Co-hosted with global technology and payment partners, the summit brought together the DTC community to explore the future of AI-powered commerce and autonomous store operations.

SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Shoplazza, an e-commerce platform provider for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, today announced the successful completion of Shoplazza DTC Summit 2026, which took place in Shenzhen, China, on August 7, 2026. The event brought together DTC brands, e-commerce merchants, technology partners, and industry leaders to discuss the future of AI-powered commerce and showcased the latest enhancements of Athena, Shoplazza's AI commerce agent.

The summit featured a keynote, six speaking sessions, three expert-led panel discussions, merchant success stories, and a hands-on AI Product Experience Area where attendees interacted directly with Shoplazza's AI Agents. Sessions covered topics such as conversion optimization, omnichannel growth strategies, AI-powered workflows, and practical approaches to scaling e-commerce businesses in an increasingly AI-driven marketplace.

In the opening keynote, Shoplazza Founder and CEO Jeff Li discussed how AI adoption in e-commerce is evolving from individual AI tools to more autonomous ways of running an online business. He also shared Shoplazza's broader vision for the role AI agents will play in managing day-to-day store operations.

Athena at the Summit

One of the highlights of the event was the latest evolution of Athena, Shoplazza's conversational AI commerce agent. Following its July 26 public launch on Product Hunt, where it earned the #2 Product of the Day spot, Athena continued its public debut with live demonstrations at the summit.

Designed to simplify store operations through natural language, Athena brings together multiple AI capabilities in one place, enabling merchants to manage products, marketing, payments, analytics, and daily operations through conversation rather than toggling across multiple tools and workflows. Attendees saw Athena in action across key areas of e-commerce operations.

Among the capabilities Shoplazza highlighted at the summit:

• Advertising attribution: Athena analyzes commerce signals across channels to give merchants a clearer view of marketing performance, moving beyond simplified attribution models.
• Payment optimization: Athena dynamically selects the optimal payment routing path for each transaction in milliseconds based on factors such as card type, bank, and transaction timing that help reduce checkout failures.
• Conversational store operations: Merchants can simply ask Athena to complete high-volume tasks, including bulk product updates, promotions, and order management, with a preview-and-confirm step before changes go live.

Shoplazza also showcased enhancements to Shoplazza Payments, including upgrades to Smart Express Checkout, demonstrating how AI can help merchants improve payment success rates, better understand marketing performance, and make faster operational decisions.

"At this year's summit, we're introducing a different approach to AI in commerce, one that moves beyond today's collection of disconnected AI tools,"said Jeff Li, Founder and CEO of Shoplazza. "Athena unifies key AI capabilities in a single commerce agent, helping merchants transition to a more autonomous way of operating their businesses. Every capability we're showcasing at the summit reflects merchants' needs today and where we believe commerce is headed."

About Shoplazza

Shoplazza is a global AI-native commerce operating system that enables brands to build, launch, and scale their online businesses. Built on an AI agent-native framework, Shoplazza integrates storefronts, marketing, payments, and operational workflows into a unified system designed to support scalable, long-term growth across global markets. Learn more at https://www.shoplazza.com/.