Hey {{first_name|mate}},

Last Wednesday’s eCom Collab Club London was…how shall we put this?

Absolutely wild.

193 of you lovely lot piled into the ODEON first thing in the morning, pushing the cinema right up to its capacity and leaving a few poor souls perched heroically on the stairs like they were queuing for Glastonbury tickets.

The vibe? Electric.

The coffee? Gone almost immediately.

The bagels, pastries and yoghurt pots? By some small miracle we nailed that bit.

Small wins.

Read on for what you need to know below!

Caitlin

We kicked off the morning with the audience realising the photo of Rich used throughout the slides revealed a shirt so wide open you could practically see into another dimension.

Described as “a man-gina”, or “gaping hole” – either way, not quite the visual anyone expected so early on a Wednesday morning, but there we are….

Once the hilarity settled down we talked AI.

Speakers shared how tools like Claude, Lovable and ChatGPT are already helping teams:

One panelist even built an entire internal forecasting and supply chain system using AI tools. Something that previously lived in a snowstorm of spreadsheets.

Which is great. Unless you enjoy spreadsheets.

But! It’s not all happy automations and visually aesthetic rainbows…

The most interesting conversation came when the panel debated where AI should stop – and how , in some instances, automations can actually impact the user’s wellbeing.

One of the more honest moments on stage came when someone admitted that AI is making them work more, not less. Because when a system can complete tasks instantly, your brain goes “Great. What else can we build?”

Brilliant for productivity – not so much for sleep.

One theme kept coming up:

AI is brilliant at removing the boring work. Tasks that used to eat up hours can now be done in minutes, which means teams can spend more time doing things that make a difference – like strategy, creative work, actually talking to customers.

Some brands are already automating huge volumes of support queries using AI agents.

But others, especially brands with loyal communities, are wary of losing the human voice.

For brands with strong communities or founder-led voices, replacing everything with AI could easily strip away what makes the brand special.

The consensus?

Use AI to handle the boring, repetitive work.

But keep humans where they matter most: creativity, relationships and brand voice.

It’s already here.

But the brands that win won’t be the ones who automate everything. They’ll be the ones who figure out where AI best supports humans, not replaces them entirely.

At the end of the day, you can automate a lot of things.

But you definitely can’t automate a room of 193 eCommerce operators losing their minds over AI at 8am in Leicester Square.

Game set and matched, bots 😎

Although next time we will definitely order more coffee…

Come and see if we finally crack the golden trifecta of coffee, food and seating arrangements…

There was a time when founders stayed quietly behind the scenes and let the brand do all the talking.

But that just won’t cut it anymore.

Last week on the podcast, Adam sat down with Fin Crowe, founder of New Day Originals, to talk about what building a real personal brand actually looks like and why it matters if you’re playing the long game in eCommerce.

They got into founder visibility, authentic networking, building community around a brand, and why relationships still compound faster than most growth hacks.

Watch or listen now before the next episode drops tomorrow.

If you’re used to standing with your back against the wall at eCC London, this might just help you get into the thick of it with confidence…