Learn the only retail framework you will ever need
More than 12 years of strategic retail learnings distilled into a single powerful framework that you can apply immediately to:
- Boost your retail performance
- Find new profitable opportunities
- Futureproof your retail business
Join the world’s most forward-thinking brands

Do you ever feel that retail is becoming really complicated?
Every year, the pace of retail speeds up. Despite this, there are some simple, timeless, strategic truths that can cut through the complexity and help you get ahead.
Modern Commerce is a new view of retail. It is a strategic way of thinking that is not restricted by specific technologies. Modern Commerce retailers are effective, profitable businesses that are always at the forefront of retail, no matter what is flavour of the month.
This self-paced online course will teach you our strategic framework for Modern Commerce in just 15 short video lessons. It will show you:
- How modern retailers need to think
- How you can move from one mode of thinking to the other
- A futureproof framework for retail best practice
This course will give you a bird’s eye view of everything a successful, futureproof, 21st century retail business needs to consider.
Whether you’re a CEO, website manager, customer service representative or other role, you’ll learn the role that your department plays in helping your company get ahead, and how departments can work better together.

Key benefits
Meet your instructor
The course is led by Cate Trotter, the founder of Insider Trends, who has been named one of the world’s most influential people in retail.
Insider Trends has studied the strategies of the world’s leading retailers, and interviewed many of the industry’s key innovators. We’ve travelled the world, experiencing the best of global retail first-hand. Brands including Nike, Galeries Lafayette, Levi’s, Carrefour and Ikea have made use of our insights – and now you can too.
The course content has been developed by Insider Trends and Avensia, one of the world’s leading retail tech companies.
What you'll learn
- The 19 key issues every head office retail employee should be aware of
- The 4 elements to map when positioning your retail business
- A method to identify new opportunities and potential threats
- Ways to adapt your existing strategy to better compete
- What it means to be a 21st century retailer – and how traditional retail businesses can become futureproof
- The strategies applied by today’s most valuable retailers
- Step-by-step techniques to turn knowledge into insight
- How to forecast a retailer’s ability to create value and stay ahead
- The timeless, futureproof module for exceptional customer experience
- How to improve your company’s value proposition and competitive differentiation
- A framework that will help you identify new strategies, to keep your retail business ahead of the competition
- Understand how traditional businesses can bring themselves into the 21st century
Who is this course for?
In short – anyone in the head office of a medium or large retailer.
Retail leaders – get a better understanding of how the different parts of your business can work together to create value
Retail employees – have more informed, productive conversations about how your team can better support the wider business
Retail tech professionals/salespeople – understand where retail is going, and what should be on your clients’ minds
Founders – understand what best practice looks like and how your startup can quickly get ahead of the competition
Investors – hone your eye for spotting winners, and boost the strategy of your existing investments
Students – get a holistic look at futureproof retail
Join the world’s most forward-thinking brands

FAQs
We’ve designed this course for anyone who works in the head office of a medium or large retailer, or who hopes to go into this field.
We have deliberately designed the course to provide valuable insights for people of all levels. The frameworks are easy to learn, yet provide new ways to view a retail business and identify opportunities.
The course is entirely online – as such, everyone is welcome to join, regardless of where you are based.
We’ve designed this course for busy professionals.
The course works to deliver the most valuable, impactful insights and frameworks, in the most efficient manner possible. We prioritise quality over quantity.
On average, the course will take around 10 hours to complete. This includes:
- 3-5 hours to watch all the videos and complete the accompanying exercises in your Workbook
- 5 hours for the final project
However, you can spend as much time as you want on the exercises and final project.
This is a self-paced online course. You can watch the videos at the time that works best for you. This means that the course works for everyone, regardless of which time zone they are in.
Once you sign-up, you will have lifetime access to all the videos in the course, so you can complete the course at your own pace and rewatch the videos whenever you like.
No – Modern Commerce isn’t something you can pass or fail. This course is about your own learning. Everyone who submits a final project will receive their official digital badge and signed certificate.
We offer a 50% discount for those who can provide valid student ID. Email us at mca@insider-trends.com with a picture of you holding your student ID – we’ll send you a discount code that can be applied at checkout.
Your company or manager may well agree to pay for you to attend the course – contact us for a template to request reimbursement.
We do offer special passes and rates for groups of 5, 10, 20 and beyond. Email mca@insider-trends.com or call us on +44 207 183 3785 to find out more and book.
Yes – if you don’t feel the Modern Commerce Academy is worth what you paid for it, we will refund you in full. This guarantee applies to those who engage with all the modules and complete the final project.
We know how valuable the insights in this course are. We apply the exact framework we are teaching here to many of our projects.
We could be charging a lot more for it.
Instead we’ve made it as affordable as possible by focusing on the quality of the content rather than fancy production values.
Instead of bloating the course with unnecessary information that asks for more of your time, we’ve deliberately made it concise and to the point. This allows you to extract maximum value and keeps the price affordable.
Any other questions? Email us at mca@insider-trends.com or phone us on +44 207 183 3785.