Retail’s Next Edge: Thriving in the Unpredictable

I grew up playing sports, and one lesson stuck with me was that if you're chasing someone, you're already losing. Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky put it best: "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."

That same principle separates today's retail leaders from everyone else. While some brands are still reacting to yesterday's trends, the top companies are already headed to where the customers are.

The $1 Trillion Problem: Why Old Retail Playbooks Fail

Some retailers are still holding on to their old marketing strategies. For instance, some are making decisions based on last season's data, while in reality, with social media and economic swings, trends are changing overnight. Annual planning cycles also tend to be slow and ineffective as customers' interests shift constantly. Retail dashboards have some limitations, as they only show what has already happened, lack real-time updates, and highlight problems without offering solutions.

The cost of these failures is staggering and cannot be ignored. According to the IHL Group, stockouts and overstocks cost retailers over $1 trillion globally annually. However, a report from NVIDIA showed that 69% of retailers who adopted AI last year saw revenue increases and 72% cut operating costs.

AI retail is thriving as leaders are already reinvesting their gains back into smarter systems, creating a virtuous cycle. This means the gap is not only growing but accelerating. Sticking with old retail habits is making businesses less competitive and slowing growth.

How Winning Retailers are Playing the Game

Prominent retailers are not eliminating old structures, but are integrating them with smarter systems that learn, adapt, and act fast.

FLO: The Store That Learned to Think Ahead

When FLO replaced stale sales data with AI-driven forecasting, they increased their availability from 71% to 94% and their lost sales dropped from 15% to 3%. Their inventory accuracy jumped to 94%, while profits increased without adding complexity.

Best Buy's BOPIS Bet

Before COVID, Best Buy noticed that their customers wanted to buy online and pick up in store. While other retailers were still figuring things out, Best Buy had already set up their BOPIS (buy online, pickup in store) system. When the pandemic made curbside pickup a necessity, they were ready, while competitors scrambled to catch up. This proved that great retailers don't just react to change, they see it coming and prepare before it happens.

What Needs to Change—and How to Start

This isn't about "adding AI" or launching a task force. It's about rethinking how your business operates, moves, and decides. The old way relied on static forecasts and quarterly planning cycles, but the new approach uses dynamic, signal-driven predictions and real-time test-and-learn loops. Where retailers once made reactive inventory shifts, they now deploy predictive allocation with auto-replenishment.

Centralized, top-down decisions are giving way to distributed teams with clear testing guardrails. Most importantly, instead of drowning in data without action, leading retailers now use systems that convert insights into daily action. What slows teams down isn't a lack of ideas; it's the friction between knowing and doing.

The Further Difference: Where Strategy Meets Execution

At Further, we're not just building for speed but also enabling retailers to deliver the personalized, seamless, revenue-driving experiences that the modern shoppers expect. When your data is connected, your systems are aligned, and your teams are unblocked.

• Deliver recommendations that convert, not just "feel relevant."
• Personalize promos, pricing, and messaging in real time—not weeks later.
• Make omnichannel feel like one brand, not five disconnected silos.
• Scale efficiently without burning out teams or adding more tools.

This is what intelligent operations make possible. Most retailers want this shift but they lack the engine to power it. In a fast-changing world, the real advantage is navigating the unpredictable. Further helps you own the unknown.

The Bottom Line

AI in retail is already here, reshaping the game in real time. The stores and brands that are leading the way are already using AI to work smarter, know their customers better, and sell more. Meanwhile, those that are slow to adapt are losing ground every single day. The truth is winning retailers use AI to save money, then reinvest those savings into even better tools and create a cycle of success.

Those stuck in the old ways face higher costs, missed sales and shrinking profits. The biggest difference is speed. Fast-moving brands act on live data; slow ones are still looking at yesterday's reports. The only remaining choice is to start using AI now or get left behind as others rewrite the rules. Contact us to learn more about how AI is transforming the retail industry.