Commerce Partners
Agentic Commerce Review
AI, product data and sourcing decisions for commercial leaders in European retail.
Analysis / Product Data
Product data is a margin line now, not an IT ticket
An AI channel is asking you to publish your own return rate as a ranking input. The regulator is demanding the same catalogue discipline with customs enforcement attached. Both arrive at the same desk — and it is not IT's.
- 2 min
Brief / Standards & Regulation
The Digital Product Passport registry is live, and customs can query it
The European Commission's Digital Product Passport registry is now enrolling organisations, and customs authorities can use it to verify electronically that an imported product carries a valid registered passport before release for free circulation. Batteries are first, in February 2027.
- 3 min
Vendor Watch / Ecosystem
How to test an "agent-ready" claim
The published specifications from Stripe and OpenAI, Google, Visa and Mastercard give buyers something rare: an objective test for a vendor claim. Six questions to put to any platform, PIM or agency that says it is ready for agentic commerce, and what a weak answer to each one tells you.
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Read it before it is public
Every Brief and Analysis goes to the list first. Around a thousand people in European retail, sourcing and the integrator community already read it.
One question at signup tells me which of the two audiences you belong to, so the sourcing items reach sourcing people and the ecosystem items reach the firms selling into them. You can unsubscribe from either in one click.
How the Review works
Five formats, five desks
Formats set the length and the promise. Desks tell you whether a piece is about your job.
Formats
- Brief
- A weekly read of one development and what it changes. Three minutes.
- Analysis
- A monthly argument, sourced and meant to be quoted.
- Vendor Watch
- A short, plain assessment of a vendor claim. Never sponsored, ever.
- Partner View
- A named practitioner from an integrator or agency, writing under their own byline.
- Interview
- A conversation with someone doing the work.
Desks
- Sourcing & Suppliers
- Supplier discovery, screening and shortlisting when part of the work is done by an agent.
- Product Data
- Catalogue quality as a commercial asset — completeness, structure, and who in the business owns it.
- Buying in the Agent Era
- Assortment, pricing and range decisions when the customer arrives through a machine.
- Standards & Regulation
- GS1, the Digital Product Passport, GPSR and the rest of the compliance load landing on sourcing teams.
- Ecosystem
- The vendors, integrators and agencies serving European commerce — who is real and who is briefing well.