Retail reimagined: How your brand will connect with the 2030 consumer

What if your brand’s first touchpoint with a customer was through their smart mirror, which not only chose their outfit but knew what was missing from your customer's wardrobe and ordered it from you?

This isn’t science fiction. It’s a tangible vision of the near future, where connecting with customers means being seamlessly woven into the fabric of their daily lives.

This forward-looking perspective was recently laid out by Tobias Ring, Managing Director Commercials at SCAYLE, during a masterclass at Shoptalk. Using a "Future-Back Thinking" approach, he explores what the consumer journey of 2030 will look like and, crucially, what it means for your brand today. Below, we explore the key insights from his presentation on a future driven by AI and agentic commerce.

For the 2030 consumer, the shopping journey begins at wake-up. An AI-powered alarm syncs with a smart mirror that suggests outfits, creating an immediate touchpoint for your brand. In the kitchen, smart appliances automatically reorder groceries, shifting the point of sale from a planned shop to an automated background task. This hyper-personalised world is designed to help your customers navigate the “paralysis of choice” they increasingly face.

This seamless integration creates new opportunities for connection throughout the day. A commute can expose a customer to your brand through interactive ads, while a shopping trip becomes a hyper-personalised in-store experience where you already know their order history, style, and size. The vision is an environment where you will have new touchpoints for commerce embedded in every activity.

The day winds down, but commerce doesn't stop. A workout is guided by an AI, and a package your customer ordered earlier is waiting upon their return. Entertainment itself becomes a storefront. As content-driven commerce grows, your products could be purchased directly from a streaming service. For more complex needs, a customer can simply ask an AI for recommendations, like, “I’m going to a wedding in Italy, what should I wear?”.

This vision of the future introduces a paradigm shift from manual decision-making to what is termed agentic commerce. This is the evolution of shopping from an active, customer-led search process to a delegated task managed by a personal AI agent on their behalf.

These personal AI agents will be sophisticated systems that hold your customers’ preferences. An agent will be capable of understanding a complex request like, “Buy me Nike running shoes under €150, delivered by Friday.” It will then perform a cross-platform search, evaluate the options, and complete the purchase. The key question for you is: how do you ensure your brand is the one the agent chooses?

While this future is compelling, the "when" and "how" of its implementation remain foggy. Your focus today is likely on a different set of immediate concerns. Many brands are navigating a challenging market where global fashion revenue growth has stabilised in the low single digits. This slowdown, combined with high operating costs, is putting unprecedented pressure on your profitability. This drive for efficiency is so strong that some retailers expect their entire commerce team to be managed by less than one full-time employee (FTE).

This creates a difficult paradox: meet rising consumer expectations for convenience, while staying laser-focused on profitability. Your focus as a brand must therefore shift to efficiency and innovation. This is compounded by the reality that your internal teams are stretched thin and facing a backlog of critical IT projects, leaving little room to explore new ideas to support long-term growth and profitability.

Your journey to 2030 can start now, as AI is already delivering real value, particularly in your back office. In fact, the greatest initial impact of AI will likely be in boosting your back-office efficiency.

On the customer-facing side, you can already experiment with a new generation of AI tools that are changing how customers discover and interact with your products. Innovations range from AI-based image search, which allows a customer to upload a photo to find a similar item, to more immersive experiences like Virtual Try-On and conversational shopping assistants. 

Virtual Try-On (VTO), for example, is showing significant promise in tackling the challenge of fit. While overall usage is still growing, a high feature adoption rate of 32% among those who encounter it shows strong customer interest. More importantly, VTO is delivering powerful results: users who complete a scan have a 17% higher Add-to-Basket Rate. These customers are also highly engaged, uploading an average of 1.5 photos and generating 3.7 scans each, proving the feature's relevance.

Similarly, conversational shopping assistants are opening a new channel for deep customer interaction. This isn't about replacing the search bar; it's about serving a different need. 

While early versions of these assistants see lower conversion rates (1% from start to add-to-wishlist), it highlights a key learning: the opportunity is not to just process keywords like “white sneakers,” but to develop a smarter, more anticipatory AI that can act as a true shopping advisor.

The path to 2030 requires a dual focus: navigating the present while building for the future. The key takeaways for your brand are clear: consumer behaviour is fundamentally changing, and AI will be a game-changer for both how your customers shop and how your business operates. To succeed, you must build the flexibility and agility to adapt to this new landscape.

Your brand’s success will not hinge on a single piece of technology, but on fostering an interconnected and resilient ecosystem. It requires a strategic mindset focused on building operational agility, breaking down internal silos, and embracing data-driven decision-making. The future of retail belongs to brands that can balance the urgent demands of today with the incredible opportunities of tomorrow, transforming modern challenges into competitive advantages.