The Retail Recap – 07 November 2025 – what’s been making waves in retail this week?

From frightfully good Halloween footfall to M&S going live on TikTok Shop and Co-op reaching a key retail media milestone, what’s been making waves in retail this week?

Dr Martens dials up UGC with StoryStream

Dr. Martens has partnered with visual commerce platform, StoryStream, leveraging User Generated Content (UGC) to enhance product discovery and style inspiration.

The move will bring together the brand’s own content as well as authentic storytelling from Dr. Martens’ customers via UGC into shoppable journeys.

Partnering with StoryStream, the footwear brand has launched new galleries on its Homepage, Product Description Pages (PDPs) and Inspiration pages in 11 markets, including the UK, U.S. and key territories within Europe and the Nordics.

M&S goes live on TikTok Shop

M&S has launched on TikTok Shop, offering customers a curated selection of M&S Beauty products on the social commerce platform, to broaden its customer reach and enhance engagement among younger shoppers.

As one of the fastest growing shopping platforms, one beauty product sells every second on TikTok in the UK.

M&S’ aims to bring together the “quality and value” of its beauty ranges with the “energy and influence” of TikTok, having already proved popular with content creators on the platform after several products went viral and subsequently sold-out.

“Our TikTok Shop supercharges the buzz we have on the platform by bringing the magic of M&S into a space where people love discovering new products,” Sharry Cramond, Fashion, Home & Beauty Marketing Director at M&S, said.

Frightfully good Halloween footfall lifts store performance

Halloween delivered a welcome boost to the UK High Street, according to the latest data from Sensormatic Solutions, as ‘spooky season’ improved shopper counts and helped retailers shake off a sluggish summer.

Data from its ShopperTrak Analytics platform, which captures 40billion store visits globally each year, showed that footfall on Halloween (31 Oct 2025) rose +4.6% year-on-year.

Retail Parks saw the largest yearly increases in store visits on Halloween, up +12.6% year-on-year, while Shopping Centres also saw gains of +11.5% compared to 2024.

“Many retailers will have breathed a sigh of relief that, far from delivering a High Street horror show, Halloween resurrected footfall performance,” said Andy Sumpter, Sensormatic Solutions’ EMEA Retail Consultant.

Co-op reaches RMN milestone, adding 1,000 in-store screens

Co-op Media Network (CMN) has completed its rollout of 1,000 front of store screens, taking its number of digital advertising touchpoints to over 15,500 across its estate.

The new installations, combined with kiosk, self-service and customer-facing screens at manned tills, takes its total screen-count to 15,871 – one of the largest digital advertising footprints of any UK grocery retailer.

“Our continued investment in the digital screen network further strengthens [our] standing as the UK’s most prominent media owner in the convenience sector,” said Kenyatte Nelson, Chief Membership & Customer Officer at Co-op.

“In-store screens continue to be one of the most effective ways for brands to reach shoppers at the point of purchase,” commented Lee LeFeuvre, CCO at SMG, Co-op’s RMN partner.

MACH Alliance to build best-of-breed AI Agent Ecosystem

The MACH Alliance and 45 enterprise technology providers have committed to building the “Agent Ecosystem” – an interoperable, composable environment in which SaaS and AI-native tools connect to create one of the first ‘true’ agentic AI ecosystems.

“While some tech providers envision a single platform to rule them all, we believe the future of enterprise AI will not be defined by a single agent, platform or vendor.”
Jason Cottrell, MACH Alliance President & Orium CEO

“By focusing on delivering outcomes aligned with their clients’ tech ecosystems and business objectives, tech companies can embrace the agentic era with tangible results,” said Amanda Cole, MACH Alliance EBM & Bloomreach CMO.

A growing list of enterprise technology companies – both from within and beyond the MACH Alliance – have pledged support for the Agent Ecosystem, including EverWorker, Deloitte Digital, Valtech, Akeneo, commercetools and Mapp.

AI adoption rapidly boosts agent ‘spending power’

AI agents could be responsible for £29billion of predicted online spending by as soon as 2030, Worldpay forecasts, as shoppers rapidly adopt AI in their browsing and buying journeys.

Its research of over 8,000 global shoppers, including 2,000 from the UK, showed that consumers expect 7% of their retail purchases to be conducted by AI bots within the next five years.

Already one in three (31%) UK shoppers are happy for smart bots to browse on their behalf, rising to almost half (45%) of younger shoppers aged 18-34.

Gumtree taps Mangopay for wallet-first payments

Gumtree has partnered with Mangopay to launch wallet-first payments as part of its transformation from a traditional classifieds site into a fully transactional Consumer-To-Consumer (CTC) marketplace.

Gumtree’s Joint MD, Kim Faura, said that the move would “provide the foundation to build greater trust with our users and grow our community of buyers and sellers.”

Mangopay’s payments infrastructure will enable Gumtree sellers to instantly reuse their earnings to buy other items. Users will also be able to receive funds directly on-platform; replacing offline transactions and creating a seamless, secure experience.

Mark Fleming, CCO at Mangopay, added the partnership would offer Gumtree the “flexibility and scale to drive engagement and accelerate growth.”

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