IGDS WDSS 2026: What We Heard in Mexico City

We attended the IGDS World Department Store Summit in Mexico City this year, hosted by Liverpool, joining retail leaders from across the globe for two days of conversation, debate, and – at times – very candid honesty about where the industry really is.

And the mood? Noticeably different from the usual conference circuit.

There was far less talk of transformation as a concept. Instead, there was a shared recognition that most retailers already know what the future should look like. The problem, increasingly, is that getting there is proving far more difficult than anyone would like to admit.

In short: the strategy is not the issue anymore. Execution is.

Unified Commerce dominated almost every session, but not in the glossy, “vision deck” way it once did.

This year, it was discussed more like unfinished business. Across speakers from Liverpool, Gap, and Kurt Geiger, there was a clear sense that the industry has converged on the goal: one customer view, one inventory view, seamless movement between store and digital.

But in practice, most organisations are still working around their own complexity rather than solving it.

As one retailer put it rather bluntly:

“We’ve been talking about unified commerce for years. The gap now is not understanding – it’s integration.”

What kept surfacing in conversation was not ambition, but friction:

The uncomfortable truth is that unified commerce is no longer a strategy discussion. It is a systems problem – and systems are rarely quick to fix.

If previous years were about AI excitement, this year was about AI discipline. There was very little hype. Instead, retailers spoke about where AI is actually being used – and where it still falls short.

The focus areas were pragmatic:

But there was also a strong undertone of caution. Many have learned – sometimes the hard way – that AI is only as good as the data beneath it.

One speaker summed it up neatly:

“AI doesn’t create clarity. It exposes the lack of it.”

The shift here is subtle but important: AI is no longer a “future topic” – it is becoming an operational test of whether retail businesses are structurally ready for intelligence at scale.

There was no talk of the “death of the store” – that debate has long been retired. Instead, the conversation has moved on to something more interesting: what the store is now supposed to do. And the answer is increasingly: a great deal more than selling.

Stores are being reimagined as:

All at once, and ideally without becoming cost-heavy monuments to complexity.

One comment from the floor captured the tension rather well:

“We don’t need more stores or fewer stores. We need better stores that earn their place.”

What’s becoming clear is that physical retail is not diminishing in importance – but it is being asked to justify itself in far more ways than it used to.

A highlight for our team was seeing our Director, Julius Carrell, join a panel alongside leaders from Oura Ring, Capgemini and T-Systems International.

The discussion themes were familiar to anyone close to retail transformation:

There was a notable honesty in these discussions. No one is under the illusion that this is easy anymore.

As always, the most useful conversations happened away from the stage.

In corridors, coffee breaks, and informal discussions, the same practical challenges kept resurfacing:

These weren’t conceptual debates. They were operational realities – often spoken about with a sense of urgency rather than curiosity.

If IGDS 2026 made anything clear, it is this: retail is no longer suffering from a lack of direction. There is remarkable alignment on where the industry needs to go – connected commerce, intelligent operations, and stores that deliver more than transactions.

The problem now sits elsewhere. Execution has become the defining constraint of modern retail. Not because the ambition is missing, but because the underlying systems were never designed for the world retailers are now trying to build.

From where we stood in Mexico City, that gap – between ambition and delivery – is where the next phase of retail will be won or lost.