Imagine a market growing at breakneck speed, where billions of parcels cross borders every year, where an algorithm can search for suppliers, negotiate prices and complete a purchase without any human being pressing the ‘Buy’ button. This is not science fiction. It is digital commerce today. And the fashion, footwear and leather goods sector is at the forefront — both as a key player and as a ‘target’.
ACCORDING TO THE FIGURES
The value of B2B e-commerce in Europe in 2025 reached €1.817 trillion, with 25–30% of orders handled online — a share set to grow rapidly. This is not a trend, but a structural transformation of the way businesses buy and sell.
89% of B2B buyers already use generative AI tools to search for suppliers, configure complex solutions, analyse procurement markets and negotiate prices. A figure that, put like that, sounds almost unbelievable. But the data speaks for itself: today’s buyer is no longer the same as ten years ago. Buyers increasingly belong to the Millennial and Generation Z cohorts, digital natives who demand seamless, engaging and hybrid shopping experiences.
Meanwhile, 5.8 billion parcels were imported into the EU in 2025. A figure that clearly illustrates the logistical, customs and competitive pressures weighing on the entire European production system.
AI THAT CHANGES THE RULES
Artificial intelligence is no longer a promise for the future: it is already embedded in processes. From the debate that emerged during the Netcomm Digital Commerce Strategy Talk in January 2026, it became clear that AI is no longer a technology to be explored, but a concrete strategic lever that impacts productivity, customer relations and business models. The real challenge, experts point out, is not technological: it is organisational and cultural.
On the operational front, the results are already measurable. A case study in pharmaceutical distribution generated savings of almost one million euros in less than a year across a sample of just one thousand product lines, thanks to optimised planning and inventory management. This principle is also applicable — with the necessary adjustments — to the fashion and footwear supply chain, where the management of collections, materials and international suppliers has always been a critical issue.
AI Agents, in particular, find fertile ground in B2B. In business-to-business commerce, products are complex, configurations are customised, prices are variable and approval processes are intricate. AI agents integrate natively with corporate systems, drawing on the company’s proprietary data to generate precise and contextualised responses.
There is, however, one development that deserves particular attention: Nexi has unveiled the AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol), developed with Google and over 60 partners, designed to enable secure transactions managed autonomously by AI agents on behalf of users — a scenario that challenges the fundamental assumption of current payment flows, where it is the human who explicitly clicks ‘Buy’. In short, the future of payments will be agent-driven. And it will require new standards of security and accountability.
Another quiet transformation concerns brand visibility. With Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) as an evolution of SEO, major AI assistants are becoming the new intermediaries in the search and selection phases, potentially distancing the consumer from a direct relationship with the brand. For those working in fashion and luxury — sectors where brand identity is everything — this is no small challenge.
THE MISSING RULES
The growth of e-commerce brings with it a problem that Europe can no longer ignore. Many of the products entering the EU market contravene current regulations: VAT fraud, breaches of safety standards, infringements of intellectual property rights and misleading claims fuel unfair competition within the Single Market, putting businesses that adhere to high European standards at a disadvantage. Such unfair commercial practices, linked to small parcel shipments, are eroding entire industrial value chains.
Faced with this scenario, a broad coalition of European associations — including CEC, the European Footwear Confederation, and EURATEX for textiles and clothing — has signed a joint declaration calling on the EU to introduce, without further delay, the obligation for foreign operators to appoint a legal representative in the European Union for e-commerce imports.
The crux of the matter is the so-called ‘deemed importer’: the EU, under the new Union Customs Code, plans to introduce this only in 2028, but for trade associations, this will be too late. The signatories of the petition stress that it would be technically feasible to bring this measure forward via a simple EU Regulation: it is merely a question of political will.
Sustainability, safety, intellectual property: these are precisely the values on which the European fashion and footwear industry has built its global reputation. Seeing these values undermined by opaque and non-compliant imports is, first and foremost, a matter of fair competition.
To sum up: B2B digital commerce is growing at a rapid pace and artificial intelligence is multiplying its efficiency — but also its complexity. Whilst businesses are rushing to adopt AI agents, predictive tools and new payment protocols, the rules of the game are lagging behind. For the footwear and leather goods sector, which competes globally on quality and compliance, securing a more effective regulatory framework is not a mere detail: it is a matter of survival.
