By Richard Potter, CEO and Co-founder at Peak, a UiPath company
Mother’s Day is fast approaching, and this year it coincides with a shift towards more agentic, AI-driven retail. While many mothers may wish they had an agent at home to help juggle the daily chaos, retailers now have the opportunity to harness AI agents to do just that for their operations.
UK retail and e-commerce sales are climbing, driven by discounting and sales. But rising demand and sales doesn’t automatically mean stronger margins. The retailers set to win will be those using AI to predict demand accurately, make smarter pricing and promotional decisions, and act quickly on stock allocation.
But how can brands turn AI from concept into measurable commercial impact? Here are three moves retailers should prioritise to deliver precision across stock, pricing and performance ahead of Mother’s Day.
- Predict demand for stock
Spreadsheets are still widely used by retailers. But they inhibit a dynamic, real-time approach that can adapt to consumer demand and the range of variables that impact stock levels. If retailers can implement an AI system that is able to integrate with critical business applications, however, they can adjust their strategies as demand changes.
The first move is to use AI to predict demand for stock. AI models can analyse real-time and historical data to detect patterns and surface any risks or opportunities. Through collecting and processing a range of data like inventory, sales and availability, for example, AI can precisely forecast demand and suggest optimal stock levels, both for online and specific store locations and regions.
- Optimise pricing and promotions
Demand predictions need to be joined by optimising how products are priced and whether to apply any promotions. Through assessing a variety of historical data, like a store or product’s previous performance, coupled with real-time demand signals (e.g. what items are most popular in the run up to Mother’s Day so far this year) AI is able to estimate the price elasticity for each product.
Price elasticity is how much a change in price will impact demand for a product. A highly elastic product only requires a small markdown in price, whereas an inelastic product needs a more substantial decrease. To suggest the optimal price, AI can simulate various discount levels and what these are likely to do to units sold, the margin recovered and to stock remaining. This eradicates the need for retailers to choose prices and discounts based on precedent or guesswork.
- Put AI agents to work
Normally, even with AI, humans would have to perform the next steps like reallocating stock or pricing products manually. But the arrival of agentic AI significantly transforms this process. Using the AI-generated suggestions for stock and pricing, AI agents can take decisions and carry out actions autonomously on behalf of humans to achieve a desired goal, as opposed to teams spending their time downloading spreadsheets and manually applying discounts for various products.
The AI agents’ actions are relayed back to humans, so that teams can maintain oversight and control, and the agents are able to continuously learn from outcomes. Tasks that might take hours can suddenly be performed in minutes.
The perfect Mother’s Day gift
In a global market hindered by low growth, retailers have been challenged with unlocking new ways of finding profit and achieving more for less. And Mother’s Day presents a key opportunity to maximise their margins. To do this, they need to accurately predict demand to optimise their stock levels and also understand the optimal price elasticity of their products.
AI is essential for making these predictions accurately – there are simply too many variables and real-time fluctuations for humans to produce these insights manually and at speed. But agentic AI takes this to the next level, performing tasks on behalf of human teams and adjusting strategies in real time. It’s no exaggeration to claim that the retailers using agentic AI will be achieving margins way above any competitors for Mother’s Day and beyond.
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February 2026 issue
2025 A1 Buyers Guide
