Our Takeaways From The Retail Technology Show 2026

19th May 2026

We recently attended the Retail Technology Show, one of our favourite annual events and a great opportunity for engaging with retail professionals.

As always it was wonderful to see so many familiar faces, as well as make new connections. We had lots of great conversations about productivity, budgeting and ways to grow rather than simply cutting costs.

The event was also a great success for us on a personal level. Over the two days, we:

• Conducted in-person demonstrations of our labour planning tool, ReBudget – We showcased how it creates accurate, bottom-up labour budgets tailored to unique operations and combines industry-leading workload modelling with AI-powered forecasting
• Handed out copies of the ReThink Productivity Retail Report – In the first edition of our report, we inform readers about an efficiency gap in the retail sector as labour costs reach historic highs, and we reveal six golden rules to help retailers turn insight into advantage

Key takeaways from RTS 2026

After the first day was done, we hosted an afterparty with SolvedByAi, during which, we also recorded a live podcast to digest the event’s main topics. 

Here are our key takeaways:

• Artificial Intelligence – AI technology has really started to take shape and integrate into other systems. Gone are the days where AI was just a jargon word attached to everyone’s marketing – now, we are seeing it used effectively in cases such as forecasting and more
• Electronic shelf edge labels – These are now mainstream in the UK and were extremely prominent at the event, being sold at multiple stands
• Productivity improvement – Brands remain focused on how to improve retail productivity. This is a hot topic and it’s understood that simply cutting costs isn’t the answer
• Evolving technology – In our podcast, we heard from Steve Young from cruise ship retail experts, Harding Retail, and Chris Chandler from Our Coop. Both were asked; if they could instantly implement one thing they had seen at the show, what would it be? With their team having limited accessibility at sea, Harding requires tools that aren’t always 100% online. So Steve spoke about seeing lots of amazing technology at the show, such as one that used QR codes (instead of barcodes), allowing them to retain one code from one end of the supply chain to the other. Chris’ response highlighted the L&D technology on show at the event that trains colleagues in the moment, based on the behaviour that person is displaying via the platform they are using

For even more takeaways from the Retail Technology Show, listen to our live podcast here.