At a glance:

• More than a third of surveyed commerce leaders say key tasks are partially automated but still require manual checks. Many workflows still depend on a human proof step before go-live, according to the 2026 commerce readiness index.  
• Another 29% said data is scattered and stockouts show up after orders, turning routine pricing and inventory updates into avoidable cleanup work.  
• 34% of commerce leaders said dashboards are available, but teams are still forced into manual exports to confirm what they’re seeing.  

Retailers and brands have spent years layering ecommerce automation into pricing, inventory, listings, and media. But many still stop for a manual proof step before go-live.  

The double-check has not gone away. It often comes just before a team is ready to act. A price looks right in one system but off in another. Inventory looks stable until the channel view suggests otherwise. The team stops to verify the basics before moving ahead. That pause turns automated work back into manual work. 

Ecommerce automation still needs a proof step  

In the 2026 commerce readiness index, 34% of commerce leaders said key tasks are partially automated but still require manual checks. Nearly half of executives said 26%-50% of workflows still depend on spreadsheets, and repetitive tasks like manual data entry, and approvals.  

Promotions punish messy handoffs  

Marketing campaign promotions don’t leave much room for hesitation. Price, inventory, product content, and media all move at once, yet teams are often working against slower decision cycles: more than half of retailers said they act on meaningful performance signals within 48 hours, while brands are more likely to take three to five business days.  

The readiness assessment helps explain why: 32% said signals are spread across tools and reports, while 29% said they have dashboards and alerts but unclear workflows. When product feeds, pricing, availability, and catalog updates refresh on different schedules, a promotion can look ready until something slips and the team has to stop to confirm what is actually true. Rithum’s retail media guide describes the same problem from the campaign side: by the time the dashboard reflects it, time and budget may already be gone. 

Scattered data turns ordinary work into manual work  

The trouble is often small at first. A price changes here but not there. Inventory moves, but not everywhere at once. Reporting can show that something changed without showing where it began. In the index, 29% of respondents said stockouts appear only after orders come in. Routine work turns into cleanup.  

Dashboards lose their authority when something shifts  

A dashboard can feel reliable until something starts moving faster than your reporting can explain. When a product moves faster than expected, a promotion performs differently across channels, or a price update appears in one system but not another, the dashboard can flag the issue without showing its cause. The team has to look elsewhere to confirm what changed.  

The readiness assessment points to the same problem: 34% said core dashboards are standardized, but edge cases and new channels still depend on manual exports they know are unreliable. Another 26% said the data they work from is incomplete, late, or manually tweaked, but they still use it because it is all they have. The gap is not only in dashboard coverage, but in confidence in the data underneath it. 

Rithum’s retail media guide points to what’s missing: product context alongside campaign performance. When teams can see which products absorbed the budget, what changed in price or availability, and which issues need attention first, reporting stays useful while teams are still deciding what to do.  

The window to act is getting tighter  

The gap becomes more expensive during peak shopping events. In the report, more than half of retailers said they act on meaningful performance signals within 48 hours, while brands are more likely to take three to five business days.  

Rithum’s Prime Days 2025 data shows how timing can be problematic. One brand held spend until conversion and AOV recovered, then pushed harder. Another brand pivoted mid-event toward back-to-school assortments, bundles, and sharper titles and keywords, finishing 15% above the prior year’s Prime Day. The advantage was a timely read on what had changed, while there was still room to respond.  

What teams should standardize now to achieve the benefits of ecommerce automation  

Instead of adding more ecommerce automation, retailers and brands should look at where to cut back on verification work. Start with the handoffs that break trust most often. Set clear source-of-truth rules for product data, pricing, and inventory so a routine channel change does not trigger a manual review. Exceptions should surface early, with enough context for teams to understand what changed without going back into spreadsheets.  

Where Rithum helps by providing automation tools for ecommerce  

Rithum helps cut down the verification work that piles up between systems by offering automation tools for ecommerce. Error tracking flags mismatches earlier. Automated tools and workflows reduce the same reconciliation loop playing out over and over. Connected commerce and media insights bring pricing, listings, inventory, fulfillment, and performance into a view teams can actually use.  

For retail media teams, product changes and campaign performance sit closer together, so it’s easier to spot what shifted, what needs attention, and where to act first. As a result there are fewer exports, less back-and-forth, and less time spent confirming what should already be clear.  

Download the full 2026 commerce readiness index to see where retailers and brands are still losing time, and what it takes to move faster without adding risk. Then take our readiness assessment to see where you stand in comparison.  

The post The hidden cost of ecommerce automation is verification work appeared first on Rithum.

Every commerce team has a peak season playbook covering Black Friday, Prime Days, back-to-school and other big tentpole events. But we’d bet our bracket that few commerce teams strategize for the day UConn beats Duke.

We analyzed six weeks of Rithum network data over the course of the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, looking at order patterns across states, channels, and game days. What we found was something rarely see quantified this cleanly about how Americans shop, and what drives their purchases.

The quick takeaways:

• Thirty-one of 32 tournament states had shopping rates above their baseline on game days.
• On Sweet 16 Thursday, national ecommerce orders ran 40% above the pre-tournament average.
• The day UConn beat Duke, Connecticut’s shopping numbers did the wave right along with the fans.
• In all four Elite 8 matchups, the state that shopped more was the state whose team won, even adjusting for population.

This is a small data snapshot, but it tells a story of a much bigger moment. Even as AI optimizes your feeds, tariffs reshape your margins, and new channels multiply your reach, there are non-high-tech, non-global-impacting signals that still matter. Like when a state collectively loses its mind over a basketball win.

The brands that can read those moments—and move fast enough to meet them—have an edge that can’t be planned six months out.

Connecticut broke its own record the day UConn beat Duke

On the day UConn knocked off Duke in the Elite 8, ecommerce orders in Connecticut hit the state’s highest single shopping day across our analyzed six-week window. That Sunday came in 12% above the next-highest volume shopping day and 32% above a typical Sunday. In fact, 10 of the top 11 highest-shopping days of the last 6 weeks in Connecticut were during the tournament.

And just to be clear, this isn’t a basketball merchandise story. Connecticut didn’t suddenly buy 32% more jerseys. The entire state’s ecommerce activity surged—across categories and channels—because Connecticut was having a great week.

The commerce data predicted every Elite 8 winner

In all four Elite 8 matchups, the state that shopped more per capita in the 6 weeks analyzed was the state whose team won.

Connecticut out-shopped North Carolina. Michigan out-shopped Tennessee. Illinois out-shopped Iowa. Arizona out-shopped Indiana.

Now, we’re not suggesting you build your bracket prediction model on this data. But we are saying that this basketball story is disguising a commerce story about what always-on retail has made possible. A fan in New Haven checking the injury report at halftime is two taps from buying something. Maybe they didn’t plan to shop, but hey, their phone is already in their hand, and if the right ad has been built for the moment, or the right TikTok influencer pops up . . .

Commerce used to require intent. Now, especially with social shopping, it has essentially become ambient. We can’t say the tournament created demand, but it made opportunities for shopping. And understanding this is key to knowing where to show up next to meet those cultural moments.

California spiked 38%. And their team lost

When Saint Mary’s tipped off in the Round of 64 on March 19, California’s ecommerce orders surged to a 38% spike over its average Thursday order rate and had the biggest same-day jump of any state with 10M+ residents. St. Mary’s competitor’s home state of Texas was the only other large state that came close, with a 34% spike.

Saint Mary’s, a 7-seed, lost that same day.

California didn’t shop because its team won. California shopped because its team was playing on Californians’ screens.

Anticipation and access drives commerce. Participation and brand presence drives commerce. Being emotionally invested—regardless of outcome—drives commerce. The brands positioned to capture these moments aren’t the ones running the best sale. They’re the ones who showed up in the right place, with the right product presence, consistently, when the emotion and moment was already there.

What this means beyond March Madness

One caveat: orders were trending upward across the whole 6-week period for every state, tournament or not, so some of this reflects seasonal momentum. But the day-specific spikes—40% above normal on Sweet 16 day, for example—suggest something else happening on top of the trend. The correlation between game days and order volume is too consistent, across too many states.

The NCAA Tournament is a six-week, state-by-state experiment in what happens when consumer attention concentrates around a shared cultural moment. And the answer, across 31 of 32 states, is the same: commerce goes up.*

So, what do you do with this information, other than have a cool factoid for your next cocktail party?

The FIFA World Cup kicks off June 11, spanning 16 cities across the US, Canada, and Mexico for 39 days. Six billion people are expected to watch. America’s 250th anniversary arrives July 4th with a year of cultural programming around it. The Tour de France runs through July, and in recent years has been drawing its largest American audience yet.

Every one of these is a moment where consumer attention spikes. And as the NCAA data shows, when attention spikes, so do orders.

The brands that follow a retail calendar alone—through peak season, off-peak season, promote, pause—will miss the revenue that cultural moments create. The brands with the channel infrastructure, inventory visibility, and pricing flexibility to move when consumers are paying attention are the ones who capture it.

Three things worth doing before the next moment arrives:

1. Map your commerce calendar to cultural moments, not just retail tentpoles. The World Cup, America 250, Tour de France, and Fashion Week are all coming in the next six months. Each one is a potential Connecticut-level spike.
2. Make sure your channel presence is ready. Game-day-style lifts happen fast. Brands that are already visible on the right marketplaces with accurate inventory and optimized listings are there in the right moment.
3. Make sure you can see, and follow, the data in the moment. Rithum’s network data showed the tournament signal clearly because we were looking at order patterns in-depth. Your own commerce data will show you which moments move your buyers only if you’re set up to see it. The data is always there. The question is whether you’re able to read it accurately, with the right partner.

The retail calendar tells you when to run a promotion. The cultural calendar tells you when your buyers are paying attention. Rithum can help you connect all of these calendars and moments to be ready when and where the opportunity lives.

*Maryland, home of UMBC, was the exception. UMBC bowed out in the First Four; their orders dipped a fraction of a percent.

Methodology note: Data sourced from the Rithum commerce platform across 8.2M unique products and 20K+ suppliers. Order rates are normalized to per 100,000 residents to enable state-by-state comparison. Some client data excluded to preserve anonymization. Results reflect the composition of brands and retailers active on the platform during the period analyzed.

The post The Shopping Bracket: What the NCAA tournament tells us about today’s commerce appeared first on Rithum.

To no one’s surprise, AI talk was everywhere at eTail West 2026. But the sessions that stuck with me focused more on returning to basics: Product information, checkout, measurement, customer trust, internal readiness and meeting the customer where they are in their shopping journey. Even as shoppers start their journeys using the advanced technology of AI, those basics carry more weight than ever. Here’s what I’m still thinking about after soaking up all eTail West had to offer.  

AI answers are a storefront now  

As the referral to external websites from LLMs decreases rapidly, retailers and brands need their products to be the answer when shoppers use AI, not a click along the way. Jessyca Frederick, Director of Digital Product at Wine Enthusiast, said: “LLM priority #1: answer your questions completely . . . prevent linking out.”  

Jessyca talked about how these systems gather information: “RAG agents pose fan-out queries to search engines.” RAG stands for retrieval-augmented generation. It means the system searches for sources, pulls what it needs, then writes using what it found. A fan-out query is one question that triggers several searches. Think of one shopper question, many search runs.  

“The more fan outs you appear in, the more likely you’re to be cited,” Jessyca said. 

AI answers reuse what they can read and trust. Product catalog management accuracy with an emphasis on data hygiene is key. The fit, price, availability, policies must be accurate. If your details are incomplete, inconsistent, or stale, the answer engine moves on.  

Jessyca suggested putting a window for time for “freshness” of that information of 3 months. She emphasized that teams need a routine for keeping key pages current across the places customers browse. The biggest thing to remember is that AI bots simply skip information they can’t access. Jessyca advised to put critical product details in formats they can read, keep pages fast, and clean up broken paths. 

Shoppers move. Your product story has to beat them there. 

The “everywhere customer” panel put a name to what many teams see in their analytics and support queues. With Jodi Williams from Ulta Beauty, Lauren Price from COS, Feliz Papich from Crocs, Jason O’Toole from Gildan, and Jacob Ross from PebblePost, this panel all agreed that brands need to stop thinking they can tell consumers where to shop. Discovery happens in one place, validation in another, purchase somewhere else. A TikTok Shop presence can end up influencing an Amazon transaction.  

Instead of focusing on where the conversion came from, the panel advised asking what shaped it. Measurement is important, but post-click attribution gives the final click most of the credit, even when the decision was made three touch-points earlier.  

“Post click conversions are heavily flawed.” according to the panel. Instead, the panel talked about the importance of incrementality. Measure lift against a baseline. Set up a holdout, compare outcomes, and see what changed. Try to reduce guesswork. 

Checkout decides revenue  

Once discovery is multi-surface and measurement is catching up, it’s tempting to treat checkout as an afterthought. The checkout panel pushed back on that.  

Pat Suh from Affirm (joined by Jack Phung from Newegg and Henry Spear from JD Sports) said, “Ideally the AI already knows the options, but we aren’t there yet.”  

While agentic commerce grows in popularity to discover products, consumers still abandon carts when checkout creates friction or surprise. Brands and retailers often treat checkout as a problem to solve later, then watch conversion drop after they’ve invested in everything upstream. It’s an expensive way to learn the lesson.  

Instead, panel members recommended that to reduce surprises, brands should put key payment details where customers look for them, make choices clear, and keep terms readable.  

Personalization needs intent, not a dossier  

Anna Downs, Digital Personalization Manager at The North Face, noted that consumers want to shop without feeling monitored. and Michiel Dorjee from Optimizely said, “A lot of people don’t like the creep factor of knowing too much about my persona.” The better target, they argued, is intent. “Think about it more of their intent and serve that to them faster, then their experience improves.”  

Intent is what the customer signals in the moment: what they search, what they click, what they compare, what they’re trying to solve. That’s more useful than demographic profiles and less likely to make someone feel surveilled.  

Automation raises output, then it raises the stakes  

The AI panel with Keri McGhee from Attentive, George Davis from Cozy Earth, and Tommy Kowalski from HeyDude covered what teams are truly using AI tools for: scaling creative volume, speeding up lifecycle messaging, and turning one idea into hundreds of variations. The panel cited AI-driven lifecycle journeys producing 200-300% revenue lifts in some implementations.  

Despite that growth, the panel noted there are still retention risks, because consumers will leave the brand if they have a bad experience with AI. Brands and retailers should understand what automation can do and where a human needs to be involved. Going back to the basics: Customers have always remembered when a problem is handled poorly. AI is no exception.

Trust keeps working after the purchase 

There is no replacement for consistency, according to the authenticity and transparency in retail panel. Angela Clark from Patagonia, Catherine Hayden from Kate Farms, Elton Graham from Sur La Table, and Sara Jensen from Hugh & Grace talked about the importance of brand stories that customers can recognize and believe.  

The big takeaways:

• Details like packaging inserts and QR codes drove high engagement to further brand loyalty.
• Customers want context after purchase. They want to understand what they bought and why it exists. It’s another way to retain customers.
• Clear context reduces returns, reduces support load, and strengthens repeat purchase behavior.  

Internal readiness decides who moves fast  

With all the technology changes happening so fast, it’s easy to fall into a reactive stance. A panel with Jennifer Conrad from Inc., Steve Schwartz from Art of Tea, Jonathan Weiss from Raw Sugar Living, Bridgit Lombard from Francesca’s, and Ron Tarter from MNEE Pay spoke about resilience as brand culture. 

“Give yourself permission to pause between stimulus and action.” They called that habit equanimity—the steadiness of mind to absorb new information before reacting. Brands and retailers need to move thoughtful, not make decisions in a half-panic. Be thoughtful and move faster when you need to, but don’t default to a reactive stance. 

The CMO panel echoed the same idea from the growth side. Kate Huyett from Bombas, Aaron Magness from Full Glass Wine Co., Ed See from Zeta Global, Richard Jones from Wunderkind, and Taryn Rayment from J.McLaughlin talked about what it takes to create profitable customers. The work crosses functions: inventory planning, finance, sourcing, marketing. When those conversations stay siloed, growth slows. The marketers gaining ground are the ones willing to get into other teams’ processes and build from there.  

In 2026, brand and retailer teams are fixing the basics. That way, any automation they use is working with accurate data. Looking for continued thought leadership? See how we’re partnering with Amazon MCF on stage at Shoptalk Spring 2026. 

If you’ll be at upcoming industry events, we’d like to compare notes. Meet with Rithum at Shoptalk Spring, booth #1775, March 24-26 in Las Vegas. 

The post What ecommerce teams are focused on right now in 2026 appeared first on Rithum.

In January, retailers usually brace for a mid-winter slump, as shoppers tighten their wallets after the holiday spending binge.

But Rithum’s January 2026 ecommerce data tells a different story: shoppers are hunting strategically instead of hibernating. They’re shopping with clear intent in an ecommerce landscape that’s fundamentally different than any we’ve seen before. And the channels and products they’re choosing reveal telling patterns about where ecommerce could be heading.*

January 2026 ecommerce overview: What the data reveals

Fashion doesn’t take a January break, but it does lean towards the more practical. Boots of some kind (winter, work, fashion, etc) represent 16% of all categorized purchases, while women’s tops and blouses captured another 3%. Combined, those two categories make up nearly one in five items sold in January.

This aligns with broader retail patterns: major retailers run sales with huge discounts throughout January, making it a strategic shopping month. January is when savvy shoppers stock up at discounts.

It’s also highlighting what we were tracking in 2025 as a fundamental shift in retail dynamics: consumers have learned to work the calendar, comparison shopping rather than impulse shopping or waiting for peak seasons and big tentpole events. This consumer awareness causes retailers to compete against each other with aggressive promotion instead of relying on traditional seasonal demand and consumer loyalty to drive sales. Peak seasons are spreading across the year, with the old playbook giving way to year-round promotional warfare.

Back to January trends: after boots and shirts, health and beauty led the way, with vitamins and minerals rounding out the top three categories. Though minute in size, vitamins made up a mighty 3% of ecommerce purchases in January. As shoppers update their wardrobe to look better on the outside, those vitamin purchase spikes likely reflect January health goals to feel better on the inside.

But just because consumers are looking chic and feeling good doesn’t mean they want to brave the cold. January sold 8% more books than June, possibly proving that beach read season loses to winter reading coziness.

Or maybe it’s that the January books are actually beach reads: luggage purchases doubled in January, compared to June. While summer is often considered travel season, January travelers are evidently updating gear for their winter escapes (and maybe packing a good read in that new luggage), or even preparing well in advance for that summer getaway.

The continued social commerce surge

As we saw with boots and blouses, fashion dominated January. And that dominance connects directly to where consumers are shopping. According to Rithum’s data, fashion performed 2.4X better on social commerce than traditional ecommerce last month, accounting for 30% of sales volume on TikTok Shop, compared to just 12% of volume on more traditional ecommerce marketplaces.

The difference isn’t only about the platform (although social selling is increasingly becoming it’s own marketplace). The broader truth is that regardless of where you’re selling, the principles that make social selling work—authentic storytelling and video-first product demonstrations, for example—are becoming table stakes. Embracing these approaches, whether on social platforms or your own site, is a great way to create trust with customers in an increasingly competitive market.

What January 2026 tells us about the year to come

Ecommerce has evolved beyond simple channel optimization. It requires reading between the data points for details that don’t reveal themselves in raw numbers alone.

At Rithum, we work to spot signals before they become obvious, connect disparate patterns into actionable strategies, and help you pivot as consumer behavior shifts. These are just some of the trends our data can pull—when we dig into the pipes behind your commerce engine, we can get granular and dive deeper into where strategies can improve.

The complexity of modern ecommerce isn’t something you need to navigate alone—it’s why we’re here as a dedicated guide who understands both consumer data, evolving channels, and how the underlying stories can be your most valuable competitive advantage.

*Methodology Note: This analysis is based on data sourced from the Rithum commerce platform, representing 8.2M unique products and 20K+ suppliers generating billions in global sales across ecommerce channels. As is the case with all data of this kind from any commerce platform, results reflect the composition of brands and retailers using the Rithum solution and may not represent all ecommerce activity.

The post January 2026 ecommerce trends: Early signals for 2026 appeared first on Rithum.

The most significant changes in retail aren’t always the flashiest. I’ve sat on both the retailer and tech side of the table, and I’ve learned that trends in this space often grow gradually. Paying attention to the smaller shifts can alert you to the seismic shakeups that lie ahead. 

When Sam Howard, Rithum’s Head of Merchandising, and I joined the Retaili$tic Podcast, we covered a lot of the trends impacting the industry. Some were major focal points across the industry, while others were smaller ones we’ve kept an eye on at Rithum. Here are five that I’ll be watching after our discussion on Retaili$tic—and what lies ahead for each.

1. The brand vs. retailer divide is disappearing

Not long ago, there was a distinct difference between brands and retailers. But that line has become increasingly blurred: business models are blending, and so are the problems leaders face. 

As Sam said on the podcast, the continued adoption of direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategies is what’s closing the gap: “There’s seldom a differentiation between a retailer and a brand anymore because so many brands are leaning into DTC expansion and creating a connection with the customer . . . most brands are retailers in and of themselves.” 

This strategic convergence means that the pain points once unique to either brands or retailers are now shared. Marketplace integrations, fulfillment, returnpolicies, and retail media are all creating challenges for businesses looking to connect with customers, and it’s why companies need platforms and partnerships that can flex across models. 

2. Merchants are analysts

There’s a persistent myth that merchants are purely creatives: taste-driven, product-focused, instinct-led. But that’s only part of the picture. The reality is that modern merchants are weighing increasingly sophisticated analytics as heavily as intuition. 

During the episode, I spoke on my experience with merchants embracing data: “Merchants are completely data-obsessed. Their job is so dependent on reading the data and following it. For both profitability and performance … they’re looking at a lot of things.” 

Supporting merchants’ data-driven decision making is where Rithum shines. We help merchants become better analysts by surfacing performance metrics beyond sales. Our clients understand what their customers need, and Rithum provides data-based insights that empower them to meet those needs. 

3. Smart retailers are turning physical space into strategy

Physical stores aren’t dead, but they’re not just stores anymore, either. Retailers are reimagining how their square footage serves marketing, fulfillment, community, and experience. 

I shared her vision for the future of physical retail, and I stand by it: Today, when you go to a store and try an item on, but you don’t necessarily leave with it. You order it online and it gets sent from somewhere else. That’s where I see it heading: physical locations becoming more of showrooms and experiences. 

This isn’t a shocking shift, as it aligns with what we hear from clients: Gen Z wants more than a transaction. They want an experience as much as they want the product, if not more. Retailers are embracing this and experimenting with spaces that function as marketing, content, and fulfillment centers all at once. 

4. The future of retail media is generative and intent-driven

AI has flipped retail media on its head. It’s no longer just about ads; instead, a strategy to meet today’s search behaviors needs to encompass all kinds of discovery avenues.  

Traditionally, retail media was all about search engine marketing for brands. Now it’s shifting to what we’re calling GEO, or generative engine optimization. When you type into ChatGPT, ‘Find me these running shoes under $150,’ you have a much more focused intent. That’s different than showing up on a site to browse. (I dive into this more on the podcast, give it a listen if you want more details). 

This is a huge shift. It changes how brands build product pages, structure metadata, and leverage tools needed to get found. At Rithum, we’re already exploring how to support brands as shoppers turn to AI tools for recommendations, and are ready to help those who want to revamp their strategies. 

5. Consumers want to buy from brands that reflect their values

Consumers’ preferences extend beyond product quality and pricing. What ultimately fosters lasting loyalty (particularly among Gen Z) is alignment on values and identity. 

“Especially for younger generations, people want brands and retailers to play into their value set,” Sam explained. “The more brands and retailers can reflect those values—in events, in partnerships—the more authentic it feels. I think that authenticity is just so valuable.” 

Our returns data backs this up. 88% of consumers said they expect free returns, but more than half said they’d accept restrictions if framed as environmentally responsible. This is where loyalty lives now—in values, not just in products. 

Staying a step ahead of emerging trends 

These shifts are redefining how brands and retailers operate. At Rithum, we work to make that transformation easier. Whether it’s aligning inventory models, surfacing performance insights, or helping brands show up where discovery happens, we equip our clients with the tools to stay ahead. 

Check out the podcast for the full discussion, and reach out to our team if you want to talk about these trends in more detail—we’d love to hear what’s on your mind. 

Some quotes have been lightly edited for context and clarity. 

The post The Future of Retail Media & 5 Industry Shifts I’m Still Thinking About After the Retaili$tic Recording appeared first on Rithum.

At Rithum, AI is more than a buzzword; it’s foundational intelligence our platform uses to power 2.4B daily transactions for 40K+ brands across hundreds of marketplaces. With the rising complexity of ecommerce and shifting consumer shopping patterns, RithumIQ’s AI capabilities are key to enabling speed, accuracy, scalability, and profitable growth for our clients.  

But impactful AI doesn’t happen by accident. It requires more than clever models. It demands leadership with deep domain knowledge, strategic execution, and a clear focus on value creation. At Rithum, we have a full team of people who are doing just that: led by Ali Irturk, PhD, Rithum’s Chief Technology Officer, and Sebastian Spiegler, PhD, Head of AI.  

Ali brings two decades of applied AI leadership to his role, with a PhD in Computer Science and a track record of scaling intelligent automation, computer vision, and data-driven platforms at enterprise scale. He’s built and led technology teams through rapid growth, always with a focus on translating AI from theory into tools that drive performance and profitability. 

Seb, who holds a PhD in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, blends deep research fluency with startup agility. His background spans everything from genomics and large-scale language models to founding a Generative AI company focused on product discovery—now part of Rithum. He’s also long been an investor and advisor in the AI ecosystem, giving him a wide-angle view of where the technology is going—and how to make it practical today. 

Together, they bring a real-world ready, research-informed, results-driven approach to scaling AI in commerce and building Rithum’s AI-powered technology. Here’s what they had to say about some of the ways AI is changing ecommerce and how it’s evolving alongside the industry. 

Q: Seb, what’s a common misconception about AI in commerce? 

One big misconception is that AI is plug-and-play or that it fully automates entire workflows. That’s rarely the case. Effective AI deployment relies on domain expertise, strong data infrastructure, and human oversight. Without that foundation, AI often fails to deliver meaningful results. Impactful AI demands more than hype—it demands vision, disciplined execution, and trust. 

Q: Ali, how does your team approach AI differently at Rithum? 

We approach AI as a systems problem, not a feature set. That means embedding AI directly into commerce workflows—whether it’s product discovery, catalog optimization, or advertising performance. My career has been about scaling AI to solve operational problems in high-stakes environments, and that same mindset drives our strategy here. Our goal isn’t to build demos. It’s to build durable, measurable outcomes that evolve with our customers’ needs. 

That’s why we’ve built infrastructure like the AI Magic Mapper, which accelerates product onboarding with AI-driven categorization and field mapping, and RithumIQ—a scalable, multi-modal Knowledge Base that powers smarter product enrichment and attribute validation in the backend of our solutions. These aren’t standalone features, but  systemic enablers. They support human-in-the-loop workflows at scale, improve data quality, and make AI outputs useful in the real world. We approach AI with a mindset of operationalizing intelligence, not just showcasing it. 

Q: Seb, you’ve been in AI for a long time, before it was on most people’s radar. What are you most excited about across the AI universe—inside or outside of commerce? 

I’m particularly interested in the convergence of multi-modal AI and large-scale knowledge systems. When you can make sense of structured and unstructured data together, that opens up real possibilities, especially in the dynamic ecommerce environment. But broadly speaking, what excites me most is AI’s potential to augment human creativity and decision-making. That’s where the value is. 

Q: Ali, Rithum has an AI Center of Excellence. What’s its most important guiding principle? 

Bridging research and operations. AI has the most impact in the loop, not in isolation. It’s about aligning with business goals, embedding AI expertise into cross-functional teams, and creating feedback loops that allow for fast iteration. At Rithum, our AI Center of Excellence is built on the philosophy of practical innovation, deeply embedded in execution. 

Q: Seb, headlines about AI can feel overwhelming. What should non-experts keep in mind? 

Most headlines exaggerate. Either they oversell AI’s capabilities or gloss over the implementation realities. The truth is: AI requires quality data, defined goals, and human judgment. Behind every success story is a system of people, processes, and platforms working in harmony. So a bit of scepticism, and a lot of curiosity, is always a good starting point.

Q: Many companies talk about using AI. What does Rithum actually do differently?

Ali: A lot of companies are either experimenting with AI at the edges or using third-party tools that aren’t built for commerce complexity. What sets Rithum apart is that we own the full data and delivery stack, and we’ve embedded AI directly into it. That gives us the control and visibility to drive performance where it matters: onboarding speed, listing accuracy, inventory health, advertising ROI. 

Sebastian: And we design with scale and accountability from the start. Our AI systems are not feature experiments. They’re engineered as part of platform infrastructure. That’s why tools like our AI Magic Mapper and RithumIQ at the center of our solutions aren’t just technically interesting: they’re business-critical. We prioritize human-in-the-loop design, ethical guardrails, and architecture that can grow with our clients. That’s the real differentiator. 

Want to learn more about what makes AI at Rithum different? Check out our RithumIQ page.

The post What Makes AI Actually Work in Commerce? A Q&A with Rithum’s AI Leadership appeared first on Rithum.

Once a definitive moment in digital retail—capable of delivering up to 40% of annual revenue for some—Amazon’s Prime Day has undergone a massive shift this year.  

The shift started from the moment the sale was announced. Amazon extended this year’s event to four days and pulled it forward by a week compared to 2024. On paper, this flexibility should’ve created new opportunities. In practice, we suspect it introduced some consumer fatigue and new competition. Walmart, Target, and Nordstrom ran overlapping sales, dividing consumer attention. Internally, our Rithum teams noted that clients approached the week less with anticipation and more with obligation. Many of the sales had to be submitted right as tariffs news was creating unease, and The Super Bowl energy of past years was gone. In its place: calculated caution and high alert about ways to pivot quickly if performance underdelivered. 

And that caution was smart. Prime Day 2025 didn’t deliver the kind of breakout performance of years past. But it wasn’t a failure either. It was a recalibration, and a sign of things to come. Below are five strategic lessons from 2025’s Prime Day Event that ecommerce marketers, operations leaders, and retail media strategists should carry into the rest of the year’s tentpole sales. 

Lesson 1. Prime Day isn’t the Super Bowl anymore. It’s the preseason. 

In prior years, Prime Day was trusted to provide 20–40% of  annual GMV for some brands and retailers. This year, it functioned more as a seasonal trigger than a standalone sales boom. With the event extended to four days and moved a week earlier than in 2024, many shoppers (and sellers) approached it differently.

The urgency that once defined Prime Day was diluted. Instead of seeing it as an isolated event, many of our clients repositioned it as the kickoff to back-to-school and Q3 seasonal cycles. For some, that meant liquidating summer inventory. For others, it was a way to test demand signals, creative strategy, or pricing elasticity ahead of Labor Day and holiday seasons.

Takeaway: In a crowded promotional landscape—including overlapping events from Walmart, Target, and Nordstrom—Prime Day and its competing sales events are now a starting point, not a finish line. 

Lesson 2. Spend was up, but conversions were down. Agility mattered. 

Across retail marketplaces, Rithum performance teams reported a common pattern: ad spend increased (especially for the extension of sale in days from 2 to 4), but conversion rates lagged. This wasn’t a media execution problem, rather, it reflected more cautious, inflation-conscious consumer behavior. Although GMV overall was down across the first three days of Prime, GMV jumped +38% YoY on day four. Our takeaway? Shoppers built carts early, browsed across platforms, and often delayed purchases until the last day. They were comparing and pricing for the best value and delaying until they knew they’d get what they needed, for the price they wanted.  

At Rithum, our teams worked with clients on a daily basis to track the conversion activity of the consumer to make informed decisions of ad budget. This could not be a spread spend like peanut butter across 4 days type of approach. Each day brought unique activity for each client, and we had to be extremely agile to navigate the environment to still bring in revenue and GMV wins.  

Takeaway: This shift forced many to move beyond lower funnel paid search services. We helped many teams pivot to mid-funnel and audience-driven tactics, including DSP and visual advertising tools, which delivered better engagement in an environment where urgency was absent. Our clients that succeeded treated every day of the four-day event differently, allocating budget based on actual conditions, not pre-set plans. 

Lesson 3. Essential products outperformed, even without heavy promotions 

One of the clearest signals from this year’s event was the strong performance of household consumables, even without Prime Day badges or deep discounts. According to one Prime Day tracker, household products accounted for 29% of purchases, and 51% of shoppers purchased something they’d been waiting to buy until it went on sale. We saw this across our data, as well: Zep, a household cleaning supplier client of ours, saw steady sales throughout Prime Day(s) due to consistent shopper demand for cleaning and maintenance goods. These items outpaced discretionary categories such as apparel and beauty, where GMV was down 10-20% across the sales. 

Takeaway: This shift emphasizes a move toward needs-based shopping and margin-conscious purchasing. In many cases, consumers weren’t chasing deals—they were using Prime Day to stock up on items they normally get in-person or at grocery stores. It’s another reminder that ecommerce channel management must account for inventory prioritization and margin forecasting—not just promotional planning. 

Lesson 4. Gen Z Is changing the rules of retail engagement 

Gen Z, now the largest behavioral shopping cohort in the U.S., is not buying into urgency-driven sales tactics the way previous generations did. This group expects authenticity, sustainability, and transparency from brands and tends to favor first-party channels, DTC brands, or retailers that match their values. 

What this means for future Prime Days and similar events: discounting alone won’t win. Success requires upper-funnel engagement, differentiated brand stories, and multichannel awareness. Brands that leaned on algorithm-driven promotion or last-click attribution this year likely missed a sizable portion of Gen Z shoppers. Building trust now requires authentic storytelling, not just sale banners.  

Takeaway: Enhancing PDPs with lifestyle content, sustainability claims, or social narrative going forward is a key opportunity for reaching this demographic. Creator aligned promos using Rithum’s TikTok shop integration, for example, along with transparent pricing and fulfillment options during a time of economic uncertainty, will all resonate loudly with this influential buying group.  

Lesson 5. Strategy beat scale. Platform readiness is key. 

Not all missed performance was due to consumer behavior. This year, some brands hesitated to participate because of tariff-related uncertainty around the time Amazon required Prime Day deal submissions. Others faced technical or operational hurdles around deal eligibility, badging, or shipping compliance. These platform-level shifts meant that participation wasn’t just optional—it was conditional on preparedness. 

Takeaway: This is where ecommerce order management and real-time marketplace intelligence mattered. Rithum clients leveraged dynamic spend control, algorithmic forecasting, and feed management tools to reallocate efforts mid-event—shifting between brand marketplaces, social commerce platforms like TikTok, and more stable categories. That flexibility allowed teams to protect margin while capturing engagement in a fractured retail landscape. 

Prime Day has evolved. Have you? 

Prime Day 2025 served as a clear tipping point. Consumer spending and shopping have changed, and instead of anticipating patterns, it’s more important to align spend with actual market behavior, adapt to consumer signals in real time, and leverage tools to remain agile across retail media, marketplaces, and direct channels. 

Whether you’re optimizing product feed management, refining your advertising tools, or preparing for peak season performance, now is the time to reframe events like Prime Day as catalysts for smarter, multi-channel success. Post-prime day is the time to evaluate your feed health and listing accuracy ahead of H2/Q4 selling, review your operations to improve real-time performance shifts, and use these lessons to get ready for Q4 promotional layering around Black Friday, Cyber Week, and other big events.  

Reach out here—we can help.  

Tom Quilty is Senior Manager, Technical Account Management at Rithum. 

The post 5 Lessons from Prime Day: What Worked, What Didn’t, & What it Means for The Rest of 2025 appeared first on Rithum.

Annual ecommerce sales have surpassed $1 trillion, yet 60% of retailers and brands still struggle with profitability. This striking contradiction was at the heart of a recent webinar I moderated, featuring three industry experts who brought unique perspectives on scaling challenges. 

Rithum’s Senior Sales Director Nathan Bird joined Lauren Rowinski, General Manager of Multi-Channel Solutions at Walmart, and Matt Ligon, Senior Director of Channel Partnerships for Walmart Marketplace to discuss this profitability paradox.   

Here are the three biggest takeaways from their conversation that are still sticking with me: 

Takeaway #1: Growth Without Foundation Creates Operational Chaos 

Although it sounds counterintuitive, success can actually slow brands down. Nathan explained the common scenario many fast-growing brands face: 

“Growth usually means more channels, more SKUs, more people, and more data sources. And without a strong foundation, teams are left doing patchwork: updating product information, chasing inventory numbers, or merging reports manually to understand performance.” 

–  Nathan Bird, Senior Sales Director, Rithum

This fragmentation creates what our experts called the “Stack Overflow,” where teams are logging into five to six different systems daily just to manage their ecommerce operations. According to live polling during the webinar, 60% of attendees were experiencing exactly this challenge.  

And the hidden costs go far beyond manual labor. Lauren emphasized how disjointed systems impair decision-making speed: “Acting and operating with speed can set sellers and brands apart. Adoption of new APIs, products, and listing strategies really start to compound over time.” 

The solution isn’t necessarily fewer tools. It’s ensuring those tools communicate effectively. As Nathan noted: “What’s critical is that your systems are talking to each other and not past each other, and most importantly, speaking the same language.” 

Takeaway #2: Visibility Is Essential to Profitable Scaling 

Visibility, specifically, the ability to see profitability by SKU and by channel in real-time, emerged as a common thread between stories of scaling successfully in the webinar. 

Nathan shared a case study of Flat River Group, an ecommerce distributor in the toy category. “As their business grew, so did their operational complexity. While they had logistics and supply chain in place to support growth, they lacked the technical infrastructure to integrate with new marketplaces at speed.” 

Using unified platform automation, Flat River expanded to six new marketplaces, including Walmart, Target, eBay, Macy’s, Michaels, and Oriental Trading, in just eight months, all without hiring additional team members. 

The key differentiator wasn’t just automation itself, but the visibility it provided. “The majority of clients we speak to struggle to see profitability by SKU and by channel, and are often flying blind,” Nathan explained. “That’s usually where the operational cracks start and where the fastest improvements come from.” 

This visibility enables what Matt called “playing offense” rather than defense: “You really want to operate in a state where you’re playing offense,” he said, emphasizing how unified data enables brands to act with confidence rather than react to problems. 

Takeaway #3: Multi-Channel Infrastructure Is Becoming Table Stakes 

The third major insight focused on the evolving role of fulfillment and logistics in ecommerce success. Rather than viewing different marketplaces as separate challenges, according to Walmart and our own Rithum team, winning brands are treating them as components of a unified customer experience. 

Lauren highlighted how Walmart’s approach exemplifies this shift:

“Through our Multi-Channel solutions, sellers can leverage their Walmart Fulfillment Services inventory for orders from other marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Shein, Temu, and social media shops, like TikTok and Instagram.” 

– Lauren Rowinski, General Manager of Multi-Channel Solutions at Walmart

This strategy addresses one of the webinar’s key findings: fragmented fulfillment creates poor customer experiences and drives up costs. The solution is about meeting customers where they are in their purchasing journey. 

As Matt explained: “Rather than trying to change customer behavior, you can really insert yourself directly in their preferred purchasing path. Many consumers start with product searches directly on marketplaces, bypassing search engines or individual brand websites.” 

The numbers support this shift toward multi-channel infrastructure: Walmart alone sees approximately 270 million customers and members shop across their stores and e-commerce channels each week.  

The brands we see succeeding in 2025 are building systems to reach customers across all marketplace touchpoints. Want to dive deeper into how they do it? Watch the full webinar recording to hear more from these experts. 

(Some quotes have been lightly edited for context and clarity.) 

Jennifer Connally is Product Manager at Rithum.

The post The Profitability Paradox: 3 Key Insights from Walmart and Rithum on Solving Ecommerce Growth Challenges in 2025 appeared first on Rithum.

The big summer sales surge is about to begin, with Amazon Prime Day kicking off July 8-11, Target Circle Week (July 6-12), and Walmart Deals (July 8-13). It’s the big show that sellers have spent months prepping for: and now, deals are locked, inventory is in place, and the curtain is about to rise. 

But for sellers in top-performing categories across Amazon, Walmart, and Target, the real work is just starting. 

High-performing categories can be high-risk for sellers 

We expect that apparel, electronics, and home goods will once again be the most competitive categories. If you’re managing those listings, errors in availability, pricing, or categorization could lead to missed sales in a high-traffic window. 

This isn’t just about what sold last year. It’s about what every other brand is focused on now, and how well your team is positioned to compete in categories where margins are tight, consumer attention is limited, and mistakes can be costly. The strength of your listings, product feeds, retail media campaigns, and fulfillment operations will determine whether you break through or are overlooked during this peak sales event. 

What we can learn from 2024 sales data 

Clothing/shoes/accessories was the top-selling category for Amazon during Prime Day July 2024, up 16% year over year, according to Rithum data. This category is one of the most operationally intense, with large SKU counts, high returns rates, and customer expectations around fit, speed, and accurate presentation. 

On the flip side, clothing/shoes/accessories category also top the list in overall return volume, according to Rithum’s 2025 Global Returns & Profit Impact Report. Common drivers include poor fit, vague sizing charts, or missing details in product images or descriptions. 

The mix of strong sales and high return rates puts margin at risk. Listing accuracy is more than a conversion play. It protects post-sale margin. 33% of shoppers return items when the product doesn’t match the description or photos. In high-paced sales cycles, it’s even more important for product titles, images, size guides, and fulfillment settings to be locked in before traffic spikes. Rithum’s AI Magic Mapper helps automate setup and reduce manual errors across large, complex catalogs—especially in apparel and consumer electronics. 

To avoid fulfillment at a loss, brands can also rely on Rithum’s Price Protection. This safeguard prevents costly pricing errors before listings go live, reducing the chance of cancellations, penalties, or margin hits during high-traffic windows. 

Last year, consumer electronics/photo was the second-highest performing category globally. Its popularity is tied to high purchase intent, where shoppers arrive at Prime Day already prepared to buy TVs, headphones, tablets, and smart devices they’ve researched in advance, according to Wiser. These buyers come with high expectations. Listings often require exact specs, compatibility info, and current images. Inaccurate details can result in returns or negative customer reviews (electronics also ranked among the top categories for return volume, according to Rithum’s return report. 

What to check before Prime Day begins 

If you’re in one of the high-volume categories—or expecting to be—make sure your setup is solid. Use this checklist to prepare: 

• Review listings for accuracy, detail, and compliance with marketplace standards 
• Use listing error detection to flag and resolve content or formatting issues 
• Check inventory levels across fulfillment partners and channels 
• Confirm routing, delivery windows, and stock buffers 
• Adjust retail media spend to align with margin and availability targets 

With Prime Day running four full days from July. 8-11, brands need staying power across the event. Budget pacing, creative adjustments, and close monitoring of seller notifications and listing status will help maintain visibility and performance from start to finish. 

Pricing and inventory decisions should be dynamic, especially with tariffs adding cost pressure and shoppers reacting quickly to price changes. Repricer automation can adjust pricing in response to competitor moves, inventory levels, and preset rules. These tools can also be reviewed after Prime Day to refine strategy ahead of back-to-school and holiday cycles. 

Inventory alerts help protect both revenue and spend. Low stock warnings prompt action before products sell through. Sellers can pause ads, shift budget, or trigger replenishment with minimal disruption. 

Once Prime Day starts, there’s little time to correct the course. Rithum’s Advisor can help you respond in real time and guide post-event optimizations using actual sales data. 

Why localization matters for global sellers 

In the U.S., the top Prime Day categories mirrored global trends: apparel, electronics, home goods, and automotive. In the U.K., toys and outdoor gear climbed. Germany saw growth in beauty and wellness. 

These differences matter. Even when SKUs are consistent, listing requirements often aren’t. Shipping dimensions, voltage compatibility, ingredient disclosures, and delivery expectations vary by region and channel. So do packaging rules and marketplace standards. 

Rithum gives brands the tools to localize at scale. Product content, fulfillment logic, and taxonomy mapping can be adjusted for each market without duplicating work or managing disconnected systems. That reduces error and accelerates speed to market. 

How to get more from your retail media spend 

With this year’s Prime Day event extending longer than the typical 2-day time frame (and Walmart extending their sale event across 6 days), brands will need to be flexible with their approach and budget. Beyond scaling when demand spikes and pulling back when stock runs low, it is important to do a larger audit of the competitive landscape to understand which sellers are offering the most compelling discounts and how those offers are appearing across marketplaces. 

“Speculation this year of less 3P sellers active due to tariff impact provides an opportunity for other 1P and 3P brands and sellers to carve out more market share due to less competition,” says Meghan Barden, Director of Global Retail Media at Rithum. “Understanding the entire competitive landscape and overall activity each day of the Prime event is now more important than ever, and we are advising our clients to have an agile approach to the sale from a budget and overall advertising perspective.” 

Rithum connects retail media ad strategy to live product data from our marketplaces feed in our proprietary platform, allowing teams to respond to what is happening in their catalog rather than relying on fixed plans. 

Here’s how to stay in control: 

• Shift spend based on organic lift: Move budget away from products that are already gaining traction 
• Pause ads for low inventory: Avoid paying for clicks on items that are nearly out of stock 
• Align with margins: Factor in fees, storage, and shipping costs to support profitable outcomes 
• Adapt mid-campaign: Adjust bids and targeting based on current performance 

Retail media should support strong product performance and work symbiotically with organic product optimization efforts for a successful presence in Prime Day.  

Walmart and Target reflect, but don’t replicate, Prime Day 

Walmart and Target both saw strong summer sales in 2024. Their top-performing categories were similar to Amazon’s, but key differences stood out. While apparel, home goods, and electronics remained competitive, each retailer had different standouts. 

Target gained traction in general merchandise and industrial products. Walmart stood out in automotive and mass-merchant categories, helped by strong omnichannel promotions and in-store pickup options. 

Success on Walmart, Target, and other marketplaces, takes more than duplicating your Amazon playbook. Each has its own taxonomy, fulfillment expectations, and content rules. Rithum helps sellers navigate these requirements with platform-specific templates, listing validations, and customized routing strategies. 

For Walmart, Rithum’s integration upgrades give brands access to additional tools, including: 

• Multichannel fulfillment that supports store pickup and delivery 
• Walmart Review Accelerator to boost review volume and visibility 
• Lower-cost shipping through Walmart’s carrier network 

These upgrades enable teams to manage listing accuracy and delivery performance more effectively, especially during peak traffic events like Prime Day. When every platform plays by different rules, having the right structure in place keeps your products shoppable and compliant across the board. 

These upgrades help teams manage listing accuracy and delivery performance more effectively, especially during peak traffic events like Prime Day. When every platform plays by different rules, a flexible structure keeps products shoppable, compliant, and positioned to perform. 

Post-event, the work continues. Reviewing performance metrics and analyzing cancellation and return rates can uncover where expectations fell short or exceeded expectations. Segment-level insights from tools like Rithum Report Center help identify which products overdelivered and which need attention. For teams looking to scale these efforts across marketplaces, Rithum Managed Services supports listing, fulfillment, and campaign management with the consistency and coverage that high-volume events demand. Applying these learnings now sets the foundation for stronger execution in back-to-school, and peak holiday season. 

Learn how Rithum can help. 

Top 5 categories by region and retailer: Prime Day 2024 

Based on Rithum’s 2024 Prime Data, here are the top five categories sold by region and retailer: 

Amazon: Global 

1. Clothing / Shoes / Accessories 
2. Consumer Electronics / Photo 
3. Home / Kitchen 
4. Office Products 
5. Automotive / Motors / Marine 

United States 

1. Clothing / Shoes / Accessories 
2. Consumer Electronics / Photo 
3. Office Products 
4. Home / Kitchen 
5. Automotive / Motors / Marine 

United Kingdom 

1. Toys / Games / Hobbies / Crafts 
2. Clothing / Shoes / Accessories 
3. Home / Kitchen 
4. Consumer Electronics / Photo 
5. Sports / Outdoor Equipment 

Germany 

1. Consumer Electronics / Photo 
2. Home / Kitchen 
3. Clothing / Shoes / Accessories 
4. Beauty / Health / Personal Care 
5. Sports / Outdoor Equipment 

 Walmart 

1. Consumer Electronics / Photo 
2. General Merchandise / Mass Merchants 
3. Automotive / Motors / Marine 
4. Beauty / Health / Personal Care 
5. Clothing / Shoes / Accessories 

Target 

1. General Merchandise / Mass Merchants 
2. Clothing / Shoes / Accessories 
3. Consumer Electronics / Photo 
4. Home / Kitchen 
5. Industrial / Scientific 

 Cameron Sutton is Senior Manager, Strategic Account Managment at Rithum. 

The post 2025 Prime Day Primer: What to Fix Before the Sales Surge appeared first on Rithum.

Retail has a daily complexity problem: too many products, too much data, and not enough insight to act fast. From overflowing inventory to mismatched product listings and product disappearing margins, operational challenges are costly and constant. 67% of brands cited product content optimization as their top profitability challenge, due to rising customer expectations and outdated tech, according to Coresight Research.

RithumIQ, the foundational layer of intelligence built into the Rithum platform, was designed to solve some of the biggest operational headaches for retailers and brands: product categorization and profitability benchmarking. 

Make smarter inventory decisions with Rithum AI 

RithumIQ helps brands better understand what products to keep, adjust, or remove from inventory. Instead of trimming entire categories or gut-checking what might work by relying on outdated reports, retailers and brands can make proactive choices based on clear data patterns.  

RithumIQ: 

• Uses a multi-language large language model (LLM) trained on commerce-specific data so it can adjust listings based on language and regional standards   
• Combines AI embeddings for smarter template mapping   
• Integrates human-in-the-loop (HITL) feedback to improve accuracy over time   
• Is benchmarked across 50 channels with 70% top-five prediction accuracy 

Why it matters for retailers and brands: 

• Launch faster on channels like Zalando, OTTO, La Redoute, Amazon, Walmart, and Google  
• Improve search visibility and conversions with higher listing quality  
• Automatically comply with local marketplace data requirements  
• Drastically reduce manual effort and errors 

Real-World Example: Instead of removing an entire category because of returns, one European fashion brand used Rithum to single out just a few high-return SKUs. In another case, updated descriptions for apparel fit led to higher conversions and fewer returns. 

Get profitability benchmarking that goes deeper than a spreadsheet 

Even the most polished listings and inventory plans can fall short if you don’t know where you’re losing margin. While other tools hand you raw data, Rithum’s AI delivers granular SKU and variant-level analysis to identify underperformers, predict assortment success, and benchmark performance against peers. Highlight exactly what’s costing you money and see how to fix it.  

RithumIQ identifies and assesses: 

• High-return SKUs and variations (e.g. size or color mismatches)  
• Root causes of returns (like fit descriptors or faulty product data)  
• Future assortment recommendations using predictive modeling  
• SKU-level profitability (costs, fees, refunds, conversions)  
• Peer benchmarking based on cross-network insights 

Why it matters for retailers and brands: 

• Improve margins by focusing on high-performing SKUs 
• Avoid over-discounting with smarter pricing models 
• Cut returns by identifying and fixing product issues 
• Align teams across finance, merchandising, and operations 

Real-World Example: Instead of assuming jeans are being returned because of pricing or product type, one brand used Rithum AI to discover how fit descriptors, such as slim or tapered fit, were the real problem. Once added, return rates dropped and conversions increased. 

See what your data has been trying to tell you. Schedule a demo of Rithum’s AI today. 

Sebastian Spiegler is Senior Director, Artificial Intelligence at Rithum.

The post How RithumIQ, the AI Engine at the heart of Rithum’s platform, gives retailers and brands the insights they’re missing appeared first on Rithum.