FT Live Future of Retail 2025: Pandora, The Cotswold Company. and Kingfisher place bets on AI

Executives from Pandora, The Cotswold Company and Kingfisher shared where they are placing their strategic bets on artificial intelligence (AI) deployments to get the most bang for their investment buck at the FT Live Future of Retail event in London this week. 

According to Catarina Runa Miranda, Global AI Director and London Digital Hub Lead at Pandora: “Our big bet is on AI-based story telling.”

“We believe it’s a big opportunity for us online via an AI assistant,” she said. “In Australia we’ve already rolled out an AI powered fully immersive online experience - not just a chatbot - that will help customers choose the most appropriate charm for when they are building their ‘bracelet story’.”

For context, Miranda explained that Pandora’s customers tend to buy a bracelet from them and personalise it with charms that hang off it that are specific to their lives, whether that is a music charm, a sporting symbol and so on.

“We ask who are you buying this for and why? Do you, or they, like gardening and so on, as we can then suggest specific charms,” she commented. “In the future, we hope to roll out this online AI assistant service globally and deepen the experience with an avatar as well.” 

The agentic AI experience, where agents help you, was much discussed at FT Live Future of Retail 2025.

Fellow panellist, Mohsen Ghasempour is Chief AI Officer at Kingfisher, which owns the B&Q and Screwfix DIY brands in the UK and Castorama in France, and shared an update about its Hello Casto tool. This AI powered public facing virtual DIY assistant was claimed as a world first upon its launch and Ghasempour explained: “It’s now had 350,000 chatbot conversations by H1 2025 [and is therefore learning and improving all the time].”

RTIH covered it and Kingfisher’s extensive over-arching AI programme previously. “Today, we’ve got 45 people working on this programme,” added Ghasempour, at FT Live 2025, as he agreed that it’s time to place big strategic bets on AI technology. The time for pilots and small scale experimentation has passed.

According to Ralph Tucker, CEO at The Cotswolds Company, which is a UK-based digitally led premium handcrafted furniture and homewares brand, its big bet on AI is initially in the corporate treasury and supply chain arena, where it can help foresee sales, feeding into purchasing and effective cash management and other activities in its operations.

“We are looking at using AI to improve our forecasting accuracy,” explained Tucker, as he believes it could be really helpful there.

AI is a strategic investment

“At a boardroom level we are looking at AI as a strategic investment now,” added Tucker, while expanding that he is also very interested in Gen AI powered large language models (LLMs) and also in how Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) search will change traditional SEO informed approaches to marketing.

“We realised three years ago that we needed to lean into AI and the business has now adopted it enterprise wide as something to be aware of [and to look for ‘wins’ in],” explained Tucker during the panel discussion that also included Dan Czasznicki, Head of Retail and CPG, Digital Experience at Adobe.

He advocated for “brand affinity” in this new AI era that is dawning as a way to retain the attention of your customer in an increasingly digital age where GEO and ecosystems could look to lock-in their attention to the detriment of the retailer.

Instacart might provide instant data insights  

David McIntosh, Chief Connected Stores Officer at Instacart, was also part of the FT Live Future of Retail 2025 panel.

His American firm had one of its smart carts on display at the event. This connected data gathering shopping trolley can gather in-store information from users for use online, to improve in-store experiences, and to gather data for use in AI systems.

Digital shelf-edge labels can also interact with the Instacart. It drew a crowd at the associated exhibition in London. Verification and personalisation might also be end uses for the connected product.  [Place cart pic supplied here] 

“AI can be an invisible agent enhancing service and ultimately filling carts in the future,” said McIntosh.    

Conclusions: Don’t forget the people  

“We didn’t initially plan to seed AI throughout the culture of our business,” said Tucker. “But it’s turned out that way, as organically every separate unit in the business is now exploring how it can help efficiencies, targeting, forecasting, and so forth. For example, HR might alert me to a new workflow tool for a call centre now unprompted. New ideas are arising all the time, from everywhere.”  

This is undoubtedly the best approach. Making AI part of your everyday business, and training staff in its various different multifaceted end uses, will inevitably lead to success.

It is a better approach then just leaving the IT specialists to think about the technology, rather than actually deploying it to solve an actual identified problem, which is always the best implementation strategy. Aligning people, process and technology is always a good idea to get the best results.

“We even need our staff to understand linguistics when hiring them as ‘conversational designers’ for AI powered assistants,” said Pandora’s Miranda, as she agreed that alignment of skillsets and technology is a key success factor.

“We also consider what we will build ourselves and what we will buy in – we are a retailer after all,” she added. “Our strategy is that we will only build things that bring our costs down and offer strategic value. Other smaller capabilities we will look to vendors and partners to supply, although we might have to ‘sector train’ them a little bit.”    

2025 RTIH INNOVATION AWARDS

AI will be a key focus area at the 2025 RTIH Innovation Awards.

The awards. which are now closed for entries with our finalists and shortlists being announced last week, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

Our 2024 hall of fame entrants were revealed during an event which took place at RIBA’s 66 Portland Place HQ in Central London on 21st November, and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by comedian Lucy Porter

In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “The event is now into its sixth year and what a journey it has been. The awards started life as an online only affair during the Covid outbreak, before launching as a small scale in real life event and growing year on year to the point where we’re now selling out this fine, historic venue.”

He added: “Congratulations to all of our finalists. Many submissions did not make it through to the final stage, and getting to this point is no mean feat. Checkout-free stores, automated supply chains, immersive experiences, on-demand delivery, next generation loyalty offerings, inclusive retail, green technology. We’ve got all the cool stuff covered this evening.”

“But just importantly we’ve got lots of great examples of companies taking innovative tech and making it usable in everyday operations - resulting in more efficiency and profitability in all areas.”

Congratulations to our 2024 winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Lucy Porter, and all those who attended November's gathering. 

For further information on the 2025 RTIH Innovation Awards, please fill in the below form and we will get back to you asap.