t. Yet, within a generation, hand-woven fabrics had become luxury goods. Harris Tweed. Persian rugs. Kashmiri shawls. The machine had set a new functional floor and, in doing so, created a new and much higher human ceiling. Photography did the same thing to portrait artists in the 19th century. Why commission a painting when a camera could produce a more accurate likeness for a fraction of the cost? But the same technology that displaced representational artists also liberated them, freeing them from the obligation to replicate reality simply. Painters gave the world impressionism, expressionism and abstraction. Original human-made work became even more valuable, not less, precisely because a machine could now do the functional version cheaply. The Quartz Crisis is probably the most instructive example for anyone working in retail today. In the 1970s and 80s, Japanese quartz technology devastated the Swiss watch industry, and dozens of companies went under. Nearly 70 per cent of Swiss watchmaking jobs disappeared, and consumers who wanted a watch that told the time could now buy one for a few dollars that matched the accuracy of the finest handmade Swiss timepiece. But then something remarkable happened. By the mid-2000s, the market for luxury watchmaking had caught fire. Patek Philippe. Richard Mille. F.P. Journe. Prices went to the stratosphere, and consumers willingly paid. A watch was no longer just about telling the time. The machine had already solved that. A watch had become about something else entirely. So the pattern is consistent. Technology destroys the commodity experience and, in doing so, it paradoxically reveals and amplifies the market for everything above it. So here’s the question for retail in 2026: what does this mean for your on-the-floor sales? AI is already the new baseline. Product knowledge, feature comparisons, availability and recommendations are all commoditised. The consumer who walks through your door today has, in many cases, already done the research. For those who haven’t, virtually every retailer now deploys some form of AI capable of meeting those functional needs instantly and at scale. The mediocre salesperson – the one who recites the specs, reads from a catalogue, and waits to be asked a question – has already been replaced in practical terms. The technology just made it official. But this is not the death of selling. It is the elevation of it, in my opinion. I spent a decade at Nike and watched this dynamic play out in real time. The best people on the floor were never just traditional salespeople. They were all athletes, enthusiasts and people who genuinely cared about sport and about the person standing in front of them. I always remember watching a floor staff member spend forty minutes with a recreational runner, not selling a shoe, but understanding how she trained, what was holding her back and what she actually needed to get more out of her running. So she left without buying a thing. But what she really left with was confidence and a sense that someone had genuinely paid attention. That interaction had nothing to do with product knowledge and had everything to do with human connection. And that is not something any AI replicates. Then there was Guy Orbeïd. I met him when the concept of Sneakerboy was still being worked through and mapped out, and he was genuinely one of the most original retail thinkers I have encountered. He was a big part of the reason I joined the business, and what he built in those early days was a first in Australia and arguably a first globally. The store had no inventory. You walked in, touched and tried the product on, experienced the space, and if you wanted to buy, you ordered on an iPad. The product was either delivered to your home or returned to the store for collection. The physical space was a studio, not a shop, and that single decision changed everything about what the experience could be and what the people in it were there to do. Guy understood something that most retailers still haven’t fully grasped: the store is not primarily a place to hold inventory and never has been. It is a place to hold and contribute to culture. The people in that environment were curators, community members and genuine enthusiasts who brought deep knowledge and real passion to every conversation. Walking into Sneakerboy felt completely different because it was unlike anything else. The experience operated well above the functional baseline because that was the entire point. Guy built the ceiling first and worked down, not the other way around. That is the ceiling the best retailers are now competing for, and the gap between AI-level service and that kind of genuinely human, transformational selling has never been wider or more commercially valuable. Okay, so what actually separates the ceiling from the baseline? There are three things, and none of them can be trained in a two-day onboarding session. The first is genuine curiosity and a real interest in the person in front of you that goes beyond the transaction. The second is authentic product passion, not performed. Consumers are extraordinarily good at detecting the difference, and they disengage the moment they sense someone is just going through the motions. We have all been there. The third is the ability to make someone feel something – not just informed or assisted, but genuinely understood. That’s what transforms a purchase into a memory and a customer into someone who comes back and brings others with them. These are not soft skills, either. They are the hardest skills in retail and, right now, the most undervalued on the floor. The question sitting in front of every retail leader is an honest one, in my opinion. Where does your sales experience actually sit? And are you deploying people to do things a machine already does better and cheaper? Or are you building something above the baseline – real sales culture, emotional intelligence, genuine product passion and human connection that no technology can commoditise? The quartz watch was really accurate, efficient and forgettable. It competed on price because it had nothing else left to offer, and it reset the entire industry in the process – not by killing the premium market, but by making the premium market more valuable than ever. The machine has reset the sales floor. The ceiling is open, and the only question is who in your category is willing and able to own it. Further reading: What Australia’s new spending mindset means for retailers