Agentic AI could be retail’s unexpected savior

At the Exceptional Women Alliance, we enable high-level women to mentor each other to enable personal and professional happiness through sisterhood. As the nonprofit organization’s founder, chair, and CEO, I am honored to interview and share insights from some of the thought leaders who are part of our peer-to-peer mentoring.

This month I introduce to youKarlyn Mattson, an award-winning retail C-suite executive and founder of The Leadership Advisors.She has decades of experience delivering profitable growth, transformative consumer and product experiences, omni-channel and digital transformation, and consumer centric value creation for brands such as Macy’s, Target, and Amazon.

Q: You have a provocative hypothesis that agentic AI could be retail’s unexpected savior.  Can you tell us more?

Karlyn Mattson: The real promise of agentic AI isn’t just automation. It’s the chance to restore the human side of an industry that has quietly lost its creative and strategic edge.

Retail has always been shaped by trends and counter-trends—the existence of two radically opposite movements at the same time. Today, two forces are rising simultaneously: The rapid acceleration of AI—and an equally strong need for human connection and creation, analog, and artisanal—influencing brands, products, and experiences.

While they appear to be at odds, I believe they are deeply connected.

As retailers explore AI deployment, the opportunity is larger than the efficiency realized by leveraging generative AI. The more powerful opportunity is agentic AI, which can enable the refresh this industry desperately needs, freeing time for strategic and creative innovation.

Q: You’ve described retail “malaise.” What’s driving that?

Karlyn: Creative and strategic oxygen has been replaced by analytical and operational dependence, evident in the lack of inspiration at so many retailers. 

Merchants, at their best, are equally left and right-brain professionals. They are hired for their potential to make great choices for the consumer—deciding where to buy more, where to pull back, where to take calculated risks. Instead, many spend their days toggling between versions of the same financial forecast or explaining variances across metrics.

It’s not about a lack of great talent but instead frustration with the day-to-day job requirements.

Q: How does Agentic AI change the equation?

Karlyn: The insights and research that generative AI produces allow for amazing efficiency and synthesis. This is a huge win. The trend identification and product development processes absolutely benefit from this.  

Agentic systems change the game because they don’t just analyze, they act. Within strategic guardrails, these systems continuously learn, rebalance, and adapt, autonomously managing thousands of SKUs across hundreds of locations with a precision that is beyond human capacity.

It’s intelligence that executes so humans can reclaim time to focus on decisions that shape future strategies and assortments.

Q: How does reclaimed time impact retail merchants?

Karlyn: It changes their motivation and inspiration.  Most merchants I know enter retail to create compelling and differentiated assortments that surpass their competition and excite their consumers through storytelling. And that takes time.

Instead of creating another report or refining a projection, merchants can think more strategically about long-term growth, competitive white space, brand positioning, product differentiation, and assortment architecture.

The inability to spend time on strategy is one of the biggest tensions in a merchant’s job satisfaction.

Q: Some leaders worry that more automation means less humanity. Is that a risk?

Karlyn: I think for retail, it needs to be viewed as a capability amplifier. 

Retail is grounded in human work—it’s emotional, creative, cultural work. And it’s also rooted in disciplined strategic work. For example, AI can detect a trend or signal but only a human can decide whether that trend aligns with your brand positioning. AI can optimize inventory flow but it cannot determine to place a big bet on a trend you saw on the streets of London.

I believe that AI can strengthen human-centered retail strategy, not weaken it, if led correctly.

Q: What does this mean for CEOs and boards?

Karlyn: First, this is an operating model decision, not just a technology decision. A lot of money can be wasted if AI is bolted on to legacy systems. Significant workflow re-design is required to accommodate the opportunity of agentic AI.

Second, if autonomous systems remove some of the analytical or operational work, how will organizations reinvest that capacity? It should be directed toward that capability amplification discussed earlier—defining growth initiatives, championing creativity and innovation, and developing sharper strategies.

Q: What gives you confidence this shift will happen?

Karlyn: First, necessity—margin erosion, consumer fragmentation, declining loyalty—retail cannot afford incrementality and mediocrity anymore.

Second, the art of retail has quietly diminished over the past several years. The merchant role has shifted from curator to reconciler, from strategist to number cruncher. Agentic AI has the potential to reverse that trajectory. Its use can unleash incredible human-centric work—sharper strategy and bolder imagination to reclaim the hearts and minds of consumers craving inspiration and connection.

Larraine Segil is founder, chair, and CEO of the Exceptional Women Alliance.