Webinar: AI commerce in practice: what enterprise retailers need before AI scales by Octomedia

AI commerce in practice: what enterprise retailers need before AI scales

About

Discovery is only as accurate as your data.

When product info, prices, and inventory don't match across channels, the mess shows up in operations. It also shows up everywhere shoppers look. Search, social, and AI assistants can only show what you tell them.

This session is a working conversation, not a product pitch.

James Johnson and Holly Freeman from Shopify join Inside Retail for a live Q&A with retailers across Australia and New Zealand, moderated by Adam Thorn. Bring your actual headaches: peak traffic spikes, integration nightmares, getting your team on board, and keeping checkout reliable no matter what.

What you’ll leave with

- A prioritised view of risk: Where your catalogue, pricing, and inventory data usually breaks first (spoiler: it's under heavy traffic and in the integration layer).

- A practical bar for "AI-ready": The boring stuff that needs to work perfectly before AI recommendations make sense.

- A clearer path from launch to daily use: How teams actually use tools like Sidekick after the excitement wears off, and why adoption sometimes stalls.

When

Thursday, May 28, 2026 · 11:00 a.m. Sydney (GMT +10:00)

Agenda

Where things break at scale, and what to fix first.
How to build a case your CFO will actually fund (with numbers they care about).
What AI-powered commerce needs from your operation, while keeping the basics solid. Trust and fundamentals still determine if shoppers buy, not just if they find you.

Presenters

James Johnson

Director of Technology Services & Enterprise Merchants, Shopify

James is Director of Technology Services & Enterprise Merchants at Shopify. With 20 years of global retail and commerce experience as a practitioner (Michael Hill, Colorado Group and Virgin), a consultant (EY) and technologist (Demandware, Salesforce and Shopify), he understands the challenges that retailers and independent businesses face and helps them meet their customers needs by sharing insights, experiences, best practices and stories.

Holly Freeman

Senior Customer Success Manager, Shopify

Holly is a Senior Customer Success Manager at Shopify, partnering with ambitious household brands to scale across ANZ and expand globally. An operator, founder, and consultant, she's spent 10+ years brand side leading unified commerce at Assembly Label and Lucy Folk, building her own business, and consulting across lifestyle, wellness, and fashion verticals. Holly brings a full-stack perspective to the messy reality of modern commerce, helping brands unlock their potential through Shopify's enterprise solutions.

Adam Thorn

Managing editor, Inside Retail

Adam has worked for more than 50 major publications, including GQ, Esquire and The Sunday Times. He has curated and launched large and intimate events, edited multiple magazine titles, presented hundreds of podcasts and videos, managed large teams and moderated panels on stage.

Commercially, he has also created and strategised content for more than 100 major brands, including Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Twitter and the BBC.

Inside Retail

As a trusted voice to the industry for over 40 years, Inside Retail’s dedicated journalists and industry insiders deliver unparalleled news, analysis and trends on retail across the globe.

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