As AI reshapes shopping, RithumLIVE highlights a new era of faster, more flexible commerce. Featuring insights from Walmart, Target and eBay, RithumLIVE events spotlighted shifting retail trends and new AI-powered solutions that reduce product onboarding from 40 hours to under eight. Rithum, the leading global commerce solutions provider, brought together retail and technology leaders at its RithumLIVE 2026 events in London and New York to examine how AI is reshaping commerce. Across the two events, the company unveiled new solutions designed to accelerate channel expansion, shared early results from its AI-powered catalog technology and hosted discussions with major retailers including Best Buy, American Eagle and JCPenney about emerging shifts in consumer shopping behavior. "Retailers are facing a fundamental shift in how consumers find and buy products, and the next battle for market share may be won long before a shopper reaches a product page," said Lou Keyes, CEO of Rithum. "As AI introduces new ways to discover and evaluate products, brands need to rethink what it means to be visible and accessible. In 2027, success won't just be about having the right products. It will be about making sure those products can be discovered wherever the shopping journey begins. That's exactly the challenge we're navigating alongside customers, and why the conversations and innovations shared at RithumLIVE are so timely." At RithumLIVE London on September 30, the company unveiled Rithum Commerce to complement RithumIQ, Rithum's intelligence engine announced last year - two solutions designed to help businesses expand into new sales channels more efficiently. Rithum Commerce's agentic catalog engine, Harmonizer, automatically adapts product information to meet different channel requirements, reducing work that previously took weeks to hours. Early pilot results also showed that 94% of products were ready for listing in less than a day. RithumIQ draws on insights from more than $55 billion in annual gross merchandise value to help businesses identify promising products and channels for profitable growth. Building on the announcements in London, RithumLIVE New York on October 15 brought the conversation to the challenges and opportunities facing retailers as AI changes how consumers discover products. Leaders from Walmart Marketplace, Target, eBay and other major retailers discussed emerging shopping behaviors and the operational demands of reaching customers across multiple channels. Forrester's Sucharita Kodali also examined the realities of agentic AI in retail and what businesses should consider as the technology develops. "The way consumers discover products is changing faster than many brands can adapt," said Kim Miller, Chief Marketing Officer at Rithum. "We're entering a world where the path to purchase is no longer predictable, and being present where shoppers are today won't guarantee visibility tomorrow. As we head into 2027, the brands that win will be the ones that can move quickly as new shopping behaviors emerge. It was encouraging to see so many major brands on that path at RithumLIVE."

Rithum wins Walmart's first Marketplace Solution Provider of the Year. Two sellers share where their time goes before holiday peak season. September 15, 2026 Reading Time: 5 minutes Walmart named Rithum its first-ever Marketplace Solution Provider of the Year this month at the Let's Grow! 2026 Walmart Marketplace Seller Summit in San Diego, recognizing more than 14 years of work together on programs including Multichannel Solutions and Customer Favorites. Rithum Chief Revenue Officer Greg Banning pointed to the sellers behind it, calling them "the reason this partnership works." Sellers like Mary Beth Carson and Joe Caldwell joined Jenn Connally, a product manager at Rithum, for the session, "How specialty and industrial sellers are growing on Walmart through catalog and pricing." Carson, director of ecommerce at Wood Expressions, manages about 1,000 board game SKUs across five marketplaces. Caldwell, director of ecommerce at SIM Supply, manages an industrial catalog of roughly 700,000 items across eight marketplaces. Connally works with sellers launching and growing on marketplaces, and she started the conversation by questioning a common assumption about what drives growth on Walmart. When sellers talk about winning on Walmart, the conversation often jumps straight to advertising. While advertising is important, Rithum Holdings, Inc. is finding that sellers are winning in less glamorous areas. Catalog and pricing tend to be the levers that decide whether you're eligible to be seen and whether you convert. - Jenn Connally, product manager, Rithum Where the growth came from. * Wood Expressions paired Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) with advertising. Ad spend and WFS that gives listings the Walmart+ badge lifted conversion in a way neither move managed alone. * SIM Supply sets a floor and a ceiling, then lets Walmart price between them. Those boundaries are built in Rithum and passed to Walmart, which handles the repricing in between. * Both sellers combined Walmart programs rather than betting on one. The results came from stacking programs and measuring what worked. How Wood Expressions grew Walmart sales 88% by pairing WFS with advertising. Carson's team measures every marketplace on whether it grows sales and whether it protects margin. WFS fees came in a dollar or two below the competing service the company was using, and roughly five dollars below what it cost to ship from her own warehouse. Walmart puts WFS rates at 15% below the competition on average. WFS did not boost sales at first. Wood Expressions ran it for a stretch without much change in volume, and advertising had already solved the harder problem of shoppers finding the catalog at all. Conversion was the piece that stayed flat, until Carson's team started putting ad spend behind WFS listings. WFS items display a badge on the listing, the signal Walmart+ members look for when deciding what to buy. Walmart says items with that tag and a two-day delivery promise average 50% GMV growth. The WFS and advertising combination was one of the key drivers Carson shared onstage in September, when she detailed how her team achieved 88% year-over-year growth. When Rithum Holdings, Inc. advertise a WFS product with that Walmart+ badge, its conversion rates have increased significantly. Rithum Holdings, Inc. feel that that combination of WFS and the advertising is the reason Rithum Holdings, Inc. has grown 88% year over year. Rithum Holdings, Inc. has never experienced that level of growth on Walmart, but Walmart is now its fastest-growing channel. - Mary Beth Carson, director of ecommerce, Wood Expressions Walmart's holiday guidance pushes sellers to send inventory into its fulfillment centers well ahead of the October and Annual events, which is what puts the badge on a listing in time to matter for peak. Carson's team runs the WFS fulfillment center inside Rithum, where it also gets restocking and sales data. Wood Expressions protects wholesale relationships by holding prices steady across channels. Wood Expressions sells wholesale to accounts ranging from mom-and-pop shops to big box retailers, and those buyers watch what the company charges on marketplaces. As a premium brand, it needs them to trust that the price they buy at is not being undercut online, which is why Carson calls pricing integrity "everything to us." Her team is proactive about weeding out unauthorized sellers who undercut it. Pricing otherwise stays consistent across her marketplaces, with slight adjustments only when data shows an item resonating with one platform's customers. Every one of those prices runs through a single system. "Rithum is our source of truth," Carson said. "Every image, every piece of product data, every price flows through there." That premium stance kept Wood Expressions out of coupons and promotions for years. Carson reconsidered once she saw her customers growing more price-conscious, and rather than commit the holidays to an untested idea, she ran promotions during Walmart's summer deals first. The results were strong enough to change her Q4 plan, and board games sell heavily enough in the fourth quarter that she wanted the data in hand before Walmart's October event. "We are a premium brand, and in the past we didn't offer discounts or coupons or promotions. But we know that our customers are more budget-minded now. We tested that theory during summer deals, and we did see the impact. We are going to lean into that in Q4, especially for October deals and Black Friday and Cyber Monday." - Mary Beth Carson, director of ecommerce, Wood Expressions SIM Supply builds its Walmart price floors and ceilings inside Rithum. Caldwell tests every new Walmart program by asking whether it lowers the referral fee. The Walmart incentive program does, and SIM Supply forwards those savings to its customers instead of keeping the difference. "It's what we do with those incentives that really counts," Caldwell said. "Rather than just use it as margin and pocket it, we reduce the price of the product. It makes it quite a bit more competitive." Caldwell calls Walmart his number two channel by volume and his number one focus by time spent, and pricing is where most of that time goes. SIM Supply treats shipping, commission and every other cost as a variable, then runs those variables through Rithum business rules that set a minimum and maximum price on every item and pass them to Walmart. "Rithum is our data warehouse. It's where we keep all of our pricing and all of our special deals," Caldwell said. SIM Supply removes manual steps from its order process ahead of peak. "Automation is the number one priority across our whole ecommerce group right now," Caldwell said. Damaged shipments were an obvious place to start, since each one generates a service ticket and a replacement order somebody has to place by hand. His team flags those orders and reships automatically where it can, so a replacement is often already moving before the customer sees a damage notification. Caldwell described the approach as designing the manual work away, and his team applies it anywhere someone has to place, track or fix an order by hand. Service reps also sit in SIM Supply's ecommerce technical meetings, where a problem with a vendor, a carrier or a single item reaches the technical team directly. They can change carriers or swap out an item on the spot. Better product data is how SIM Supply keeps expanding its Walmart catalog. SIM Supply lists 263,000 of its 700,000 items on Walmart. Caldwell points to product information as the big reason more are not live yet. That data comes from vendors and sometimes lacks certain attributes, so his team uses Rithum's Catalog Assist to fill those gaps and skip the manual data entry. "There's a lot of other programs out there which we like. The incentive program is great," Caldwell said. "But catalog is always going to be our focus, because if it's not out there, it won't sell." What both sellers are investing in next. Carson is sending more inventory into WFS so the Walmart+ badge reaches more of her listings. Advertising is the bigger shift. Her team held back for years over weak returns and is now spending more with Walmart Connect, conservatively and with margin in view, and she is testing Walmart's listing AI recommendations to help shoppers find the catalog. "Walmart+, faster shipping, a cleaner Seller Center," she said. "The platform just keeps getting stronger." Caldwell is staying with catalog, the answer he gives every year. Walmart Business is the Walmart program he said he is most looking forward to. Walmart's marketplace posted its fastest growth in two and a half years. Both sellers built their Walmart growth by combining programs rather than betting on one, and both treat catalog work as ongoing maintenance rather than a launch project. One does it across 1,000 SKUs, the other across 700,000. Caldwell has been selling on the marketplace for 14 years, about as long as Rithum has been partnered with it. "We've watched it grow up," he said, "and we've grown with it." Walmart's third-party marketplace grew nearly 50% year over year in the quarter ending April 30, 2026, its strongest pace since the channel opened to international sellers. Quotes from the session have been lightly edited for clarity. Rithum Team

Introducing SHEIN Marketplace. 7 Aug 2026 SHEIN is one of the most popular shopping platforms in the world serving customers in around 160 countries. Since its launch in 2012 as an on-demand online fashion retailer, SHEIN has evolved into a global fashion and lifestyle ecosystem, connecting consumers, brands, and businesses with the help of its third-party marketplace. In 2024 SHEIN expanded its marketplace offering from the US to Europe and today thousands of UK retailers use SHEIN Marketplace to reach customers across Europe. From on-demand fashion to global ecosystem. As shoppers increasingly looked to the platform for branded, lifestyle and local products, it became clear there was a strong appetite for a broader retail offering. SHEIN Marketplace was created to enrich the experience for existing customers while opening up new opportunities for local businesses to reach an engaged audience and grow across Europe and beyond. Today, SHEIN Marketplace has become a growth engine for UK businesses, helping them to expand internationally while maintaining full control over their brand identity. Built for seller success. Everyday customers from all around the world come to SHEIN looking for products and your shop could be their next favourite. Joining the SHEIN Marketplace means you can have control over product assortment, pricing, content, and brand identity. SHEIN provides the infrastructure: brand visibility and audience reach, traffic, logistics, marketing tools, and real-time performance insights to help sellers optimise and grow their business. A dedicated marketplace team is also on hand to offer hands-on support where needed to help sellers optimise their shop and drive sustainable growth. Sellers can also choose from a variety of fulfilment and logistics options. SHEIN has integrations with technology partners such as THG Ingenuity, Linnworks and Rithum so onboarding and shipping is simple and intuitive. Connect with an engaged customer base. SHEIN's customer base is highly engaged, coming to the platform with a strong intent to discover products across fashion, beauty, home and lifestyle categories. SHEIN's diverse community of shoppers is always looking for new brands and products that reflect their evolving needs and interests, creating opportunities for retailers to grow their reach. Ready to get started? SHEIN Marketplace is actively growing and welcomes retailers looking to reach a highly engaged audience. We recommend SHEIN Marketplace if your business is already set up as an ecommerce store. Those who perform best on SHEIN Marketplace are the retailers that develop channel-specific strategies, actively use the insights provided, and react quickly. Top tips. To get started successfully, sellers should focus on a few essentials from day one: * A clear channel strategy * Strong product imagery * Regular performance testing * Close attention to customer reviews and marketplace insights The opportunity is clear: for UK businesses looking to reach a large, engaged European audience, SHEIN Marketplace offers both the scale and the support to grow