Why Unified Commerce Is the New Battleground for Specialty Retail Leadership
Scott Benedict
Top Retail Expert | Retail Merchant | Omnichannel Consultant | Educator | Author | Mentor | Speaker | Podcaster | Advisory Board Member | eCommerce Executive | Retail Accelerator
There’s a quiet revolution happening across specialty retail—and if you’re not paying attention, you might just get left behind.
The newly released 2025 Unified Commerce Benchmark from Incisiv is the most detailed assessment yet of how 220+ U.S. specialty retailers are performing in four critical experience areas: shopping, checkout, fulfillment, and service. And make no mistake—this isn’t just a tech trend report. It’s a roadmap for relevance.
What the report lays bare is this: the traditional growth levers that specialty retailers once relied on—exclusive assortments, category expertise, store experience—no longer guarantee sustainable success. Digital-native brands have reset customer expectations, and unified commerce has become the new baseline for competitiveness.
The Great Divergence: Retail’s New Reality
The report outlines three major forces creating a new urgency for transformation:
Only 5% of Specialty Retailers Have Achieved Unified Commerce Leadership
Of the 220+ specialty retailers assessed, just 5% were recognized as true leaders in unified commerce. That’s a wake-up call.
To earn that title, retailers must go beyond channel integration. They must deliver naturally flowing, real-time experiences—from discovery through post-purchase—that reflect how customers actually behave. It’s a shift from connecting the dots to removing the dots entirely.
What Leaders Are Doing Differently
Leaders in unified commerce aren’t just adding features—they’re unlocking compounding business advantages in some of the following areas of the business:
What’s remarkable here is that experience and efficiency are no longer trade-offs. When done right, unified commerce drives both.
The Bar Is Higher, and Rising Fast
One of the most striking insights from the report is how fast capabilities evolve from “differentiators” to “requirements.”
In just two years:
What took five years to standardize in the past now takes two. That means retailers who aren’t investing now will soon be left playing catch-up.
My Take: The Future Is Unified, or It Isn’t
As someone who’s spent my career in retail merchandising and transformation—at Walmart, Sam’s Club, Best Buy, and now as a consultant—I’ve seen firsthand what happens when retailers fail to evolve. I’ve also seen the magic that happens when they do.
This report is more than a benchmark—it’s a clear signal that unified commerce isn’t optional. It’s existential.
The leaders of tomorrow will not be those with the most locations or the flashiest digital storefronts. They’ll be the ones who rewire their organizations around a simple idea: the customer doesn’t care about your org chart, your legacy systems, or your inventory silos. They care about convenience, consistency, and context.
To deliver that, retailers must:
The retailers that do this won’t just stay relevant—they’ll thrive. The ones that don’t may not get another shot.
The Bottom Line
The 2025 Unified Commerce Benchmark proves what many of us in the industry already feel in our gut: the future of retail isn’t omnichannel—it’s unified.
If you’re a retailer, brand, or partner trying to figure out where to go next, I urge you to study this report. Use it to pressure test your capabilities. Challenge your team to think beyond individual touchpoints. And above all, remember this:
Unified commerce isn’t a finish line—it’s a mindset. And it’s the only one that leads to sustainable retail leadership.
To get more information on this topic, visit the Incisiv website.
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