Every year, the World Retail Congress gathers the industry's most senior leaders to debate what's next. This year's edition, which wrapped April 29 at Berlin's InterContinental Hotel, left little room for debate.
More than 800 CEOs and senior executives from over 50 countries spent three days under the banner "Retail's Roadmap to 2030: Winning Customers Today, Securing the Future." But the real theme was narrower and more urgent than the title suggests: artificial intelligence has moved from the innovation track to the survival track, and the gap between leaders and laggards is opening fast.
The Chair's Verdict
The tone was set at the opening session, where the Congress chairman told a packed room that AI is "the biggest driver of change and opportunity in the world of retail today." His message was blunt: "The winners of 2030 are those retailers making decisions and investments in AI and other technologies right now."
It's the kind of statement that could sound like conference boilerplate — except the data backing it up has gotten impossible to ignore. McKinsey's recent report with ICSC, which we covered last week, found that the top 10% of retailers will capture 85% of the sector's economic profit, with AI deployment as the primary differentiator.
The Otto Group Playbook
One of the Congress's most substantive keynotes came from Petra Scharner-Wolff of the Otto Group, who outlined how the €16 billion European retail and services conglomerate is building resilience through "consistent action, clear strategic focus, and innovation as a mindset."
The Otto Group — which owns brands including Crate & Barrel, CB2, and About You — has invested heavily in AI-driven personalization, robotics in fulfillment, and a platform strategy that allows its brands to share infrastructure without sacrificing individual identity. Scharner-Wolff's message was that AI investment isn't about chasing the latest model — it's about embedding intelligence into operations at every level.
For American retailers still debating their AI strategy, the Otto Group's approach offers a contrast: while U.S. retailers tend to make splashy AI product announcements, European counterparts have focused on operational AI that drives margin improvement behind the scenes.
The CEO Confidence Gap
Perhaps the most revealing moment of the Congress came during a CEO panel on AI strategy, organized around the theme of closing the gap between "AI's promise and its proven value."
The discussion surfaced a tension that runs through the industry: most retail CEOs believe AI will be transformative, but many still can't point to measurable ROI from their investments. Panelists acknowledged that for many organizations, the gap between AI pilots and scaled deployment remains wide — and that the leadership skills required to bridge it are fundamentally different from those that built the previous generation of retail technology.
Deloitte, which participated as a knowledge partner, framed the challenge in familiar terms: the retailers who win won't necessarily be the ones with the best AI technology. They'll be the ones who reorganize their operating models around what AI makes possible — faster assortment decisions, dynamic pricing, hyper-local fulfillment, and personalized customer engagement at scale.
Store Tours: What Berlin Showed
The Congress organized behind-the-scenes tours of Berlin retailers including Zalando, Adidas, HOKA, Mango, the iconic KaDeWe department store, and discount chain Action. The tours were designed to showcase different approaches to physical retail in an AI-enabled world.
Zalando's presence was particularly notable. The European fashion platform, which has invested aggressively in AI-driven styling and discovery tools, hosted a restricted roundtable on the regulatory landscape ahead — a recognition that European data privacy rules and the EU's AI Act will shape how retailers deploy these technologies differently than in the U.S.
What This Means for U.S. Retailers
American retailers weren't just observers in Berlin — they were data points in every conversation. Amazon's AI-powered logistics, Walmart's Sparky shopping assistant, and Google's agentic shopping tools were referenced repeatedly as examples of the pace at which the largest players are moving.
The Congress's implicit message was clear: AI isn't optional, and it's not something you can evaluate for another year. The retailers who are investing now — in operations, not just customer-facing features — are building advantages that compound over time. The ones who wait are falling behind a curve that's steepening every quarter.
For an industry already navigating tariff uncertainty, conflict-driven supply chain disruptions, and a weakening consumer, the Berlin consensus added one more item to the strategic priority list: move on AI now, or accept that the roadmap to 2030 will be written without you.