On 10 February 2026, Eber co-hosted The Future of Growth: How Retail & E-Commerce Will Scale in 2026, a seminar bringing together retail and e-commerce leaders to explore what sustainable scaling looks like in the year ahead.
The afternoon unfolded at Colony @ KL Eco City, with practitioners and growth teams from across the industry gathering not just to listen, but to exchange ideas. Organised in partnership with WATI, and with Shopify as event sponsor and Meta as star speaker, the session drew from multiple corners of the commerce ecosystem.
One theme kept surfacing throughout the day: the rules of growth have changed.
Reach alone no longer drives meaningful business outcomes. What separates brands that grow from brands that stall is the depth of their customer relationships, and whether those relationships are built on real data or guesswork.
As WhatsApp and conversational channels move from “nice to have” to central infrastructure, more brands are shifting away from one-way campaigns. The conversation is no longer just about traffic. It’s about knowing who your customers are, owning that data, and creating experiences that keep people coming back.
Eber’s session explored how this plays out in practice, specifically how brands can:
When loyalty infrastructure connects meaningfully with conversational engagement and performance marketing, the customer journey stops feeling like a series of disconnected tools. It starts to feel like a relationship.
What made the session particularly valuable was the range of perspectives on stage.
Eber brought its experience building loyalty and CRM infrastructure for multi-outlet brands across retail, F&B, wellness, and e-commerce in Asia, making the case for loyalty not as a campaign mechanic, but as a long-term growth foundation.
WATI unpacked how brands are using WhatsApp as a primary engagement channel today, sharing practical approaches to automation and CRM-connected messaging that move beyond broadcast.
Meta offered a view on acquisition and engagement in a privacy-first world, reinforcing why activating first-party data across messaging and commerce channels is becoming a competitive necessity rather than a best practice.
Shopify’s presence as event sponsor reflected something bigger: the way commerce platforms, messaging solutions, and loyalty infrastructure are increasingly designed to work together, not in silos.
Between them, the speakers covered the full arc of acquiring customers, engaging them, converting them, and building the conditions for them to stay.
The event drew an impressive cross-section of established names and fast-growing businesses from retail, wellness, healthcare, and consumer goods, including Gintell, BONIA, WorldFirst, Jaya Grocer, Live-well Nutraceuticals, NZ New Image, Dignity for Children, Mayfair Wellness and Fitness Concept.
Their presence spoke to a shared recognition: that customer retention and lifetime value are no longer secondary metrics. They’re the growth strategy.
Retail and e-commerce will keep evolving. But the brands best positioned for what’s ahead are those that take real ownership of their customer relationships, using first-party data responsibly and embedding loyalty into the everyday, not just the occasional campaign.
The conversations at the event reflected a shift that’s already underway across the industry. Growth in 2026 isn’t about who can shout the loudest. It belongs to the brands building something worth staying for.
Eber is proud to have co-hosted this initiative alongside WATI, Meta, and Shopify, and to be part of that shift.
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