Our Takeaways From The Retail Technology Show 2025

8th May 2025

Last month, members of the ReThink team attended the Retail Technology Show, including our Co-Founders, Simon and Sue, our Head of Insight Development, James B, our Workload Model Expert, Karen, and our Head of Business Development, James BW.

Taking place at ExCeL London on 2nd-3rd April 2025, the Retail Technology Show brings together Europe’s most forward-thinking retailers and leading technology innovators to discuss the latest trends that are transforming the way we shop.

What did we take away from the event?

Every year, the Retail Technology Show offers a fantastic opportunity to network, reuniting with people we know and making new connections throughout the event. 

New venue

This year, the event was moved to ExCeL London (previously it was held at Olympia London), meaning there was more available space than previous years.

AI

This continues to be a hot topic but now, we’re beginning to see some great examples of how it’s being used. For example, it is being used for forecasting, whether that’s planning specialist resources, or applying it to stock. 

People shared more use of computer vision, such as on CCTV where heatmaps were being used to highlight where customers were standing. One particularly interesting system could identify when people were putting things in their pockets, when they were shoplifting and subsequently send an alert to a security centre where their face was recorded and added to a register for the security team’s future use. 

It was great to see how AI is now being applied and we are excited to see how this will look next year with technology growth.

Cash

With more and more businesses adopting a cashless approach, it was interesting to see hardware and technology still being developed for using cash.

Businesses that choose to use cash, or are required to do so, require efficient ways to handle it, such as smart equipment for automatic counting. So cash may be around for longer than we thought.

Colleague communications

Since lockdown, there have been questions on how to reach team members that work in a store, and not just those in a leadership role. We saw lots around communications and engagement apps, task training, and frontline communications etc. It was interesting to see platforms that link to workforce management and HR systems, showing how the development is progressing.

Find out more

These are just a few of our takeaways. To hear more, head over to our business productivity podcast episode, Retail Technology Show 2025 Review, in which Simon, Sue and James B discuss the event in more detail.