Retail and Consumer

What is changing

Retailers sell through stores, websites, apps and marketplaces at once, and customers notice the moment those channels disagree. Margins are thin and stock is expensive. The retailers holding their ground are joining inventory, pricing and fulfillment so every channel works from the same facts.

Customers check stock on their phone before they leave home, and expect the answer to be right when they arrive.

Price changes that once took a week of shelf labels now have to happen in hours, across thousands of products and every channel.

Three shifts in how people buy

One stock figure for every channel
A single, current view of inventory across stores, warehouses and suppliers is now the basis of every promise made at checkout.
Pricing in hours
Competitors, costs and demand move daily. Pricing and promotions have to follow without a week of manual work behind each change.
Stores that also ship
Click and collect and ship from store turn shops into small warehouses, with all the picking, packing and timing that implies.

By the numbers

Retail, measured

98.6%: Stock accuracy across stores and online after moving to a single inventory service, up from 91%.
4 hours: Time to change a price across every channel, down from five days, on the pricing platforms we have built.
63%: Share of technology budget the retail and consumer leaders in our research spend keeping existing systems running.
3x: Normal order volume handled on peak days without anyone adding servers by hand.

The maintenance dividend, KIASA research, 2026 (15 of the 140 engineering leaders surveyed work in retail and consumer goods); KIASA delivery records, 2021 to 2026.

What we do

How we help retailers and brands

We work in trading seasons: changes land between peaks, and every peak is rehearsed before it arrives.

Commerce platforms
Web and app storefronts built by one team and released weekly, fast on a phone and easy to change for the people who run them.
Digital product engineering
Inventory and orders
One inventory service and one order flow behind every channel, so what is promised can be delivered.
Enterprise platforms
Pricing and promotions
Pricing that responds to cost and demand within rules your merchants set, with every change explained and reversible.
Artificial intelligence and data
Store systems
Tills, handhelds and store back offices connected to the same services as the website, so a store sees what a customer sees.
Integration and APIs
Peak readiness
Load tests built from last year's busiest day, run well before this year's, with a joint team on hand when it comes.
Quality engineering
Customer research and design
Research with shoppers in store and online, turned into pages and flows that sell because they respect people's time.
Experience design

Inventory

One number for every shelf

Most retailers hold stock figures in several places: the store system, the warehouse system, the website's cache. Each is right at some point in the day, and none is right all of the time.

We build a single inventory service that every channel reads from and every movement updates, from a till sale to a warehouse transfer. The website stops selling what is not there, and stores can promise what is.

See integration and APIs

A floating crane on a barge in a harbour.

Supply

Supply that follows demand

Forecasts made once a season cannot keep up with what customers do from week to week. The result is markdowns on what did not sell and empty shelves where it did.

We connect sales, stock and supplier data so replenishment is planned weekly from real demand, with buyers reviewing the exceptions rather than every line. Less money sits in the wrong stock, and fewer customers leave empty-handed.

See enterprise platforms

Our work in action

What we have built with retailers and brands

What we think

Reading for retail leaders

See all insights

Our leaders