Why We Built Agentic Systems for Commerce
The story behind our most ambitious product launch and why the future of the CPG industry depends on it.
The World Changed Five Years Ago
The dramatic increase in digital commerce adoption post-Covid created seismic shifts that rewrote the rules of commerce, yet most consumer goods companies are still operating with playbooks from the previous era.
For example, 70% of US consumers use curbside or delivery features, which has extended digital commerce shopping down to the store level. When those customers reorder with a single click or search for a need (i.e. "wrinkle cream" or "breakfast bar") versus a brand name, traditional brand discovery becomes irrelevant.
The growth in digital commerce adoption also meant more channels to manage, yet consumers don’t need more of your products just because Walmart added curbside or local delivery. The net result is more cost for brands to sell the same amount to the same shoppers, who now have more ways to get what they want on their terms.
The uncomfortable truth: The shift to digital created more channels to manage even while the market size itself remained static, yet most consumer goods companies are still running their sales and digital commerce organization for a retail world that no longer exists.
The Problem Got Too Big
Here's what became clear as these changes accelerated: the scale of modern commerce operations had completely exceeded human capacity to manage effectively.
The fact is that most brands are actively managing only a fraction of their commerce operations at any given time. For many, they are updating at best 10% of their product pages on a bi-annual cycle, and only for their top set of retailers. Yet they also need to find the capacity to minimize OOS, rebalance excess inventory, manage store level SLAs, etc.
The issue isn't talent or tools. It's the fact that the model wasn't setup for a machine-scaled environment. Taking the approach of upgrading existing processes with AI-enabled tools will improve the legacy performance within functional silos but won’t address the scale challenges defining modern commerce competition.
An Existential Crisis
The financial results of this transformation tell a sobering story of an industry in crisis.
Major CPG companies are reporting mixed but concerning volume trends across core categories, with several industry leaders facing significant sales pressures. Companies like Kraft Heinz, Estée Lauder, Nestlé, and PepsiCo have experienced flat or declining sales volumes in key segments.
So, if established players are struggling, who's capturing that growth? First are private label brands, who focus on a single retailer limiting the scale challenge, that now outpace national brand sales growth 3.9% to 1%. Next is the third-party marketplace sellers, who can selectively target high value shelves and were born into this modern era of commerce, that now account for 62% of units sold on Amazon.
Beyond top-line pressures, CPG companies face systemic margin compression from rising retail media costs and operational complexity, creating cost curves that no longer align with revenue generation.
The result? A long tail of agile competitors can selectively compete and win share while traditional brands spread thin resources across an outdated model.
The Path Forward
The conclusion is obvious: incremental improvements to legacy commerce processes won't solve these systemic challenges.
The companies that recognize this transformation need and act decisively will thrive. Those that continue to focus on optimizing legacy processes will watch their market share migrate to competitors who are better suited for this new era of commerce.
Agentic Systems for Commerce represents our response to this industry inflection point. Not as another point solution, but a fundamental reengineering of commerce operations that matches the speed, scale, and intelligence required for modern marketplace success.