A lot of retail news in the UK sort of washes over me – but a story this week really grabbed my attention.

The Works, that slightly odd, 500-store UK retail chain that sells arts, crafts, stationery and toys, is abandoning ecommerce.

Its website will no longer sell products, and merely act as a kind of signpost for the brand, its store locations and its product range.

It was such a surprising headline to read, nestled in among stories about all the comings and goings of agentic AI and what brands are doing to prepare for the “seismic changes” coming in search, discovery and agent-led, end-to-end shopping.

And on reflection, it’s not just fascinating but entirely logical in this particular corner of retail – for a number of notable reasons.

Quitting a rigged game

If we just for a moment assume that agentic commerce (and let’s assume the most simplified understanding of that, meaning AI agents performing all kinds of tasks and flattening shopping journeys of every kind) continues to plough on unbridled, it will as always be dominated by the giants.

Let’s look briefly at the US to illustrate this point. The average US online retailer spent $400,000 on AI in 2025.

Amazon will spend around $200 billion on AI infrastructure this year.

To put it very simply, if agentic commerce becomes all-conquering, a handful of the biggest, most infrastructurally ready retailers will win the race by a distance – and every year, they will move further and further ahead of everyone else. This won’t be some great democratisation – it never is.

The Works, with the utmost respect, will not keep up. Indeed, even if agentic commerce isn’t all-conquering and ecommerce remains similar to how it is today, the Works will remain a long way behind the giants.

And the very nature of what The Works sells and does makes it largely irrelevant online.

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