Why complexity, slow execution, and changing customer behavior are turning scale into a disadvantage – and how eCommerce leaders can adapt.
In eCommerce, scale is often seen as the ultimate advantage. Bigger catalogs, more resources, advanced technology – all signs that a business should be ahead of the competition. And yet, some of the largest online retailers struggle to deliver the kind of experience today’s customers actually expect.
During the Balkan eCommerce Summit 2026, Krasimir Krastev, Head of Product and Strategy at HighSky.ai, challenged this assumption by exploring a growing gap in the market: why the biggest online stores are often the most underserved.
As customer behavior shifts toward faster, simpler, and more intuitive experiences – especially on mobile – complexity can quickly turn from strength into weakness.
In this interview, we explore where large eCommerce players fall behind, why smaller and more agile companies often move faster in adopting AI, and how businesses can rethink accessibility, user experience, and decision-making to stay competitive in a rapidly changing landscape.
Krasimir, during your session “Why the Biggest Online Stores Are the Most Underserved”, what were the key takeaways attendees gained from it?
It does sound counterintuitive, but it’s completely in sync with the trends of everything becoming faster and easier – the same trends that prompted the creation of HighSky.
Let me explain – the largest online retailers normally are the ones with the biggest and richest catalogs. They’ve spent a lot of time and money to make their shops as rich and explanatory as possible, and their products as well described as possible, which makes them incredibly information-heavy.
This however comes in direct conflict with the trends of the current younger generations, whose attention span is ever decreasing in the past decades. Influenced by social media formats and their drive to save space, the content that is consumed gets ever shorter, training our brains to consume fast, condensed information rather than invest the time in proper research.
We are often influenced by hype and opinion rather than actual analysis, while the medium of consuming this information gets ever smaller.
Over 70% of online purchases are made on a mobile device. Now imagine this huge information-heavy website facing the challenge to deliver a proper mobile-based experience while trying to fit into the ever-decreasing attention window.
The same goes for the current trends in software development – it’s the age of fast agile startups that little by little push their way into the market shares of huge corporations and their slow and steady (meaning expensive) approach.
But being fast and agile often leads to the easiest decision of picking the lowest hanging fruits: the self-onboarding customers, the smaller businesses you can serve at scale, their lack of legal, regulatory and compliance complications, and most of all – their uniformity and lack of technological challenge to implement a solution.
And this is where the biggest retailers, the ones with the biggest potential to benefit from your product, but also the ones with the deepest pockets, get underserved. Because they are slow, complex and have a band of lawyers looking over every shoulder.
Most providers simply prefer scale to market share.
What attendees gained from the session was a perspective on how to address those gaps and how to properly take advantage of a market that is not only scale-driven, but where being a market-maker matters.
Large eCommerce players usually have more resources, data, and technology. Where exactly are they failing – and why is that gap still there?
This is the exact reason.
The majority of the current-age providers are young startups focusing on what they do best – their own product and their direct customers. Most often they lack the expertise or even the willingness to spend 6–7 months closing a deal with a large retailer with no guarantee of success, and instead prefer addressing smaller businesses that lack both the technological and legal complexity of adoption.
From your experience in AI and automation, what are the biggest inefficiencies inside large online businesses that most people don’t see?
The biggest strengths of large retailers turn into their biggest weaknesses in the current age of technology.
Information-heavy catalogs, complex website structures and huge information pages become even harder to navigate on smaller screens and while on the go – the way the younger generation of users is used to perceiving the world.
And information laid out in a plain, objective way often makes choices harder, leading to missed conversions, abandoned carts and so on.
Recommendations and search systems are also areas where many retailers are falling behind, as conventional keyword search engines no longer provide adequate results in information-heavy catalogs, while static recommenders no longer work effectively – especially when it comes to upselling.
Why do smaller or more agile companies sometimes outperform big players when it comes to adopting AI and digital transformation?
Because their risk tolerance is much higher.
They are much more legally flexible, while the decision-making process usually includes a flat structure of one or two business owners.
Another key factor is their internal structure – usually a small number of heavily overloaded employees who jump at the idea of being assisted, rather than a corporate structure struggling with the potential threat of staff cuts due to automation, which more and more often leads to internal resistance against these projects.
If you had to prioritize just one area where large eCommerce companies should invest in AI right now, what would it be – and why?
Accessibility.
Think about how you can deliver everything you want to say in one minute or less and convince the customer that this is the right product here and now.
Think easy cart-to-checkout transitions. Think smart recommendations and well-backed advice. Think searching in human language or simple purchase intent.
Think talking with your store the way you would with a live sales specialist.
Those are the things I think about when shaping our product strategy and company vision.
As eCommerce continues to evolve across technology, customer behavior, operations, and digital growth, conversations like these will once again be a key part of Balkan eCommerce Summit 2027, where industry leaders, brands, and innovators from across the region will come together to exchange ideas, practical insights, and real-world experience.
More information about the upcoming edition is available at balkanecommerce.com