Growth Files #7 | Agentic AI in Retail: What Every Commerce Leader Needs to Know Right Now

Everyone said physical retail was dead. E-commerce would take over. Stores would become warehouses.

They were wrong.

80 to 85% of all commerce still either originates or ends in a physical store. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are going back to malls. And the retailers who wrote off the store experience are the ones scrambling right now.

#aisearch #airevolution #digitaltransformation

But here is what is actually changing everything behind the scenes.

Agentic AI.

The real operational version that is already reshaping how the world's biggest retailers run their supply chains, plan their assortments, serve their customers, and keep up with a market that is changing faster than any human team can track alone.

In this episode of Growth Files, Sathish Kumar, CEO of CommerceShop, sits down with Brandon Rael, globally recognised Rethink Retail Expert, NRF Top Retail Voice, and one of the most trusted names in AI driven commerce transformation today.

Brandon has led billion dollar business transformations for some of the most complex retail and consumer organisations in the world. He does not do theory. He does results.

Here is what we cover in this conversation:

00:00 Introduction and welcome
02:00 Why Agentic AI is fundamentally different from traditional AI and why 2025 was the year everything shifted
04:50 The single biggest pain point in retail that Agentic AI is built to solve and why most companies have been flying blind for decades
07:40 The crawl, walk, run approach every leader should follow before deploying AI in their operations
09:30 How Agentic AI builds the agility and flexibility retailers need to compete in a disruptive economy
11:40 Omnichannel trust and why inventory confidence is the foundation of a great customer experience
15:00 Why getting your data strategy right is the most critical step before any AI deployment
20:00 How the customer buying journey is evolving and what that means for retailers right now
25:00 Conversational AI and the new art of product discovery for customers
30:00 How to start small, pick the right use case, and prove value before scaling AI across the business
35:00 Which retail categories will be most transformed by Agentic AI: fashion, grocery, or electronics?
40:00 Will AI reduce retail jobs or create new opportunities for frontline workers?
45:00 How large retailers like Walmart are leading AI adoption and what mid-market retailers should do right now
50:00 The real reason AI fails inside companies and it has nothing to do with the technology
53:00 The stat that changes everything: 80 to 85% of commerce still runs through physical stores and Gen Z is going back to malls
54:40 Will Agentic AI eat into e-commerce or physical retail? Brandon gives a straight answer

Brandon's single biggest recommendation for where to start with Agentic AI: supply chain and inventory management. Because having the right product at the right place at the right time is still the only promise that actually matters to the customer.

This is a free, non-commercial, knowledge sharing conversation. Just one of the most credible voices in retail AI sitting down for a straight talking session on what is actually happening and what leaders need to do about it.

If you lead a retail, commerce, or consumer business and you are still figuring out where Agentic AI fits in your strategy, this is the episode to watch first.

Subscribe to Growth Files for more conversations with senior leaders across retail, commerce, and technology.

🎙 Guest: Brandon Rael, RETHINK Retail
🎙 Host: Sathish Kumar, CEO, CommerceShop
Connect with Brandon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonrael/
Connect with Sathish on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sathish-kumar-mariappan/

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Видео Growth Files #7 | Agentic AI in Retail: What Every Commerce Leader Needs to Know Right Now канала CommerceShop Hub