Prepare for the next era of retail!
The eco-evolution is a game changer, retail media becomes a storyteller, AI delivers buying excellence, and fulfilment systems get a makeover
While 2025 has been preoccupied with the rise of artificial intelligence, several new retail trends are poised to prove pivotal to the success of retailers as we move through the second half of the year and beyond.
Here, Rupert Firmstone, Senior Advisor and Global Head of PIM & DAM at Columbus, pinpoints the four key changes that will require retailers to adopt new strategies. From increasing regulatory and consumer pressure to the rise of retail media, quietly orchestrated GenAI operations powering retail, and managing pressing supply chain demands with order management systems.
- Nice-to-have becomes a necessity as climate-savvy consumers join forces
In 2025, sustainability in retail is now imperative, with 83% of consumers now believing companies should actively shape best practices around ESG issues. Sustainability is not just being pushed onto retailers by consumers, but by legislators too, requiring operational shifts. The eco-evolution roots much deeper beyond reducing emissions or replacing plastics; real impactful sustainable practices need to progress from the start of the cycle, from rethinking how products are sourced and designed to the end of the cycle, with returns.
Subscribe to TRBRetailers leading the sustainability renaissance are embracing initiatives such as recommerce through reselling used goods or facilitating low-impact materials. Some larger retailers investing in repair services to reduce environmental impact are H&M and Levi’s. Both brands are leading in not only durability, but also repairability, with the Right to Repair law in Europe coming into legislation from 31st of July, 2026. This will promote accessible journeys and expand product lifecycles to increase upcycling and repairs over discarding and repurchasing.
An additional legislation on the horizon is the arrival of digital product passports, which impact fashion, textiles, and electronics, requiring businesses to have full control over their data and the monitoring of imports, including CO2 footprint and supply chain traceability. It is no longer about staying compliant but earning trust with consumers. Technology such as AI is driving the eco-evolution, monitoring carbon scoring, and presenting transparency in greener operational blueprints. But there’s an equally piercing challenge in reverse logistics stemming from consumers to retailers. Returns continue to increase, specifically in fashion, and this brings with it a pressing carbon cost, with its expensive, environmentally-damaging system from packaging, transportation and repackaging. Interestingly, 76% of consumers consider free returns essential in their purchasing decisions, which proves the significance of returns for consumers when shopping.
Sustainability must now be integrated into retail strategy. The planet is a priority. In a world where consumers vote with their values and regulators sharpen their teeth, retail sustainability is no longer a differentiator. It’s a license to operate.
- Storytelling sellers – the rise of retail media
Retail media has progressed from an option to the main revenue stream for modern commerce, with a worldwide digital retail ad spend of 152bn USD. But retail media is more than a concept, it’s a window of opportunity for retailers and brands alike. Digital channels in the form of advertising or marketing promote retail inventory to a wider scope of more targeted viewers with personalised ads and open up revenue streams even further.
Retail media is now a mainstream source of the shopping experience, with frontrunners such as the e-commerce giant, Amazon. The future of retail heavily relies on digitally-integrated assets, which provide tailored experiences so that the best doesn’t feel like advertisements for consumers, but naturally catered shopping journeys.
The UK is the biggest retail media market across Western Europe’s big three (UK, Germany, and France), with $5.56 billion in ad spending for 2025 expected to increase to $6.52 billion in 2026. In such a competitive marketplace, brands and retailers need to be “retail media ready” with justifiable demand to match investing in a wider digitally-infused strategy for expanding operations cross-functionally from store to media platform.
Retail media isn’t just a monetisation strategy; it’s a digital transformative accelerator. It forces cross-functional collaboration, better data infrastructure, and a more agile marketing mindset. Preparation for the transfer to a new look for retail media requires an analysis of current marketing strategies and the gradual scaling up with testing pilots for smooth integration.
Retail media is much more than simply advertising, but a business model with a firm digitalised infrastructure. For smaller niche retailers, it’s an opportunity to partner with similar brands to enable both to collaboratively appeal to advertisers and scale sustainably.
Retailers must consider themselves as not just sellers, but storytellers.
- Generative AI in retail is about less flashy outputs, more quiet excellence
The AI conversation shifted from pilot possibilities to plausible scaling integration, which larger retailers are already implementing with AI agents storing product passports, monitoring inventory levels, empowering employees and serving customers’ needs through personalised GenAI-powered experiences. According to research, over half (54%) of retail marketers are using AI-driven personalisation to drive business growth. AI is no longer in its experimental phase, but rather deeply embedded into the systems that power retail.
For AI in retail, working practices speak louder than million-pound investments with little proven use case value. AI should enhance retail in eliminating monotonous systems such as stock management and smooth out not only retailers’ operations but also customer experiences. However, quiet excellence in AI integration overpowers flashy outputs. AI powers retail from the algorithms that optimise inventory replenishment to predictive models that estimate size preferences in reducing returns.
For example, multimodal AI is the system transforming retail consumer experiences through its capability to interpret text, image, voice, and even video. Customer journeys have changed to make retail media user-friendly, whether it is reverse image search, chatbots, or personalisation. Customers now feel not only seen but heard, and loyalty is beginning to lock in further, with more than 70% of consumers expecting AI to make customer service better.
However, for many retail organisations, AI still fails – not because the technology isn’t ready but because the organisation isn’t. Successful AI integration into retail business models requires complete collaboration and readiness, ownership needs to be managed, data assessed over instinct, models tested and deployed, and employees transparently updated with the entire process.
AI integration requires a secure data strategy that will support AI as not merely a tool but a team member in seamless retailing. Data holds the power to negate consumer needs and product details, but also the gateway for optimising sustainability. Take Decathlon, for example, which integrates AI into sustainability efforts through forecasting demand and reducing overproduction.
- Behind-the-scenes orchestration in Order Management Systems (OMS) to meet demand
Customer expectations have changed and reshaped modern retailing practices. The modern retail journey is anything but linear. A customer might browse online, purchase via an app, pick up in-store and initiate a return through a third-party locker. Behind the scenes, fulfilment systems must work overtime to ensure that the journey is seamless by allocating stock, synchronising channels and keeping promises.
Now, demand in supply is urgent, consumers expect everything instantly and catered specifically to their needs to secure their buying options—whether it is instant availability, accurate inventory details and even delivery options that mould around personal wants. This is where an Order Management System (OMS) proves a key technology that releases retailers from constraints and allows complex systems to be manageable and scalable.
This level of operational retail agility in product precision is essential in locking consumer loyalty, and a robust OMS is the secret recipe for modernising retailing practices.
Decathlon again is a key retailer implementing OMS data to promote sustainability through narrowing overproduction risks and managing them. Overall, the power of OMS revolves around experience rather than logistics and can even shape brand perception more than advertising. In a year where customer expectations are higher than ever, OMS is the engine of resilience.
Case in point: Tool Supplier
Consider a Columbus tool supplier customer as an example of how automation technology can improve operational efficiency. The tool supplier faced a set of complex circumstances, including the coronavirus lockdown, which led to a surge in demand, with order backlogs increasing by a factor of over 1000%. To resolve the backlog and optimise operational efficiency, they improved data quality and control by utilising a PowerBI platform to help autonomously manage operations. Not only could the tool supplier gain actionable insights for informed decision-making, but they could also make enhancements to the core ERP system.
Retail longevity and investment for the future
Retailers have an optimal window of opportunity to take the lead as innovative frontrunners in a shifting market landscape. The future of UK retail relies on futureproofing practices through sustainable operations, multichannel optimisation, seamless GenAI integration to power retail excellence, and a behind-the-scenes orchestration from automation technology.
It is time for UK retailers to start investing in their brands’ future for long-term industry stability, success, and growth.
