From renewed tariffs and consumer strife to supply chain realignments, the Asia Pacific region is emerging as retail’s R&D lab. Its 1.4 billion mobile-first and increasingly AI-savvy shoppers already push more than half of point-of-sale transactions, with QR spend alone set to triple by 2029.
The Asia Pacific edition of Retail's Big Show brings together retail industry leaders from across the region to collaborate in Singapore from June 3-5, 2025. Learn more.
Governments from Singapore to South Korea are baking circular economy principles into policy that modeling shows could unlock $340 billion in GDP, create 15 million new jobs and slash carbon emissions by 1.7 gigatons. Layer on rapid consumer adoption of AI tools, supported by thoughtful government productivity initiatives, the diversification of sourcing hubs and the emergence of agile, tech-enabled manufacturing practices, and APAC is no longer just the world’s factory floor — it is the payment rails, the sustainability blueprint and the diverse strategic command center for the next era of global retail.
Below, we’ll follow two seismic shifts — manufacturing strategy and youth-led commerce — which both will take center stage at the NRF APAC Innovators Showcase, taking place at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show Asia Pacific.
Tariff whiplash is real: Duties can spike to 145% one month and retreat to 30% (announced on May 12), making long-term sourcing bets feel like day-trading.
It’s no wonder that 80% of U.S. tech and apparel brands and retailers are responding with a “China-plus-many strategy,” saying they’ll trim China production within two years. Apple alone air-shipped $2 billion in India-built iPhones to the United States in March, pushing China’s share of U.S. manufactured imports down from 24% to 15%, while India’s share of U.S. smartphone imports rises to 26%.
Chinese manufacturers are responding by flipping the script: turning the manufacturing line into a direct-to-consumer marketing channel. Viral TikTok “factory tours” and self-styled “sourcing agents” flaunt $38,000 luxury bags allegedly made for $1,400 and invite shoppers to buy directly, circumventing tariffs and brand mark-ups. Many claims are exaggerated or downright false, but the spectacle is driving eyeballs — and dollars — into China even as tariffs bite.
The upshot: Once a back-end cost center, the factory floor is now a front-facing brand. Dive into individual comments on viral posts, and you see Western consumers, especially Gen Z, eagerly chasing (and sharing) a spectrum of options — fakes, dupes, and reps — that offer transparency and value, both core tenets of Gen Z shopping behavior.
Meanwhile, U.S. retailers are left scrambling, losing the sale and customer data insights — this is a critical shift. For today’s social shoppers, the story behind the product (i.e., where it was made, how it was priced) is part of the appeal. Future-proofing supply chains now means hedging against tariffs and geopolitical risk and mastering livestream credibility.
With the impending wave of AI-native shopping like ChatGPT X Shopify and Perplexity AI X PayPal comes a new perfect storm: the evaporation of the sales funnel. Consumers won’t “discover” brands, they’ll ask targeted questions. Unless brands can be the answer, AI will point the customer directly to an item sold by a Chinese manufacturer, by-passing existing brands and retailers entirely.
Absent an AI tool to bridge that delta, Western brands and retailers might need to consider investing directly into their factory partners to maintain a 360-degree customer view, or reimagine nearshoring not just as a supply chain strategy, but as a new form of store-meets-factory-outlet experience explicitly created with transparency, speed and the TikTok generation in mind.
All these forces — tariff turbulence, factory-floor livestreaming, AI-native platform shopping and the rise of QR and NFC-native Gen Z consumers — will converge on the show floor in Singapore next month. NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show Asia Pacific will gather 30 hand-picked innovators in the NRF APAC Innovators Showcase, offering a live look at the tools retailers need to serve a region that already contains 55% of the world’s shoppers and a middle class on course to hit 3.5 billion by 2030.
Among the APAC Innovators Class of 2025, a few stand-outs are rewriting engagement and driving serious ROI in the process. ChatLabs turns a brand’s website into a scrollable TikTok-style feed, delivering hyper-personalized experiences that have Louis Vuitton and Samsung boosting customer retention and return on ad spend. “Modern consumers expect seamless transitions from social platforms to brand websites,” says ChatLabs co-founder Michel Tjoeng, explaining how its AI-driven platform “bridges this gap by dynamically adapting the brand experience” to each visitor’s context.
At checkout, Singapore’s MineSec erases hardware friction: Its SoftPOS technology transforms any Android phone into a tap-to-pay terminal, letting store associates finalize sales on the sales floor, no clunky registers required. This not only meets digital native shoppers’ expectations for speed, but also slashes hardware costs for retailers. In fact, MineSec envisions a world where every transaction is “as effortless and intuitive as breathing,” a mantra that reflects its mission to empower businesses with seamless mobile payments.
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Post-purchase, Alice AI makes sure Gen Z customers feel heard — literally. The Voicebox platform swaps clunky surveys for voice notes, delivering what CEO Karan Gupta calls “10x richer insights” than engagement rates above 30% — intelligence retailers can use to refine experiences, nurture loyalty and stay ahead of the curve.
While everything retail is in flux — from tariffs to social media and engagement trends — one thing is certain. The next wave of retail innovation comes alive at the NRF APAC Innovators Showcase at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show Asia Pacific, June 3-5 at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
Debra Langley and Rickie Koo are members of the NRF Innovation Advisory Committee. Langley is a partner at Captis Ventures; Koo is a principal at DNX Ventures.