Camp Miva 2026: We Didn’t Just Predict the Trends—We Built for Them

Camp Miva 2026 is a wrap. And this year, the keynote wasn’t a promise deck—it was a proof deck.

From an 8.5-out-of-10 prediction scorecard to merchants posting 15–57% revenue lifts with Vexture®, the message was clear: Miva isn’t talking about the future of ecommerce. We’re shipping it.

We sat down with CEO Rick Wilson to break down what happened, what’s shipping, and why AI-native commerce is no longer optional.

You opened Camp Miva with a prediction scorecard. What was the point of that?

Accountability. Last year, I made six big predictions about where ecommerce was headed—agentic commerce, margin-aware AI, the shift toward unified platforms, connected commerce, AI-native search, and structured data as the new SEO. This year, I graded myself in front of the room: 8.5 out of 10. I called agentic commerce before Amazon, Google, and OpenAI made it their number-one priority. Margin-aware commerce is now a McKinsey thesis. Connected commerce scored a 9 out of 10.

The point was simple: we didn’t just predict the trends. We built for them. And Miva merchants saw the results—during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, our merchants grew 8% year over year while the overall market grew 3%. That’s 2.7 times the market.

Merchants don’t care about your roadmap slides. They care about results.

This year’s theme was “Mastering Ecommerce in the Age of AI.” Do you think the industry is approaching AI with excitement, hesitation, or confusion?

All three—and that’s the problem. There’s excitement because AI is already transforming product discovery, merchandising, and analytics. There’s hesitation because most platforms were designed to process transactions, not to understand cost, margin, or inventory. Layer AI onto that, and you accelerate activity without improving outcomes.

And confusion? The market is flooded with AI features, but almost no one is building AI-native commerce. There’s a massive difference between bolting a chatbot onto your storefront and building a system where AI actually understands your business economics. That’s why we framed the year around mastery—not adoption.

What’s the difference between “using AI” and truly “mastering AI” in ecommerce?

Using AI is adding a chatbot or a recommendation widget. Mastering it means the entire platform—search, merchandising, pricing, checkout—is architected for intelligence.

It starts with structured data. AI can only make good decisions when it understands your catalog, your margins, your inventory constraints, and your customer economics. When those signals are native to the platform, AI becomes the decision layer—not a feature. That’s how merchants using Vexture are seeing 15 to 57% revenue lifts. It’s not magic. It’s architecture.

What risks do you see for businesses that take a wait-and-see approach to AI?

The biggest risk isn’t missing a feature—it’s being invisible. Agentic commerce is projected to be a $190 to $385 billion channel by 2030. AI-driven traffic is already up 7x year over year, and AI-referred orders are up 11x. That’s not someday—that’s now. If your catalog isn’t structured for LLMs, if your platform can’t expose the right signals to people chatting with an LLM or even an AI agent, you’re not just behind—you’re disappearing from the discovery layer entirely. The storefront is becoming a protocol, not a page. Structured product data is the new SEO.

How are customer expectations shifting in 2026? Are AI-driven experiences now table stakes?

They’re already there. Customers expect intent-driven experiences—they want to describe what they need and have the platform understand them. Not keyword-match them. Understand them.

We’re seeing it firsthand. Apex Tool Company saw a 57% revenue lift in peak season and hit their five-year ROI target in 30 days with Vexture. Sterling Collectables posted a 38.8% increase in total sales. Woodworkers Source saw a 30% sales lift with zero manual merchandising rules. These aren’t projections—they’re production results from the last twelve months.

AI-powered discovery isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s the revenue engine.

Without giving away too much, what can merchants expect from Miva in the coming months?

I said it on stage: this is a proof deck, not a promise deck. In the last year, we shipped Vexture Search and Merchandising, launched MivaPay, expanded PageBuilder to product and category pages, added automotive fitment, and rolled out integrations with USPS, Klaviyo, Avalara, Cybersource, and more. That’s not a roadmap—that’s a ship log.

Looking ahead, there are three big moves. First, AI Insights—an AI data assistant that lets merchants explore their business data conversationally and build reusable reports without writing queries.

Second, margin awareness is shipping in our 26 R1 release. It’s precalculated, flexibly configured, and baked directly into search results, merchandising, and collections. Your platform will finally know which products make you money—and act on it.

And third, a modernized admin experience and MivaConnect expansion for deeper ERP and operational system integration. We’re also moving to three major releases a year with software drops every six weeks.

Ship what matters. Ship it fast. Ship it right.

How is Miva thinking about AI differently than other ecommerce platforms?

Most platforms treat AI as a feature bolted onto a transaction engine. We built it into the architecture. Shopify charges $2,500 a month for lightweight B2B and still needs 10 to 20 apps to do what Miva does natively. BigCommerce has revenue caps and an identity crisis. Adobe is enterprise-priced with a six-figure total cost of ownership and painful upgrades. We built Miva for merchants who outgrew starter tools but refuse to overpay for enterprise bloat.

Our platform integrates cost, margin, inventory, and customer economics directly into search, merchandising, and automation. That’s the difference between AI that drives clicks and AI that drives profit.

What will separate thriving ecommerce brands from struggling ones this year?

Data readiness. Full stop. The brands that win will have structured catalogs, unified platforms, and margin-aware systems. They won’t be managing 15 apps to do what one platform should handle.

App sprawl creates hidden costs and operational risk—every integration is a potential point of failure. The winning brands are consolidating, not fragmenting. They’re focused on profitability per order, not just top-line revenue.

What excites you most about the year ahead?

Agentic commerce. We’re watching the storefront evolve from a web page into a protocol. ChatGPT has in-chat checkout. Google is building Universal Checkout. AI agents are going to negotiate, compare, and purchase on behalf of consumers—and the platforms that can serve structured data to those agents will own the next era of discovery. US online sales hit $1.25 trillion last year, with only 17% of retail sales online. B2B digital commerce is $10 trillion—eight times the size of DTC. The opportunity is massive, and it’s accelerating. That’s what we’ve been building toward.

If you had to summarize your message to merchants coming out of Camp Miva this year in one sentence, what would it be?

The future of ecommerce isn’t just AI-enabled—it’s AI-native, and the businesses that build for that future today will be the ones that win.