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Above: In Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet, Ophelia suffers deeply from lack of agency. In the end she’s carried helplessly down a stream - pulled under by muddy water. Painting by John Everett Mallais
In Hamlet, Shakespeare presents us with a prince who’s paralyzed by an existential choice - endure the pain of staying alive or risk the terrifying unknowns of death. In today’s marketplace retailers seem to be facing their own existential drama: should they lean fully into the muddled and somewhat distressing analog experience → or surrender to a terrifying machine that seems to be taking over everything?
A couple weeks ago Glossy and Modern Retail co-hosted a Brand Leaders dinner. On the surface, the fashion and beauty execs in attendance exuded enthusiasm, while an undercurrent of anxiety flowed beneath the smiles.
Operating under Chatham House rules, the specific identities of the attending brand founders and marketing executives were kept anonymous.
Accounts of the meeting describe: a CMO who discussed concerns about their brand’s display ads hitting a wall in terms of effectiveness. An apparel brand co-founder relating that her brand was abandoning their digital-only approach and had been throwing community parties in their company’s warehouse spaces. A boutique fashion brand owner described how their customers were starved for the human touch that comes with real world shopping.
In the same moment that fashion and beauty’s top minds are pouring energy back into analog, face-to-face retail, others are moving at blistering speed towards agentic commerce.
Industry behemoths are plugging their catalogs into Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol so that customers looking for specific products can shorten the chain of touchpoints.
Online shoppers can now simply type in something like “find a red tote under $500 that is timeless” into Google’s Gemini (AI Mode), see the item they’re interested in → compare it to other similar items → get a backgrounder on the product they like best → find out which celebrities are wearing that red tote → click Buy Now and check out, all inside their (very conversational) AI chat.
Jumping into these swiftly moving agentic shopping waters are Tapestry (Coach and Kate Spade) Gap, Nike, Ulta, Sephora, Lululemon, Wayfair, Chewy, Quince, URBN (Anthropologie, Free People, Urban Outfitters), Target, and Walmart to name just a few.
Much like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who found himself paralyzed by an existential crossroad, today’s brand leaders are caught between two starkly divergent futures. Should they double down on the ‘slings and arrows’ of volatile digital ads and pivot to the raw, human connection of real-world shopping? Or should they surrender their customer journey to the autonomous code of AI?
Where big corporations are trapped in an all-or-nothing existential crisis, small brands possess a unique superpower: the agility to do both.
Above: Hamlet = a modern brand caught in an existential crisis, overthinking the future, and paralyzed by massive shifts in his world. Ophelia = The Customer: She’s loyal, eager, loaded with potential, but is driven mad by Hamlet’s sudden shifts and mixed signals. "Hamlet and Ophelia" painting by Agnes Pringle (c. 1880s). Image courtesy of Art UK / Chiswick House
Where Smaller Brands Have a Huge Advantage
Wondering where this dichotomy leaves you as a independent brand? Guess what? You’re in the sweet spot between these opposing retail concepts.
While huge brands can’t sincerely and realistically host parties at their warehouses for their customers at scale → you can!
Shoppers starved for a human face and a strong brand connection can find a warm space within your store and the community that you’ve built around your brand.
And you can also participate in agentic commerce just like the mega corporations.
The entire agentic commerce ecosystem is being built on open, unified standards. As a result small independent stores have direct, immediate access right alongside those massive retail giants mentioned above.
Shopify for example, built a native feature called Agentic Storefronts specifically to level the playing field. Within this feature are:
Automatic Discovery: Eligible storefronts can have their products added to the Shopify Catalog. This massive, structured data layer is accessible for many AI models.
The “Dashboard Toggle”: In your Shopify Admin panel, under Sales Channels > Agentic, locate the AI command center and choose between direct checkouts “on” or “off” for various available AI agents.
Frictionless Checkout: When a customer discovers your product inside an AI chat, they can either purchase within the chat itself, or be directed to your site. Either way their order flows seamlessly right into your Shopify dashboard alongside your normal web orders. You remain the Merchant of Record, and you keep relationship with the customer.
Why should you participate in Agentic Storefronts?
According to Google surveys, shoppers using AI in their purchase journey encounter an average of about 12 touchpoints compared to just 4.2 for non-AI users.
Three-quarters of Google AI users say that tech lets them search using highly specific questions and photos.
76% say it saves time by summarizing product info and reviews.
Shopify reports that AI-driven traffic to stores on their platform grew 8x YoY in Q1 2026, while orders attributed to AI-powered searches increased nearly 13x.
We’ve talked recently about creating product pages that are agentic friendly. While independent brands trying to compete with a big competitor will struggle to outspend on traditional keyword searches - they can make a product extraordinarily easy to understand - giving them a groundlevelling advantage.
To one-up the big guys, think about your product data feed.
Writing Pine Candle, 16 oz $38 doesn’t give an AI agent much to work with. Similarly if you describe your products in overly flowery, obscure text that sounds like the opening of a romance novel you’ll wildly confuse those same agents looking for products that fit a particular shopper.
Instead, try: 9-ounce hand-poured soy candle with fir, cedar, smoke, and amber; 50+ hour burn time; gift for cabin owners, outdoors lovers, and men who dislike sweet fragrances.
When someone asks Gemini for a “holiday gift for a guy who loves camping but hates vanilla scents,” your brand jumps ahead of the 100,000 other forest scented candles on offer.
The Fate of Ophelia
In Shakespeare’s tragedy, Ophelia suffers deeply from lack of agency. In the end she’s carried helplessly down a stream - pulled down by muddy undercurrents.
As a brand if you choose to market solely via analog - fully unplugged from digital marketing you place yourself in an Ophelia like position - unable to cope with the realities of the modern consumer - floating haplessly down a stream waiting for the next current to catch you.
Similarly, brands who only optimize for algorithms, attempting, but never achieving a connection with their customer, also risks their own Ophelia moment. By reducing your brand to nothing more than a perfect data feed for an AI bot, you risk becoming completely invisible to the actual human consumer. If the customer never touches you - ie: visits your store, hears your story, or feels your vibe, you’ll fail to build a lasting relationship.
The future of independent retail isn’t AI vs. Human; it’s AI + Human.
Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.
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