The year retail integration grew up: AI, scale and lessons from 2025

December 15

Reflections from Patchworks CEO Jim Herbert on AI, retail integration maturity, peak trading and the future of retail.

As we close out 2025, one word captures the year for Patchworks iPaaS better than any other: transformation.

This was a year where momentum truly shifted — not just for our business, but across retail technology as a whole. More brands, retailers, and partners joined Patchworks to pursue a shared goal: simpler, faster, and more maintainable integrations, built for a world where complexity and volatility are the norm, not the exception.

Looking back, 2025 exceeded our expectations. We saw accelerated global adoption — particularly in the US — welcomed a new investment partner in Palatine as part of our growth raise, secured three record quarters of new business, and watched existing customers scale faster and more confidently on the platform…

But more importantly, 2025 clarified something fundamental: integration is no longer a background technical concern — it’s a board-level issue tied directly to ops, resilience, and growth.

The moments that shifted momentum at Patchworks

Every year has milestones. 2025 had moments that genuinely changed our trajectory.

Some of the most impactful included:

Launching major brands including Goodyear Belts, Mitre, Mr Marvis, Mint Velvet, Oliver Bonas, Sealskinz, Arne Clothing, and Kickers
Winning UK B2B eCommerce Software Solution of the Year
Launching the Patchworks Shopify App (featured in Shopify Editions Winter ‘26 list)
Releasing our first native AI capabilities, including AI-assisted scripting and our MCP server
Introducing Virtual Environments, giving teams safer, faster ways to build and test retail integrations
Delivering +300% growth and 100% uptime during BFCM, alongside record data volumes (read the full story)
Completing a £5m fundraise with Gresham and Palatine to fuel the next phase of growth
Continuing our expansion into the US, taking our technical solutions and expert support to even more brands and retailers.

These weren’t isolated wins. Together, they reflected a business executing with confidence — across product, partnerships, and customer delivery.

Being featured in Shopify Editions Winter ’26 was a real standout moment. For us, this wasn’t just recognition — it was validation that retail-first integration matters as Shopify continues to move deeper into enterprise and complex commerce environments.

Retail and eCommerce in 2025: clarity replaces hype

If there was one defining shift in retail this year, it was a move away from speculative black-box technology towards clear, measurable ROI.

Retailers have become far more selective. Tools or patches promising efficiency without operational reality quickly lost credibility. In contrast, platforms that delivered accuracy, efficiency, and resilience have become essential — especially as Shopify’s presence among enterprise merchants accelerated

The “post-pandemic new normal” debate finally faded in 2025. Retailers are firmly back in business-as-usual mode, but with permanently higher volatility in the landscape. So, increased expectations around speed, data accuracy, and multi-channel readiness are understandably more pertinent (all areas where the right iPaaS can shine).

Multi-channel commerce moved from theory to reality this year. TikTok Shop, Temu, and SHEIN reshaped consumer expectations, while returns management and inventory accuracy emerged as genuine margin-protectors rather than operational afterthoughts.

AI also began reshaping discovery in meaningful ways. Product search, SEO, and even checkout experiences are evolving rapidly — with developments like Shopify Checkout appearing in ChatGPT hinting at even more disruption ahead in 2026.

AI, agentic commerce, and the data reality check

Yes, 2025 was the year agentic AI entered serious retail conversations — and also the year many misconceptions were exposed.

But the biggest misunderstanding? That AI can compensate for poor foundations.

In reality, AI raised the bar. Smart retailers quickly discovered that success depends on clean, structured, and accessible product and inventory data — even more will learn the lesson in 2026. Without that, even the most advanced models underperform.

Where AI did deliver real value this year was in focused, practical applications:

Generative product descriptions and imagery
Analysing top-selling SKUs to optimise stock placement and margin before discounting
Improving visibility into inventory availability across channels

Autonomous decision-making is getting closer, but adoption will hinge on trust and standards. Agentic commerce must be near-zero error for consumers before it becomes dominant. Industry initiatives like the Commerce Operations Foundation are a critical step in making that possible

At Patchworks, we’re preparing customers for this future by:

Supporting emerging agentic standards
Making our APIs AI-accessible
Ensuring retailers can expose high-quality operational data safely and reliably

Integration maturity becomes a strategic priority

One of the clearest signals in 2025 was the changing role of iPaaS for retail.

Retailers increasingly see iPaaS not as an integration shortcut, but as the most sustainable way to standardise complexity, retain flexibility, and reduce long-term technical risk.

The biggest integration challenges we saw this year were consistent:

Black-box integrations that couldn’t support real-world complexity
Apps that worked “out of the box” — until scale, promotions, or peak trading exposed their limits (in other words, retailers and brands need iPaaS built for their needs)

A persistent misconception remains that building custom integrations is cheaper or safer. In practice, the total cost of ownership — hosting, security, maintenance, and developer dependency — often proves far higher. In fact, at Patchworks, we saw returning customers in 2025 who had learned this the hard way

Inventory accuracy, delivery reliability, and failed replatforming projects are now driving integration discussions at board level, and not just in IT teams. That shift is only accelerating.

Patchworks in 2025: progress across product, people, and partners

From a performance perspective, three achievements stood out:

Our fundraise, enabling faster innovation
A 320% increase in BFCM migrations, reflecting trust in Patchworks during peak pressure
Industry recognition through major awards

On the product side, we delivered major releases every two weeks — including Virtual Environments, SSO, database connectors, and MCP server enhancements. Over half our roadmap is shaped directly by customer and partner feedback, a commitment reflected in our G2 reviews.

Internally, every team stepped up. That collective effort — across engineering, partnerships, support, and operations — is something I’m deeply proud of.

Looking ahead to 2026

As we head into 2026, the opportunity is clear.

Retailers need control, visibility, and adaptability in an environment where channels multiply, AI accelerates, and operational mistakes are increasingly costly.

The message I’d leave with retailers, brands, and ecommerce agencies is simple:

Take control of your integrations. Replace black-box connections with an integration layer designed for complexity, growth, and the future of commerce.