Technology Rewired: Commerce and Retail

How has the commerce and retail team changed across five eras?

1. Era 1 · On-prem

   Before 2005

   0.3

   Retail ran on store POS systems, buyers and merchandisers working from spreadsheets, and on-prem e-commerce platforms that needed a dev team for every change. Store managers handled staffing and stock, and a small web team kept the site alive.

   Prices changed when someone printed new tags. The catalog was whatever the merchandiser knew.

2. Era 2 · SaaS and cloud

   2005 to 2020

   1.2

   Hosted storefronts and marketplaces let small teams sell online. Roles split into e-commerce managers, performance marketers, marketplace specialists, and a fraud analyst working chargebacks. Knowing who the customer is became a real problem, as customer identification in retail lays out.

   Fraud and chargebacks became a daily job, and the storefront was only as good as the checkout and the ads behind it.

3. Era 3 · AI-assisted

   2020 to 2024

   1.7

   Recommendation engines, search ranking, and pricing models personalized the store. Chatbots answered order status questions, and voice shopping got its first experiments.

   Merchandisers still set the catalog, promotions, and policies. The models decided what to show; people decided what to sell.

4. Era 4 · Agentic

   2024 onward

   2.0

   Shopping agents now research, compare, and in some flows buy for the user, which I cover in agentic commerce. Merchants need machine-readable catalogs and checkout that can verify an agent acting for a real customer. The storefront stops being the only front door.

   The e-commerce team starts to look like a data and policy team: product feeds, price rules, return terms, and who is allowed to buy.

5. Era 5 · Next 5 years

   2026 to 2031

   3.1

   My bet: a meaningful share of purchases starts with an agent, and commerce teams add roles that manage agent-facing catalogs, payment authorization rules, and disputes when an agent buys the wrong thing. Voice and ambient shopping, from voice commerce onward, add more entry points, each with its own fraud profile.

Which commerce and retail software is being rewired?

No deep dives yet. The first ones are in the queue below.

Coming next

• Agentic shopping
• E-commerce platforms
• Product catalogs
• Inventory
• Order management
• Returns
• Loyalty
• Point of sale

Also wired into this category: Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM).