The Vision Summit, held this week in London, opened with Virtualstock CEO, Ed Bradley setting out his vision for the future in an AI world. AI search is coming fast and it’s going to turn ecommerce upside down – top tip, get your product data in order ready for when you can feed it into the LLMs!
What was most striking about this is that as we move to AI search, the inventory that’s important to retailers is their own and their 2P (drop ship) inventory. Marketplace inventory not so much, that’s because they don’t control how this inventory is priced or availability… in an AI world it’s all too easy for a marketplace seller to move their inventory to make it available in AI search and that’s not good for the retailer’s business.
It was a fast moving day with platforms including Asda, River Island, Matalan, Sainsbury’s Argos, Robert Dyas, Screwfix, City Plumbing, and Clarks all sharing their 2P platform success… and yes two things here to note – a lot of these names don’t sound like marketplaces and yes the audience were highly engaged with the opportunities presented. Sure, if you sell fashion you might not be that interested in Screwfix and Robert Dyas, likewise if you sell tools those two channels are of interest but perhaps not River Island, but the opportunities for brands and retailers are enormous, stretching far beyond the traditional eBay & Amazon’s we started out with 30 years ago.
With breakout sessions discussing everything from product onboarding to customer service in a dropship world, and a superb marketplace seller panel where Nobel Panacea, BShirt, Kukoon Rugs and Sweaty Betty were hosted by Linnworks CMO Georgia Leybourne (oh and a superb lunch!), if you missed this year’s Vision Summit, make sure you’re there in 2026…
…but in the mean time, come to ChannelX World on the 8th of October, where you can hear from Virtualstock, Linnworks and many more partners and channels to help you grow your business!
