June 2026 - Product Update

AI Agents Automate Merchandising and Vendor Negotiations

Retailers and retail-technology vendors are deploying AI agents to automate merchandising tasks—such as assortment planning, demand forecasting, inventory management, invoice reconciliation and supplier negotiations—reducing manual work and reshaping merchant roles. Startups and vendors named in the article include Duvo.ai, Gain, Relex Solutions, Pactum, Crisp and Zenline AI; Relex and Crisp supply merchandising and demand-prediction tools, while Duvo.ai and Gain offer negotiation and "digital co-worker" agents that can read supplier emails and respond or negotiate on a retailer’s behalf. Major retailers have built or announced similar tools (Walmart’s GenAI assistant Wally; Target’s Trend Brain). Vendors and executives in the piece emphasise a human-in-the-loop approach while noting potential operational and labour impacts as trust in autonomous agents grows. Several vendors cited European and Middle Eastern pilots and expansion plans into the U.S.