everyone says ai will eat the agencies. a bristol founder split his in two instead

Bristol-based vvast has launched its new AI-powered data-ingestion and impact-reporting tool, a Shopify-native software designed to automate compliance and impact reporting for direct-to-consumer brands. This strategic product launch coincides with the company's split into two independent entities: the software business, retaining the vvast name, and a newly independent eCommerce agency, Weekday Assembly. Founder Richie Jones states the move allows vvast to focus entirely on productising a decade of D2C expertise into enterprise-grade commercial and compliance capability for growing brands.

Bristol-based vvast has launched its new data-ingestion and impact-reporting tool, a Shopify-native software designed to automate compliance and impact reporting for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands. This tool ingests product and supplier data at the SKU level, enabling brands to navigate new regulations that demand accurate reporting or face increased fees. It productises a decade of vvast's agency compliance work, allowing smaller brands to proactively manage fee exposure before orders are placed. From April 2026, UK Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees are modulated by recyclability, with incomplete data defaulting to the most expensive 'red' band, where illustrative plastic fees are up 29% year on year. The EU Digital Product Passport will extend similar data burdens to garments from 2027. Most growing Shopify brands, typically generating £600k–£10m in revenue and without a dedicated compliance or sustainability function, currently manage these complex requirements using spreadsheets, leading to potential overpayments and compliance risks. Vvast's software fills this critical gap, providing the missing infrastructure between 'enterprise compliance software' and 'a spreadsheet and hope.' This product launch marks a strategic pivot for vvast, which has separated into two independent businesses: the pure software company, retaining the vvast name, and an independent eCommerce agency, now rebranded as Weekday Assembly. Founder Richie Jones explains, 'Over the past year the two pulled in different directions, and rather than force them to share a roof, we gave each its own. This allows vvast to focus entirely on building the operating system for retail in the AI age, leveraging a decade of proprietary D2C outcome data.' The agency side, Weekday Assembly, is led by Laura Justice and will continue to offer bespoke eCommerce services. The split allows both entities to pursue their distinct missions with greater clarity. Vvast's core technology has processed over £200m GMV across 10 years, including £70m in FY24, and is deployed globally by a brand generating ~$500m GMV annually. The company is also running a pilot on the EOG's SDEX programme, an established industry standard designed to replace manual spreadsheet work for data exchange, anticipating future legal requirements. Ed Pitt, Co-founder & CTO, highlights, 'Our decade inside D2C brands taught us exactly where the data lives, where it breaks, and what it's worth once you can actually read it. That knowledge is the reason vvastify exists.' Adam Hall, CSO, adds, 'We're providing the tools for brands to not just meet, but move the standard on sustainability, ensuring their impact claims hold up under increasing scrutiny.'

Trend context

The agency world is answering AI with an axe. Forrester's 2026 predictions forecast 15% of agency jobs lost this year, hard on the heels of 8% in 2025, and WPP is cutting several hundred more positions by the end of 2026 under its Elevate28 restructuring, redirecting resources toward AI and automation. The economics forcing it are visible in one pair of numbers: worldwide ad spending grew 8.6% in 2025 while holding company revenues fell 1.2%. Forrester's own prescription reads like a description of what vvast just did: agencies "will abandon their traditional role as client representatives and transform into diversified marketing solution providers offering execution services, managed solutions, proprietary products" — the shift from agent to owner. The holding companies are attempting it by compression, squeezing services and software into the same struggling structures. vvast did it by division: the proprietary product became its own company, and the services business was set free to be excellent at the thing clients actually hire it for. Which makes the split a small, checkable answer to the industry's largest question — and the human version of it lands hardest in a layoffs year: a founder measuring his company by how far its people fly rather than how tightly it holds them.

About vvast

Why we exist

VVAST believes the expertise to grow an ethical ecommerce brand — profitably, compliantly, without racing to the bottom on discount — shouldn't be locked behind agencies only big brands can afford. For ten years that knowledge lived inside a bespoke service model. VVAST exists to productise it: to put enterprise-grade commercial and compliance capability in the hands of brands that could never buy it, and to surface that same trust data to the consumer for the first time.

How we do it

VVAST codifies a decade of real trading — £200m+ GMV across global D2C brands — into software that sits on top of Shopify. Not generic tools, and not a custom agency build, but productised playbook: SKU-level intelligence on which products cost what on compliance, which suppliers to back, which storefront changes recover revenue. A two-sided dataset (merchant behaviour plus consumer trust signals) compounds with every brand that joins, and is enriched by integration with the EOG's SDEX standard.

What we do

VVAST builds a modular suite of Shopify-native and platform-agnostic software: a high-conversion theme engine ("vvastify"), a data-ingestion and impact-reporting tool, and a roadmap of apps covering merchandising, compliance reporting, subscriptions, returns and more — orchestrated by a central AI hub trained on proprietary D2C outcome data. A consumer-facing app is planned as the trust layer. The first shipped product is the ingestion and impact-reporting tool.

Why it matters

Thousands of growing brands are about to be penalised for data they don't have. From April 2026, incomplete UK packaging data automatically lands in the most expensive EPR fee band; from 2027 the EU Digital Product Passport extends the same pressure to every garment sold in Europe. These brands manage it in spreadsheets because the affordable tooling doesn't exist. Without it they overpay on fees, fall foul of green-claims rules, and — increasingly — become invisible to AI shopping agents that only surface verifiable products. The void VVAST fills is the missing infrastructure between "enterprise compliance software" and "a spreadsheet and hope."

Who it's for

The founder-operator of a growing D2C brand — call it £600k to £10m in revenue — who sells on Shopify, believes in doing things properly, and has just realised that EPR, plastic tax and the Digital Product Passport are landing on a team that doesn't have a compliance department. They can't afford an enterprise platform or a full-time sustainability hire. They need their existing data to do the work. That's the person VVAST is built for.

Proof points

£200m+ GMV traded through the vvastify engine over 10 years; £70m GMV in FY24. Core technology deployed globally by one brand at ~$500m GMV per year. B-Corp certified; ISO and Cyber Essentials certified. 72% lower-carbon storefronts — vvastify 2.0 emits 72% less than baseline standard Shopify theme. vvastify built on Shopify Storefront 2.0, in production with listed US brands.

Traction & credibility

Running a pilot on the EOG's SDEX programme — a real, established industry standard adopted across ~125 EOG members. The EOG has allocated VVAST three brands and two retailers to pilot with. Spun out of a 10-year profitable agency with a named roster of D2C brands including VF and Deus. Further brands lined up to pilot, including Santa Cruz and a UK beauty multi-brand (~£32m GMV). Richie Jones is a founding member of The Future Fellowship, an invite-only AI-futures circle convened by futurist David Mattin (Head of Technology Research at GMI). Raising to fund the standalone software build (SEIS/EIS), with institutional seed investors tracking progress.

Spokespeople

Richie Jones

Founder & CEO

Richie spent a decade running VVAST as a managed-services agency, trading £200m+ GMV for global direct-to-consumer brands and building the "vvastify" technology behind it — all while the business stayed in profit. The frustration that drove the pivot: sitting in meeting after meeting presenting insights that could help any brand, knowing they were locked inside a model only big brands could afford. So he's carving the IP out of the agency to productise it as software. He's a founding member of The Future Fellowship, an invite-only circle convened by futurist David Mattin to track how AI reshapes markets — foresight he brings directly into VVAST's roadmap.

Adam Hall

CSO

Adam is an 18-year sustainability strategist known for initiatives that move the standard, not just meet it. Edie named him one of the Top 20 Business Leaders Defining the Next 20 Years of Sustainability, and his work has been featured as a case study by both the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. He co-founded the North Devon World Surfing Reserve — the UK's first environmental designation of its kind — is a long-term trustee of Protect Our Winters UK, and previously served as a trustee of #2MinuteBeachClean. At VVAST, he's the reason the impact claims hold up.

Ed Pitt

Co-founder & CTO

Ed brings 30 years of software development and engineering leadership across startups and scale-ups. He owns the technical bet at the heart of VVAST: that a decade of proprietary D2C outcome data, not a generic model, is what makes the platform's intelligence defensible — the thing a generic SaaS can't replicate and an LLM can't hallucinate its way to. He's the right voice for any journalist who wants to go under the hood on the ingestion pipeline, the SDEX integration, or the "mindful AI" approach.

Talking points

The asset

VVAST launches data-ingestion and impact-reporting tool for Shopify D2C brands

vvast.net/standalone-packages-2

The story

VVAST has launched its new data-ingestion and impact-reporting tool, a Shopify-native software designed to automate compliance and impact reporting for direct-to-consumer brands. This tool ingests product and supplier data at the SKU level, enabling brands to navigate new regulations that demand accurate reporting or face increased fees. It productises a decade of VVAST's agency compliance work, allowing smaller brands to proactively manage fee exposure before orders are placed.

Why it matters

From April 2026, UK Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees are modulated by recyclability, with incomplete data defaulting to the most expensive 'red' band, where illustrative plastic fees are up 29% year on year. The EU Digital Product Passport will extend similar data burdens to garments from 2027. Most growing Shopify brands currently manage these complex requirements using spreadsheets, leading to potential overpayments and compliance risks.

Who does it impact

UK and EU-selling D2C brands on Shopify, roughly £600k–£10m revenue, without a dedicated compliance or sustainability function. In the outdoor sector specifically, the EOG's ~125 members already wrestling with SDEX data requests.

Proof points

VVAST's core technology has processed over £200m GMV across 10 years, including £70m in FY24, and is deployed globally by a brand generating ~$500m GMV annually. The company is also running a pilot on the EOG's SDEX programme, an established industry standard designed to replace manual spreadsheet work for data exchange, anticipating future legal requirements.

CTA

Readers should be directed to https://vvast.net/standalone-packages-2/

Key facts

Key Functionality: SKU-level data ingestion, automated compliance reporting, impact reporting
Target Audience: D2C brands (£600k-£10m revenue) on Shopify without dedicated compliance teams
Regulatory Focus: UK EPR (from April 2026), EU Digital Product Passport (from 2027)
Integration: EOG's SDEX standard (pilot)

Get in touch

Richie Jones

Founder & CEO

Drop me a note and I'll reply by email.