“More and more, I’m coming again to working product and dealing with the vice chairman of tech on some synthetic intelligence (AI) initiatives and getting very hands-on myself,” says Wolf & Badger CEO and co-founder George Graham.
“It’s intellectually difficult, stimulating and intriguing – and I need to study extra about it. I’m attempting to get as a lot information as I can on what I take into account to be essentially the most fascinating tech development of my skilled work lifetime.”
Not the phrases of a head of engineering, CIO, or expertise govt, however these of the CEO of the net market, whose enterprise world continues to be lit up by the chance to make use of AI throughout a number of operations.
And why not? In January 2026, Wolf & Badger launched a efficiency replace to mark 15 years of buying and selling, reporting it had now surpassed $500m in cumulative gross sales since inception and achieved nearly 40 million web site visits in 2025 alone, whereas reinforcing its repute as an moral platform by securing B-Corp recertification.
Wolf & Badger companions with impartial manufacturers promising robust ethics, and successfully turns into their tech stack and on-line operations supplier. It’s the conduit for these manufacturers to attain the size that few organisations of their dimension can obtain alone.
The enterprise achieved annual gross sales of $100m (£75m) in 2024, with greater than 2,000 model companions now in place, serving to the London-headquartered operation develop globally. And ongoing funding in “AI-driven discovery and on-site personalisation” is delivering a measurable impression, with the corporate speaking about £3.2m of instantly attributable incremental gross sales from current AI initiatives.
“There’s large alternative to enhance the effectivity and discovery on Wolf & Badger by higher understanding our buyers and our manufacturers and the merchandise they promote,” he says.
“There’s tons round AI on picture recognition and product tagging to construct out higher info associated to type or what occasion a product can be appropriate for, and utilizing that to floor extra related merchandise to the person on the proper time – all with the top level of constructing life extra thrilling and creating inspirational purchasing experiences.”
Are all of us product managers now?
Whereas the work on utilizing AI to energy the net expertise is not unusual in e-commerce in the present day, Graham’s perspective as CEO of {the marketplace} is. He’s a CEO getting his palms soiled with the tech, which is uncommon in retail.
“I’ve personally spent many lots of of hours over the previous three months getting my head round AI and the way forward for commerce – with agentic commerce in thoughts,” he explains.
I’ve personally spent many lots of of hours over the previous three months getting my head round AI and the way forward for commerce – with agentic commerce in thoughts George Graham, Wolf & Badger
“Claude Code has turn into my go-to app. I’ve constructed a reasonably bespoke AI agent ‘chief of workers’ that’s linked to my instruments through MCPs [model context protocols] or APIs [application programming interfaces], with a bunch of bespoke abilities and scripts that I’ve ended up constructing into that.”
Graham says the collective reminiscence stack is getting extra highly effective by the day, and utilizing it has improved his personal working practices.
“I really feel twice as environment friendly as I used to be six months in the past. I’ve taken that point and – within the brief time period – continued reinvesting it in understanding AI.”
The AI assistant Graham has developed is being made accessible through Stack internally, and the broader staff is getting arrange on Claude Code themselves with entry to their very own model.
The CEO acknowledges he isn’t an engineer or coder, however as a young person, he would make video games in Primary (Newbie’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) and design web sites with HTML. After finding out enterprise at college, he joined PwC as a technique guide. By the age of 23, he was beginning Wolf & Badger and “had to determine how one can construct a market as there wasn’t actually market software program on the market”.
When growth at Wolf & Badger was introduced in-house – in the present day, it has a vice-president of expertise, round a dozen individuals in engineering and others in product administration and design – Graham continued to play a component in constructing out options to help model companions and prospects.
“I’ve at all times discovered all that fascinating,” he explains.
“Over time, I stepped away as we introduced the specialists in – however, more and more, I’m coming again to working product and dealing with our vice-president of tech on a few of the AI initiatives and getting very hands-on myself.”
Graham, who based Wolf & Badger together with his brother Henry in 2010, admits he doesn’t totally perceive the finer nuances of coding and doesn’t have the skilled engineer’s eye. However with the brand new tech obtainable, he suggests “anybody generally is a product supervisor or software program developer” now.
“I’ve been in a position to create prototypes – I’ve constructed issues that assess manufacturers approaching the platform and assist the sustainability staff with vetting,” he says.
The software program his inside groups are actually utilizing is ready up on GitHub, and constructed on Eversell MSL front-end, Superbase, and different apps. “Every little thing is connected in what I feel in all fairness strong for inside use,” he provides.
He urges different leaders in retail and wider enterprise to not be afraid, and to experiment with the instruments now obtainable. There’s quite a bit that may be constructed on only a small month-to-month tech subscription outlay, he notes.
The broader tech staff at Wolf & Badger initially experimented with options corresponding to Microsoft Copilot after which Cursor.
“Solely prior to now few months have our engineers discovered the standard is at some extent the place they will lean on it extra to begin really writing code. We’re holding away from the vibe coding in key delicate areas, after all, however we are able to experiment in a lot of areas.”
The tech exploration work Graham has taken on – and there’s way more to return, he says – is to “prepared ourselves for agentic commerce and ensure we’re forward of the pack”.
Because the flip of the 12 months, there have already been some noteworthy developments in agentic commerce that additional underline it as a future path of journey for e-commerce and, subsequently, one thing e-commerce and retail leaders should higher grasp an understanding of.
Agentic commerce and UCP
The brand new 12 months began with JD Sports activities saying it’s enabling shoppers to make use of AI platforms to seek for and buy merchandise – all in a single click on, with out leaving the apps.
JD prospects within the US can buy instantly by Copilot, and – in the end – this can be adopted by the power to take action through Google Gemini and ChatGPT. JD is leveraging the agentic commerce suite of tech gamers Commercetools and Stripe.
Jetan Chowk, JD’s chief expertise and transformation officer, mentioned the transfer was about assembly prospects “the place they’re”. It got here after OpenAI introduced in September that US buyers might purchase from Etsy instantly by ChatGPT.
It began with an “prompt checkout” to help single-item purchases, however multi-item carts are actually on their solution to being a actuality.
Then, on the January 2026 NRF Massive Present in New York, the place many from the retail expertise group congregate yearly, Google launched the Common Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open customary for agentic commerce that goals to determine a typical language for AI brokers and methods to function collectively throughout shopper surfaces, companies and fee suppliers.
The work Stripe is doing with agentic commerce protocol and standardising the mechanism by which individuals can store instantly through the [AI] brokers is tremendous fascinating George Graham, Wolf & Badger
This can be a fast-moving area, however was co-developed with distinguished retail trade gamers corresponding to Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Goal and Walmart, and endorsed by greater than 20 others throughout the ecosystem, together with funds corporations Adyen, American Categorical, MasterCard and Visa.
Graham is in shut conversations with Stripe and Google, attending their occasions and repeatedly tuning into their updates.
“The work Stripe is doing with agentic commerce protocol and standardising the mechanism by which individuals can store instantly through the brokers is tremendous fascinating,” he says. “Google and Shopify UCP is an extra transfer in direction of a standardisation of how that is going to work.”
Graham is assured there can be extra shopper discovery performed on Google’s AI-powered platforms, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and different comparable areas.
“We have to guarantee we’re supporting the two,000 manufacturers we’re working with to look in the proper means on these channels and facilitate the tech that may help one- or zero-click checkout, the place an agent has the power to purchase on a shopper’s behalf.”
He’s assured {that a} platform corresponding to Wolf & Badger can play a key function within the agentic area. Particular person manufacturers are usually going to wrestle to actually construct out the proper metadata and arrange UCP to be recognised by the human within the loop or an AI agent.
Graham says: “If we are able to wrap collectively the perfect impartial manufacturers and collectively go to a purchasing agent to make sure these manufacturers seem in the proper locations, we’re nicely positioned to seize a few of that demand and drive it in direction of the person manufacturers we work with, relatively than the ensuing purchases ending up with the larger homogenised manufacturers in our area.”
He provides that Wolf & Badger’s presence harks again to the pre-digital days of boutique purchasing in-store, however with the proper expertise funding and focus now, it will possibly ship this in a “scaled means” on-line and thru its showrooms.
“Our editorial and advertising and marketing staff nonetheless make the artistic calls, however we’re in a position to drive it ahead with a few of these new bits of tech,” he says, including that as Wolf & Badger extends its technological nous, it will possibly allow its manufacturers to concentrate on “the troublesome half” of commerce – which means the design and manufacturing of compelling clothes and shopper merchandise.
Quickly evolving area
As for the instant future at Wolf & Badger, the US enlargement is a key focus – as are ventures throughout Europe and into the Center East. An expanded model partnerships operate throughout the enterprise is predicted to help the onboarding of latest designers from around the globe.
However AI continues to be an space of serious exploration, with Graham assured that his experimentation and use of cost-effective instruments are enhancing how the enterprise operates.
“It’s a quickly evolving area – every thing is altering today,” he says, including that it’s getting more and more obscure what is going to come subsequent as a result of acceleration of technological functionality.
“You simply must attempt to keep forward,” he says. “We’re repositioning ourselves in ensuring we’re embracing AI in the way in which I feel any forward-thinking progress firm ought to, and recognising the ability it will possibly carry to allow us to do way more for our manufacturers and buyers.”
