It has always been a fantastic gathering of digital leaders and this year was no exception. As always, we are looking for two types of insights and takeaways from a trendsetting conference like this: what proof points validate our current thinking on retail trends and secondly, what are new trends and insights that catch our eye and warrant further investigation.

Confirming our Gut Feel

• Tapestry’s Avinash Kaushik (author of Occam’s Razor blog on data science) emphasized the importance of pre-testing brand creative. This is not new. What was compelling is his case for leveraging AI tools on large digital platforms (Meta, TikTok) to deepen your understanding of target consumers. He states that 70%-90% of the information on your brand comes from outside sources, much of that due to the creator economy’s impact on how we consume brands. For short term actions, brands should use AI on major platforms to identify purchase intent and refine personalization. He also emphasized the importance of partnering with HR to celebrate taking calculated risks – a key part of building a data and testing culture.
• Omnichannel Successes: Jon Kosoff, CDO at Boot Barn, noting their store-first emphasis on sales shared how store layouts as inputs to their AI agent are key for customers and store associates alike for efficient wayfinding, or in-stock information. It builds enthusiasm for the AI tool and also contributes to ongoing associate training.
• Stuart Hogue, SVP at Lands’ End confirmed what we observe with brands deploying multiple channels: “We hyper curate our assortments for each channel. Different on Amazon versus Nordstrom. The challenge is mining data across channels.”

Eyebrow Raising Ideas and Case Study Findings

• IKEA’s US Chief Commerce Officer, Antonella Pucarelli, shared Ikea’s use of AI for Customer Experience — a proprietary tool for project planning via a room scanner. She emphasized the importance of having the right content on the back end such as great video solutions. Given IKEA’s commitment to spending $2B to grow the US market, we look forward to seeing more of their famous store innovation (formats, tools, integrations).
• Operational efficiency via AI was the emphasis at Wayfair, where their CTO, Fiona Tan, shared how accuracy has improved for robust product descriptions coming from tens of thousands of vendors. She also highlighted Wayfair’s use of AI to power a “human experience” using product installation videos as an example.
• Tumi’s digital growth focus has been on Amazon, where they recently conducted a test of streaming video to drive branded traffic. The results were compelling. Among consumers who watched the video through completion, not only was there a 12% lift in brand searches on Amazon (vs YTD), brand searches rose on Google and at Tumi.com. Leveraging existing creative assets on Amazon is part of ongoing CX improvements to the Tumi branded page on Amazon, a trend we closely follow.
• Finally, the most compelling Agentic AI presentation was from AJ Gergich from Botify who showed an interesting case for brands to rethink their DTC sites, optimized for AI bots (e.g., enrich structured data. Bots don’t read Java and they don’t know when products are on sale, or in stock). The concept of an AI-based “fan out search” places AI in between your brand and your target customer. As Agentic AI driven traffic continues to grow, and you’re worried about clicks being down but impressions are up, it’s time to optimize your site experience for AI bots.

Global Ecommerce Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You

I was on a webinar panel hosted by global translations company Acclaro, joined by Miles Paterson, the CEO of Global Access, a leading cross-border ecommerce platform. Key takeaways included:

• global brands continue to fuel international growth in spite of the tariff driven trade wars
• per Global Access, 80% of brands in their network are seeking new markets to sell in this year
• global leaders continue to raise the bar on a localized customer experience as a means of driving brand understanding and to nurture loyalty – not only with translation and payments, but through a holistic look throughout the customer journey and their localization roadmap.

You can find the webinar recording here for those who missed the live event. Interested in global growth strategies, digital and more? Or if you’d like to share your global growth story, the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum (GELF) wants to hear from you. Contact Jim Okamura for more information or an assessment of your global growth strategies.