We help trading and retail businesses put AI to work.

A London consultancy building AI agents that work inside the software you already run, even systems built just for you.

Book a conversation See what we do

We build inside the systems you already run, off the shelf or custom:

  • Shopify
  • WooCommerce
  • Algolia
  • Sage
  • Xero
  • SAP
  • Zendesk
  • WhatsApp

What we do

Three ways we put AI to work in a trading or retail business. Most clients start with one.

Pale concrete warehouse aisle: a tipped-over heap of plain cartons on one side, the same cartons squared away on the racking opposite, one of them cobalt Agents

AI agents for your business

Agents that do the work your people retype by hand: reading the email, drafting the quote, updating the system, flagging the exception. They run inside the software you already have, off the shelf or built just for you.

View examples
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A website ChatGPT recommends

Your customers now ask ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity who to buy from. We rebuild your site so you are visible and citable when they do, starting with what those answers say about you today.

Pale concrete facade assembled from precast blocks of different sizes fitted together, every joint between them a cobalt seam Software

Custom software, built AI-fast

The tools and systems your business actually needs, at a fixed price and owned outright by you. We build with AI, which is why we take on work that used to be uneconomic.

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How AI agents can help you

Four agents we have designed for merchants and retailers. Each one runs inside the software the business already had, and each takes over work that used to sit on a person's desk. Open one to see how it plays out.

Quote Desk

Reads the request, prices it against live stock, drafts it for approval.

Runs in Sage, Xero, SAP and a shared inbox

Wall of pale concrete pigeonholes holding squared stacks of paper, one compartment lined in cobalt

Exception Agent

Handles order status, claims, returns and refunds end to end.

Runs in Zendesk, Shopify and WhatsApp

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Catalogue Intelligence

Turns supplier datasheets into product data customers can actually search.

Runs in Algolia, WooCommerce and your PIM

Deep grid of pale concrete shelving filled with identical white boxes, one cobalt box pulled forward

Counter Brain

The advice your best people give, answering on your site at nine at night.

Runs on your site, WhatsApp and Zendesk

Pale concrete trade counter with a cobalt front panel and a blank tablet lying on the top

Every engagement follows the same pattern: one process, one system, one number that moves. Something else eating your margin, such as ad operations, supplier onboarding or credit control? We build custom AI agents for those too. Start with an audit.

Where it pays for itself

Results published by the vendors and customers of AI deployments in each sector. Their marketing rather than ours, and we will happily point you to the sources.

Wholesale goods-in yard under a concrete canopy, rows of wrapped pallets with one wrapped in cobalt

Trading & wholesale

  • Quotes priced and drafted in under five minutes, down from thirty
  • Purchase orders flowing into the ERP with up to 80% fewer manual touches
  • Customs declarations processed in minutes, not afternoons
  • Debtor days cut by eight to fifteen within a quarter
Calm retail interior in pale concrete, shelving runs of plain cartons with one run stocked in cobalt

Retail

  • A quarter to a half of support tickets resolved with no human touch
  • Returns down by up to a quarter where size and fit drive them
  • Shelf availability above 97% while holding less stock
  • Product copy written in a fifth of the time, whole ranges live in days

How we work

Audit

We come inside your business, map where hours and margin leak, and rank where AI pays back fastest. You get a plan in plain English, at a fixed price agreed up front.

Pilot

One agent, built and running on your real data. You see it work, and see the number move, before committing to anything more.

Run

We ship it into daily use, train your team and stay on to keep it sharp as your business changes.

  • Fixed price, agreed before we start
  • Built on your systems, owned by you
  • A human signs off until a workflow earns autonomy
  • Your data stays yours, under UK GDPR

Questions owners ask

What does it cost?

Every engagement is fixed-price, agreed before work starts. No day rates, no surprises. The audit is the smallest commitment and tells you exactly what the rest would cost and return.

Do we need to replace our systems?

No. The agents we build sit on top of what you already run, whether that is a full commerce stack and a proper ERP or a shared inbox and a price list in Excel. If your stack genuinely blocks the result, we will say so in the audit.

Our software was built just for us. Can you work with it?

Yes, that is rather the point. Custom systems usually have a database, an API, or at the very least screens and exports. We build AI agents around what your system can already do, and we never ask you to throw it away.

What happens to our data?

It stays yours. We work under UK GDPR, put data agreements in writing before touching anything, and never use your data to train public models.

We're not technical. Who runs this day to day?

We do. Your team approves what the agents produce and handles the cases that need judgement. Nobody on your side needs to learn to code, and we train the people who work alongside them.

What is the first thing we actually see?

The audit gives you a plan in plain English. After that a pilot runs on your own data, so the first thing you see is your real work being done, not a demo. We agree the schedule up front, and if it ever slips you hear it from us first.

What if it doesn't work for us?

The pilot ends with an honest go or no-go, backed by the numbers it produced. If the answer is no, you keep every finding.

Bring us the messiest process you've got.

A 30-minute conversation. We'll tell you honestly whether AI can move a number you care about.

Every booked call comes with a free AEO readiness check: what ChatGPT and Perplexity say when customers ask about your business.

Book a conversation

Or write to hello@abington.uk

AI agent

Quote Desk

An AI agent that reads inbound quote requests, whether they arrive by email, web form or phone, prices them against your live stock file and drafts them for one-click approval. Anything it cannot price goes to a human with the reason attached.

Book a conversation How we build it

What it takes off the desk

  • Reads requests from email, web forms and phone notes
  • Prices every line against the live stock and cost file
  • Drafts the quote for one-click approval
  • Hands back anything it cannot price, with the reason

A roofing merchant turning over six million. Every sale starts as a quote: a form, an email, a phone call.

By hand

Someone reads the request, checks the stock, prices it and types it up. Same day, if they're lucky. The counter's best people spend their afternoons quoting instead of selling.

With a Quote Desk

The request is read, priced from the live stock file and drafted in minutes. The counter team taps approve. Nobody is hired, replaced or sent on a training course.

AI agent

Exception Agent

An agent that handles order status, damage claims, returns and refunds end to end, and escalates cleanly the moment a case needs human judgement. It arrives at a person with the file already built rather than a ticket number.

Book a conversation How we build it

What it takes off the desk

  • Answers "where is my order" from live carrier and ERP data
  • Opens damage claims with the photos and paperwork attached
  • Processes returns and refunds inside your own policy
  • Escalates judgement calls with the case already assembled

A distributor shipping four hundred orders a day, and one inbox for all of it.

By hand

Every "where is my order" lands in the same queue as the claim that is about to cost you a customer. The team works down the list in the order it arrived, and the serious cases wait their turn.

With an Exception Agent

Routine status, returns and refunds are closed as they arrive, out of hours included. What reaches a person is the short list that genuinely needs one, with the history already gathered.

AI agent

Catalogue Intelligence

AI that reads supplier datasheets to enrich your product data, powers search that understands what a customer actually means, and gets thousands of SKUs properly listed online rather than sitting in a backlog.

Book a conversation How we build it

What it takes off the desk

  • Reads supplier PDFs and datasheets into structured data
  • Fills the attributes your filters and search depend on
  • Matches what a customer meant, not only what they typed
  • Flags contradictions between supplier and your own data

Forty thousand SKUs on the price list. Nine thousand of them online, and half of those with an empty spec.

By hand

One person copies specs out of supplier PDFs, a few hundred lines a month. Search returns nothing useful, so the customer rings the counter instead, or buys it somewhere else.

With Catalogue Intelligence

Datasheets are read into structured attributes at volume, the gaps are filled and search answers the question that was actually asked. The backlog stops being a decade of work.

AI agent

Counter Brain

An agent trained on the advice your best people give over the counter, so that knowledge answers customers on your website and on WhatsApp, and is there for every new starter from their first shift.

Book a conversation How we build it

What it takes off the desk

  • Learns from the answers your counter team already gives
  • Answers on the website and on WhatsApp, out of hours
  • Cites the product, the spec and the stock position
  • Sits beside a new starter instead of a fortnight of shadowing

Thirty years of knowing which fixing suits which substrate, held by four people.

By hand

The advice that closes the sale lives with a handful of long servers. When they are on holiday the answer is slower, and when they retire it leaves the building with them.

With a Counter Brain

That same advice answers a customer at nine at night on the website, and sits beside a new starter on their first shift instead of a fortnight of shadowing.

See what AI says about you today.

Give us your site and we will send back what ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity currently answer when a customer asks who to buy from in your category, and what is stopping you being cited.

The site you want us to check.

Where we send the findings. No list, no sequence.

One reply from a person, not a sequence. Your details stay with us, under UK GDPR.