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The future of commerce hinges on agility, but most brands remain stuck at spreadsheet speed. Louis Camassa, Director of Product Management at Rithum, breaks down findings from the 2026 Commerce Readiness Index and reveals why data quality, inventory latency, and algorithmic visibility matter more than channel expansion. We’re uncovering the infrastructure bottlenecks threatening AI's potential, and what it actually takes for brands to compete when algorithms decide what gets discovered.

Your 2026 Resolution: Get Unstuck

Key takeaways:

• 63% of commerce teams face data quality issues affecting business decisions
• Inventory latency remains a competitive differentiator in agentic commerce experiences
• Zero-click phenomenon reducing referral traffic by 9% across e-commerce channels
• AI compute costs compressed 10x in one year, matching traditional search
• Energy infrastructure, not algorithms, poses the greatest bottleneck to AI advancement

Key Quotes:

• [00:02:04] Lou Camassa: "Most companies, whether you're a retailer or brand, you're moving at spreadsheet speed. That's just not the way of the future."
• [00:10:55] Lou Camassa: "We don't want to take from the past and just push it into the future. When we go into a chat experience, we don't want to drop somebody onto a homepage with a banner and categories. Let's think about this differently."
• [00:18:58] Lou Camassa: "We're seeing drops of about 9% across e-commerce in general on referral sources from Google because data is just being propagated in the AI overviews."
• [00:24:04] Lou Camassa: "Inventory latency is going to be a big game changer. It helps us get faster shipping and creates a competitive factor, specifically in LLM search, where everything else is commoditized."

Associated Links:

• Check out Rithum’s 2026 Commerce Readiness Index
• Learn more about Rithum’s offerings.
• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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