By: AK Infinite
With its capacity for data analysis, pattern recognition, and predictive modeling on a scale the world has never known, AI has quickly become both the buzzword and the north star of modern business. In the realm of Commerce–from legacy retailers to cutting-edge social shopping apps–AI presents unparalleled potential to improve both the “last mile” customer experience and the “under the hood” internal operations required to maximize it. And for the first time in history, technology may have the capacity to do both in a way that drives not just business profits, but also social impact outcomes that have been previously too complex to tackle.
MAS Commerce is a new consultancy guiding retailers, brands, and platforms to increase profitability and sustainability simultaneously through AI and advanced technologies. It’s an audacious mission that its Founder and CEO, Matthew Adam Smith, comes by honestly after a career spent on the bleeding edge of industries experiencing radical transformation. Before landing in big retail, Matthew was a career marketing leader of iconic media brands like WIRED and Fast Company during their evolutions from analog to digital and social powerhouses. From 2019 to 2023, Matthew helped drive Walmart’s commercial transformation as a launch leader of their B2B innovation platforms—both the retail media network and the 3rd party eCommerce marketplace. Within the world’s largest company, he helped launch 10-figure businesses that are leveraging AI to scale the quantity and quality of products available to Customers and their experiences across the Purchase Funnel. Now an entrepreneur, a member of industry councils on AI, and a board advisor to tech startups, he was recently named a “Top Retail Expert” by RETHINK Retail.
“I’ve always been passionate about both Business Innovation and Social Good, particularly Sustainability,” says Matthew when asked about this duality. “Over more than 20 years as a leader in Marketing and global Commerce, I’ve watched even the most well-intended of companies struggle to reconcile their short-term profit motive with a longer-term view of their business health and its impact on society. Now, for the first time in history, I believe AI and other advanced tech can finally shift us to a unified model with efficiency at its heart–eliminating the false choice between Profit and Sustainability.”
The importance of AI in commercial transformation cannot be overstated. It is increasingly being relied upon to make predictions and even to empower automated decision-making on everything from ingredient sourcing, manufacturing, and supply chain management to customer demand sensing, drip marketing communications, and dynamic pricing and promotions. What all of these solutions have in common is their capacity to help businesses drive their existing goals, but more productively and with less waste, which MAS Commerce believes will mean not only less time wasted but less environmental waste, too. According to Matthew, “Improving the efficiency of a delivery route saves the customer time while reducing carbon consumption. Improving search results and ad targeting improves sales while reducing the water needed to cool the servers powering those experiences. Showing a customer a 3D rendering of a home or apparel product makes them better informed and less likely to return, which eliminates the long list of sustainability downsides of the reverse supply chain. The list goes on!”
While business consulting services are by no means a new or novel offering–in 2023 alone, the industry drove more than $330 billion in billings–the AI revolution is rapidly creating new and growing knowledge gaps that upstarts are eager to fill. MAS Commerce provides clients an end-to-end framework, which Matthew likens to the full-service or “boutique” agencies that cropped up during the days of Web 1.0 and early 2.0, acting as a “one-stop shop” to help leaders across the org chart orient themselves to what AI is, what it isn’t, which goals and solutions they should focus on first, and–notably different than the largest legacy consulting firms–directly supporting the technological implementation and the change-management required for success. “AI is a truly daunting challenge for commerce leaders,” Matthew acknowledges, “so we are here to myth-bust, to simplify, and to shift leaders from a reactive to a proactive posture that equips them to experiment with purpose, drive their business and to get their coaches and players on board.”
As MAS Commerce paves the way for a more profitable and sustainable future, it reminds this author of how AI is forcing us all to rethink long-held assumptions, like the balance between Business and Social benefit that have long believed requires a trade-off. If there is now a pathway for businesses to navigate rapid technological disruption and soaring consumer expectations and to do well by doing good, MAS Commerce may just have the roadmap.
Published By: Aize Perez
