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Shopify is preparing for the transformation of a lifetime, according to its president, Harley Finklestein. Speaking at this year\u2019s Upfront Summit in Los Angeles<\/a>, the longtime e-commerce <\/a>veteran spoke about how the company is going all in on agentic shopping.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shopify is second-largest ecommerce provider<\/a> in the U.S. behind Amazon in America. But Finklestein says that only about 18% of retail purchases in the U.S. are made online. Agentic can change that, acting as a new front door for e-commerce sellers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to begin to use these agentic applications as these kinds of personal shoppers,\u201d he said, adding that the initial rollout will be slow. Agentic personal shoppers are predicted to be the future of shopping in some ways \u2014 able to discover, buy, and compare products for consumers more effectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n Finklestein said that agents will bring context to shopping, which is not something traditional search engines do well at the moment.\u00a0He offered the example of searching for athletic shoes. One of his favorite brands, he said, is On. <\/p>\n \u201cAgentic is fundamentally merit-based as opposed to, if you go to a search engine, you type sneakers, you\u2019re going to see Footlocker,\u201d he said. But once his agentic shopper knows his preference for On running shoes, the next time he searches for such shoes, the agent will do a better job of representing options from On, rather than options sold at popular, mass retailers like Footlocker.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is, we\u2019d point out, a bit simplistic. Current search engines already tailor shopping or search displays towards a person\u2019s search and browsing history.<\/p>\n