Interview with Ed Bradley of Virtualstock
As AI reshapes how work is done and how products reach market, leaders must balance speed, experimentation, and governance to stay competitive and resilient.
It is great to hear your insights today, Ed. With so much changing in business and technology, what developments in AI and e-commerce have caught your attention recently, and why do they matter to you as a leader?
More people than ever can now write code and shape technology for themselves. At the same time, we are seeing the emergence of agentic AI. We are still in the early days, but we are moving from tools that support tasks to systems that can take action, which is rapidly changing the baseline for innovation.
It’s starting to reshape the way work itself gets done. Tools like Obsidian hint at this shift by creating a structured layer around knowledge, context and decision-making – something closer to a second brain than a traditional tool. This points to a future in which work is not just supported by technology, but increasingly organised and executed through it.
In e-commerce, this is having an immediate impact on two areas. First, retailers are starting to ask much bigger questions about what new capabilities they should introduce to position themselves for future success. Second, they are focusing more directly on operational friction – the parts of the business that are slow, manual or broken, and therefore limiting growth.
Retailers are focusing much more on making it faster and easier for suppliers to get products to market, so they can expand their product range online and respond to demand more quickly.
A good example of this is supplier onboarding and getting products live online. Suppliers can often start selling through channels like Amazon very quickly, while in more traditional retail environments, the process can still take months. That gap is becoming harder to justify. As a result, retailers are focusing much more on making it faster and easier for suppliers to get products to market, so they can expand their product range online and respond to demand more quickly.
With all this new technology allowing businesses to build more than they could before, leadership becomes about deciding where to focus, what to fix first, and how to stay ahead of the competition.
Thinking about your own experience, how have these shifts in AI and customer behavior influenced the way you lead teams and make decisions?
I’m much more focused on creating conditions for experimentation. For example, we’ve given Claude to everyone in the company and introduced daily stand-ups to explore how we can use it, helping to upskill the whole workforce rather than keep this knowledge in the hands of a few specialists.
There is a real drive to maximise the efficiencies and opportunities AI can unlock, but alongside that, there has to be an equally strong focus on data security, compliance and policy. It’s like the dot-com boom, when suddenly the internet came into offices before there was clear guidelines around it. Over time, organisations had to put the right structures in place to use it safely and effectively.
So, it’s all about striking the right balance from the get-go. You have to move quickly when you see potential in a new tool, but it’s really important to ensure your business is using it in a reliable, secure and well-governed way. That is probably the biggest focus for me: leading teams to experiment with confidence, while establishing clear guardrails that make it safe.
When a business depends on multiple teams and external partners, especially with more automation, what practices help leaders maintain trust and accountability day to day?
The crucial thing is to accept that trust and accountability cannot be left to chance when technology is evolving this quickly. Leaders need to establish clear rules around how tools are used, what falls within policy, and where responsibility sits. There are already applications that can be connected to large language model environments to provide more structure, oversight and necessary boundaries.
Transparency and collaboration are just as important. When businesses depend on multiple teams and external partners, leaders need to make sure people are not working in silos or making disconnected technology decisions. That means creating a consistent rhythm of communication and shared visibility around what tools are being tested, how they are being used, and which standards apply.
This matters even more because there is no settled playbook yet. The real task is to work out which of innovations will genuinely improve outcomes, while making sure adoption remains responsible, sustainable, and aligned with data protection and governance.
Businesses need to operate effectively in a world where AI handles more tasks. What does that look like in practice, and how can leaders prepare their teams for it?
In practice, it means making AI part of everyday operations rather than treating it as a side initiative. That starts with access: people need the tools. It then needs to be backed by training, so teams understand not just what the technology is, but how to use it in the context of their own work.
People learn much faster when they are encouraged to test ideas and share what they have achieved. In our case, that has meant challenging people to take a new training, build something with it, and bring those results back into the business. Sometimes that creates internal efficiencies; sometimes it enhances the platform itself. Either way, the learning becomes practical and visible.
Looking at examples like Virtualstock joining Logicbroker, what lessons can leaders take about growing capabilities, entering new markets, and evolving how teams work to keep up with change?
The main lesson is that growth through acquisition only creates value if integration is handled deliberately. Bringing two companies together is inherently complex, so leaders need to be clear-eyed about that from the start.
Growth through acquisition only creates value if integration is handled deliberately. Bringing two companies together is inherently complex, so leaders need to be clear-eyed about that from the start.
In our case, expanding into the US and being acquired by Logicbroker – whose Intelligent Commerce Network powers some of the world’s largest retailers – was not about replacing one business with another. It was about recognising the strength of what Logicbroker had already built in its market, while working closely with its CEO, Omar Qari, and his wider team on how the two businesses could grow together. Combined, we now form one of the largest international dropship supplier networks with more than 15,000 retail and brand partners worldwide and a GMV of over $13 billion.
From my experience, there are three areas that matter most: company culture, processes, and customers. Leaders need to think about how teams work together, how communication and collaboration happen, how decisions are made, and how the combined business will grow and continue to serve customers well.
The complexity is that both businesses will have proven approaches in each of those areas, as well as strong views on what should continue. That is why integration cannot be treated as a simple choice between two existing models. The real discipline is to keep those three perspectives in view, keep collaboration open, and make sure the best of both organisations is being carried forward.
As AI reshapes retail and ecommerce, which leadership habits or approaches have become more important to you than they were a few years ago, and why?
The leadership habit that has become more important to me is being at the forefront of change, although that has always been my instinct. When AI started to emerge, I wanted to get close to the details, to properly understand the technology, where it could be applied, and how far we could push it in practice.
What has changed is the speed at which one person can now turn an idea into something tangible. In the past, you often had to explain a concept, walk people through the use case, and build support around a vision. Now, you can build something, show people exactly what it does, and demonstrate the business value straight away. That makes leadership much more practical and immediate.
What do leaders need to focus on to make sure their business keeps direction and clarity towards the future?
Leaders need to start with a mindset shift. They need to recognise that businesses can now do far more, far faster, and often with smaller teams than before. That should raise not only the pace of execution, but the level of ambition.
At the same time, direction and clarity do not come from over-planning. In technology, big plans often look different once something is live and you can see what works and what needs to change. That is why leaders need to be clear on direction, but flexible on execution.
For successful leaders, the priority is to set a clear direction, create the conditions to act and adapt at speed, and build an innovative culture that keeps improving as the market evolves.
