The fifth edition of the E-Commerce Challenge Poland brought together some of the sharpest minds in Polish e-commerce for two days of conversations, insights, and networking. As Droids On Roids, part of Apadmi, we were proud to participate – not just as attendees, but also as active contributors to the program. Krzysztof Jagliński, Client Solutions Partner, and Paweł Zamolski, Business Development Executive, represented us on the ground.
Held at the Courtyard by Marriott in Warsaw on 25–26 March, the forum brought together e-commerce directors and managers from some of Poland’s biggest companies. The program spanned two days and included two plenary sessions and six parallel tracks at the V Forum E-Commerce. Topics covered included AI’s role in reshaping customer journeys, the future of marketplaces and social commerce, and profitability under pressure.
AI: tool, threat, or both?
The overarching theme throughout the two-day event was AI – not as a buzzword, but as a practical issue that every e-commerce team is currently grappling with: In which areas is it genuinely helpful, in which areas does it overpromise, and how can you tell the difference?
Alla Cherkay from INTERSPORT made a compelling case for using AI as an operational lever to analyze customer data in real time, automate inventory management and demand prediction, and power experiences like virtual fitting rooms and AI assistants, which shoppers increasingly expect.
Piotr Lempkowski from Salesforce addressed the broader issue of AI agents, asking whether they are a genuine breakthrough or merely a passing fascination. His talk covered where agentic AI is already delivering measurable results in e-commerce, how to implement it step by step while minimizing risk, and, crucially, how to maintain a coherent customer experience when more and more interactions are handled by machines.
A panel discussion took this idea even further by asking what e-commerce will look like in six months or a year. Will agentic AI shopping become mainstream? What will happen to brand loyalty when AI is doing the buying? The room had no shortage of opinions.
Artur Górniak from CXLabs offered a more precise perspective on profitability, distinguishing between AI that genuinely increases margins and AI that merely adds complexity and cost. His framing of “automating operations versus automating chaos” was one of the more memorable lines of the event.
Another resonating topic was the future of the e-commerce director role in two or three years. A panel featuring leaders from ETAM, Super-Pharm, Kubota, and Sephora candidly discussed the necessary skills, the difficulty of managing increasingly younger teams, and the rapid pace at which the market demands adaptation.
To round out the program, Alina Lysychkina from Adcookie addressed the growing tension between media scale and profitability, explaining why classic performance marketing stops scaling at a certain point and how a brandformance approach can stabilize margins without sacrificing revenue growth.
Over breakfast: What should you actually be building in mobile?
One of our highlights was hosting a discussion table at the networking breakfast, led by Krzysztof Jagliński, Client Solutions Partner at Droids On Roids, part of Apadmi. The topic: Mobile apps – what should you develop with the future in mind?
The conversation covered which areas of a mobile app actually impact business results versus those that just add complexity. It also addressed how to set development priorities across features, user experience (UX), personalization, performance, and cross-channel integration. Additionally, the conversation touched on how to balance business goals, user needs, and technical constraints when planning a mobile roadmap. There were plenty of perspectives around the table, and the kind of frank exchange that makes these formats worthwhile.
Want to go deeper?
Krzysztof is also the co-author of a chapter in the official event e-book, a free publication with over 100 pages covering AI strategy, personalization, margins, and more. You can download it at adcookie.pl/e-commerce-w-czasach-ai.
