Meet the superhumans: how agentic AI is transforming the merchandiser’s day-to-day
By Jon Taylor on November 11, 2025Merchandisers have always been the heartbeat of retail trading. They sit at the intersection of product, pricing and performance.
You can normally find them balancing what to buy, how much to stock, where to send it and when to mark it down.
But for years, they’ve done it with tools that barely scratch the surface of what’s possible. Static spreadsheets. Disconnected systems. Manual rebuy calculations. Forecasts built on instinct and gut feel.
The result? Long days spent piecing together reports and reacting to changes that have already happened. When sales are strong, it’s hard to scale quickly enough. When they slow, markdowns hit margins before anyone can blink.
The merchandiser’s world has always been a high-stakes balancing act. And, in today’s volatile market, the rope keeps getting thinner.
The old way: trading on gut feel
In traditional merchandising, the rhythm of the season drives everything. Buying calendars and markdown plans are set months — sometimes years — in advance.
Once a product hits the store, it’s all about reacting. If an item sells faster than expected, stock is shuffled between locations. If it underperforms, the go-to strategy is to discount earlier and deeper.
It’s a cycle of firefighting:
- Trying to keep availability high without drowning in excess inventory
- Trying to protect margin while still clearing old stock
- Trying to make data-led decisions, but losing time to manual number crunching
Many merchandisers feel like they spend more time trying to fix the past rather than planning for the future.
The new way: from spreadsheets to superpowers
Now, there’s a new way to work — one that feels almost superhuman.
Powered by Peak’s Agentic Merchandising solution, merchandisers are supported by intelligent agents that predict, decide and act autonomously across their entire operation.
The system continuously analyzes data across SKUs, stores, suppliers and channels, surfacing insights and executing actions in real time. Instead of constantly reacting to yesterday’s numbers, merchandising now runs in real time.
Demand forecasts update automatically as new data flows in, surfacing risks before they become problems. Inventory levels are continuously optimized across suppliers, warehouses and stores. This ensures that products are always where they need to be.
Promotions and markdowns adjust dynamically based on live performance, not static calendars. And when the unexpected happens, only the few exceptions that truly need human judgment surface for review.
What used to take hours of analysis and approval chains now happens seamlessly in the background. This gives merchandisers time back to focus on what really matters: creativity, strategy and growth.
Predict, decide, act
This framework is at the heart of Peak’s Agentic Intelligence solutions.
- Predict: Machine learning models forecast demand, sales and price elasticity for every SKU and location
- Decide: Optimization engines balance revenue, margin and inventory objectives to recommend the best actions
- Act: AI agents autonomously execute those actions (raising POs, managing rebuys, adjusting markdowns) within your systems, with humans looped in when needed
It’s merchandising intelligence that never sleeps, never misses a beat and continuously learns from results.
The human impact
The real transformation isn’t just operational, but emotional.
Merchandisers no longer spend their time buried in spreadsheets. They spend it making decisions that move the business forward: refining assortment strategy, planning creative campaigns, or collaborating with marketing to tell product stories.
They’re not replaced by AI; they’re amplified by it.
The day feels different. Less firefighting. More foresight. Less manual reporting. More creative thinking. Less reaction. More strategy.
That’s what superhuman merchandising looks like.
The results
- Products in the right place, at the right time, at the right price
- Higher margins and faster trading decisions
- Fewer write-offs and more sustainable inventory management
- Empowered merchandisers who lead, not chase, change
With Agentic Merchandising, merchandisers don’t just adapt to the new retail reality — they shape it.
Download the guide
The introductory guide to agentic AI for retail merchandising
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