What the June 9-10 AI Retail Webinar Series Will Cover

Retail TouchPoints has announced a two-day webinar series, Retail Trendcaster: Technologies Shaping the Future of Retail, scheduled for June 9-10, 2026. The series brings industry experts and retail technology leaders together for four sessions focused on practical applications of artificial intelligence across commerce, stores and the customer journey.

The stated aim is to help retail leaders sort out which AI use cases are real and useful versus those that are overhyped. The agenda spans cross-channel operations and orchestration, the order-to-cash lifecycle and tax compliance, the role of AI in supporting store associates, and an editorial review of which AI applications in the shopping journey are delivering results today.

Named speakers include Frank Kouretas, Chief Product Officer at ESW; Pat Esposito of Vertex, Inc., who works on the Microsoft partnership; and Melissa Minkow, Global Director of Retail Strategy & Insights at CI&T.

Registration is open now. Attendees who cannot join the live sessions can register to receive details on video replays, which will be available after the webinars air.

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What the Session Lineup Says About Retail AI Priorities

The session lineup is a useful indicator of where the retail AI conversation is heading and which operational problems retailers now consider most urgent.

The Backend Bottleneck Behind Channel Growth

The opening session, led by ESW's Frank Kouretas, tackles a familiar pain point: growth across DTC, marketplaces, social channels and AI-driven surfaces outpacing backend system coordination. The pairing of orchestration with agentic AI reflects a broader industry argument that the next retail AI payoffs will come less from customer-facing features and more from automating complex back-end workflows. That framing is still largely vendor-driven, and its practical value will depend on how cleanly retailers can integrate these systems into their existing stacks.

Why Tax Compliance Is on the AI Agenda

The Vertex session, featuring Pat Esposito, addresses a less visible but costly problem: disconnects between front-end commerce, back-office operations and tax compliance. For retailers operating across borders, order delays and errors frequently trace back to exactly these gaps. The presence of this topic on the agenda suggests compliance automation is moving from a finance niche into a mainstream retail AI concern.

The Store Labor Narrative Gets a Challenge

One session directly contests what the announcement calls a misleading narrative in retail technology — that AI is primarily a replacement for store labor. The alternative framing, that AI can better equip store associates, matches how many large retailers have repositioned their investments in front-line tools. Whether the discussion moves beyond framing into measurable outcomes will determine how much practical value it delivers.

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An Explicit Acknowledgment of Uneven Results

The closing session, led by CI&T's Melissa Minkow, acknowledges that AI results across search, discovery, recommendations, personalization, service and post-purchase engagement are not equal — some use cases are proving their value now, while others remain more promising than proven. That admission aligns with the wider reality that discovery and personalization have clearer return-on-investment cases than more experimental applications.

How Retail Professionals Can Use the Four Sessions

For retail and ecommerce professionals evaluating AI investments, the series offers a structured way to compare vendor claims against practical use cases. Registration is open now, and replays will be available after the live dates.

  • Retailers struggling with cross-channel order, inventory or fulfillment disconnects should target the ESW-led session on orchestration and agentic AI.
  • Teams with international operations and tax exposure will find the Vertex session on the order-to-cash lifecycle most relevant.
  • Retailers planning front-line labor investments should follow the store-associate session, which directly challenges the AI-replaces-workers framing.