Talk
The AI-Native Retailer: How One System Runs 93,000 SKUs, From Sourcing to Sale
Most retailers add AI to a few tasks. The Bazaar was rebuilt to be AI-native. We sell electronics in re-commerce, the hardest kind of e-commerce: every product can come in up to 12 variants, each in a different condition, across 93,000 SKUs. No team can price, list and sell that by hand. So the whole business runs on one connected AI system, and selling mixed-condition stock became as simple as selling new.
Any item goes from purchase to live in our app in about 60 seconds. From there, AI runs the work end to end: it sources new stock, prices every item for its condition, runs flash offers and live auctions, writes the newsletter and social content, answers customers in Arabic and English, and decides whether returned units are repaired or scrapped. Every employee works inside the same system, from the shop counter to the app, and new channels plug in within minutes.
This is a talk about running a store this way, not a product demo. I'll share:
- how to decide which work AI runs on its own and which still needs a person
- the guardrails that let AI price and promote without discounting the business into a loss
- how to keep automated marketing honest and stop it from spamming customers
- the mistakes that shaped our rules
Attendees leave with a practical blueprint for turning a complex catalogue into an AI-native operation.
About
Hafez AlSayed is a serial entrepreneur and venture builder with over a decade of experience building and scaling automation, AI and technology ventures across the Middle East. An electrical engineer by training, he led large-scale industrial automation, robotics and digital transformation programmes in the oil, gas and manufacturing sectors before turning to company building.
Through Utopia Lab, his venture studio, he launches or scales a new venture roughly every six months and trains early-stage founders, fractional CEOs and students to turn their ideas into working businesses. As Founder and Group CEO of Utopia Global Ventures, he leads companies including Analytica, The Bazaar Retail, Cashe, NexaCare and several emerging ventures across technology, healthcare, retail and payments.
His focus today is how AI changes the way businesses are built and run, from AI agents working in real roles alongside his teams to how retailers like The Bazaar can put AI to work in everyday operation