We’ll always have Paris: 3 retail supply chain lessons from NRF Europe 2026

NRF Retail’s Big Show Europe returned to Paris in September with a clear message for retailers: supply chain can no longer sit behind the rest of the business. As customer expectations, trading conditions and technology continue to change, the supply chain is central to how retailers compete.

Across the stages, the discussion repeatedly moved beyond traditional logistics. From real-time inventory and demand planning to AI, unified commerce, rapid fulfilment and reverse logistics, the emphasis was on creating supply chains capable of responding to change rather than simply executing pre-defined plans.

That was reflected in the dedicated session on rebuilding supply chains for unified commerce, where retailers including Pets at Home and IKI Lietuva discussed the need for more agile distribution and real-time decision-making.

Three themes stood out.

 

Supply chains must become more resilient – and more responsive

 

Retailers are operating in an environment where disruption has become a structural consideration rather than an occasional event.

The NRF Europe programme explicitly positioned supply chain and logistics around the challenges of quick commerce, omnichannel fulfilment, returns and rerouting supply chains in response to changing global conditions.

That means resilience is no longer simply about holding additional stock or having alternative suppliers. It’s about being able to make decisions quickly when demand, availability or routes change.

This was evident in the discussions around unified commerce. The old distinction between the supply chain serving stores and another operation serving e-commerce is becoming less useful when customers expect retailers to fulfil an order from whichever inventory location makes the most sense.

Whether it is tariffs, geopolitical instability, AI or extreme weather, the challenges keep mounting up for retailers – and agility needs to be designed into the supply chain network as a result.

From the sessions at NRF Europe, it was suggested this means developing more flexible fulfilment options, better visibility of inventory, alternative logistics routes or technology that allows decisions to be made closer to real time. It also means supply-chain teams need to work much more closely with e-commerce, stores, merchandising and commercial teams.

Mariusz Kwiatkowski, head of supply chain at Pets at Home, spoke about exploring automation where it can improve efficiency, particularly in the e-commerce space, but he emphasised that there are so many elements of the business where human interaction between staff and customers simply cannot be replaced.

Once again, the message coming through loud and clear is that supply chain is no longer a back-office function; more an operating system for the retailer.

 

AI’s role in decision-making infrastructure

 

If resilience was one major theme in Paris, the other was the growing role of AI in making supply-chain decisions.

Perhaps the clearest example came from M&S Food. Susan Massicot, head of supply chain for the business, explained how the retailer has moved its entire food operation onto machine-learning-based forecasting and replenishment.

The important point was not simply that M&S was using AI. It was how the technology was being used to remove manual intervention from forecasting, ordering and allocation.

The retailer's highly seasonal product range, new product development and increasingly unpredictable viral demand make traditional forecasting particularly difficult. Rather than expecting teams to manually manage every exception, the objective is to allow the system to handle complexity while people concentrate on higher-value activity.

This theme was evident across the NRF Europe exhibition floor. There were plenty of examples of AI-native planning technology capable of connecting specialised agents across forecasting, assortment, allocation and replenishment, with the aim of turning real-time signals into inventory decisions.

For retailers, automated decision-making is the route to future success. But as M&S’s Massicot warned, technology alone does not create transformation – retailers must evolve how their teams work in order to deliver intended benefits from the tech.

 

Supply chain extends beyond point of sale

 

A third overriding theme from Paris was the widening definition of the retail supply chain.

Forward logistics remains critical, of course, but retailers are increasingly having to manage what happens before and after the sale: product development, inventory optimisation, delivery, returns, repair, resale and recycling.

The NRF Europe programme specifically identified reverse logistics alongside fast delivery and demand planning as part of the core supply chain challenge facing retailers.

That matters because returns and circular services can no longer be treated as isolated customer-service processes. They create additional movements, inventory decisions and data requirements.

There were plenty of startups at NRF Europe highlighting how they use data from product lifecycle management, sales and returns systems to identify potential design and supplier problems before products reach customers. This could be significant for retailers, as preventing a poor product decision before production is inherently more efficient than trying to manage excess stock, markdowns or returns afterwards.

Indeed, the best supply chains are increasingly connected to the entire retail operation, with stores themselves increasingly becoming part of the fulfilment infrastructure. They can be selling environments, collection points, return locations, service centres and sources of real-time inventory.

Supply chain leadership today, therefore, is about building an operating model that can absorb disruption, use data to make decisions faster, and connect every stage of the product journey – from planning and sourcing through to fulfilment, returns, and the next customer.