Wednesday 25 February – Thursday 26 February 2026, ICC Sydney
PRESENTING PARTNER
American Express (NYSE: AXP) is a global payments and premium lifestyle brand powered by technology. Our colleagues around the world back our customers with differentiated products, services and experiences that enrich lives and build business success.
Founded in 1850 and headquartered in New York, American Express’ brand is built on trust, security, and service, and a rich history of delivering innovation and Membership value for our customers. With over a hundred million merchant locations across our global network, we seek to provide the world’s best customer experience every day to a broad range of consumers, small and medium-sized businesses, and large corporations.
EVENT PARTNERS
Active International is a commercial innovation company. We are a global team of business innovators, industry leaders, media mavens, and finance experts dedicated to delivering new levels of financial flexibility and custom solutions our partners need to Achieve More. We increase commercial agility through our industry expertise, our Active Trading Model, and direct investments that allow our clients to transform assets into new forms of value and deliver positive business outcomes.
Afterpay is a buy now, pay later service that helps customers shop with flexibility and supports businesses growth. Shoppers can split their purchase into four interest-free payments made over time, making it easier to budget and buy what they need, when they need it.
Merchants get paid upfront, while Afterpay manages the payment schedule with the customer. Afterpay works both online and in-store and is easy to add to existing checkout systems.Millions of customers actively use Afterpay, giving businesses access to a large and engaged audience. With built-in marketing support and a smooth checkout experience, Afterpay helps brands attract new customers, drive repeat purchases, and stay competitive in today’s retail landscape – creating value for both shoppers and merchants.
Are Media is Australia’s leading women’s lifestyle network, connecting with 90% of Australian women through iconic brands including The Australian Women’s Weekly, Better Homes and Gardens, Woman’s Day, marie claire, ELLE Australia, TV WEEK, New Idea, WHO, Australian Gourmet Traveller and BEAUTY/crew. With deep insight into what moves and inspires women, we connect commercial partners with audiences across print, digital, social, video, content commerce, immersive experiences and Australia’s largest online communities. We create the content Australians love across food, fashion, beauty, homes and entertainment — and through our Change AREgenda, drive meaningful and positive change for women.
We’re Australia’s oldest continually operating organisation. We contribute to Australia’s economic growth and prosperity and reinvest in the community to advance our enterprise purpose: Helping our people, customers and communities deliver a better future. Everyone, Everywhere, Every day.
Commercial Radio & Audio (CRA) is the peak industry body for Australia’s commercial radio broadcasters. It promotes the effectiveness of radio and audio to advertisers, delivers industry research and audience measurement, publishes the Australian Podcast Ranker and revenue reports, and leads innovation, standards and regulatory advocacy.
Fabulate is an AI-powered platform built specifically for creator marketing, bringing creator vetting and brand safety, workflows, approvals and analytics into one place — making campaigns faster to run and easier to measure. We exist to prove that AI can elevate creativity, not replace it. As a preferred partner of all major social platforms, Fabulate combines rich creator data, intelligent AI and deep industry expertise to help brands and creators tell more powerful stories with less friction, more insight and greater impact — so creativity can lead the way.
GS1 Australia is the local member organisation of GS1, the global leader in supply chain standards. We introduced barcoding to Australia in 1979 and today support over 23,000 member companies of all sizes to improve efficiency, through implementing the GS1 system. We connect businesses, associations, and industries, providing advice, networking, and solutions to supply chain challenges. Partnering with members, solution providers, and industry leaders, we promote and showcase best practice.
Part of a worldwide GS1 network in over 118 countries, with a global office in Belgium, GS1 Australia operates as a member based, not for profit organisation. Our charter is to supply and manage barcode numbers, maintain supply chain standards, and deliver related services on a cost recovery basis. Driven and governed by our members, we help ensure Australian supply chains benefit from globally recognised standards and innovations.
Mandala is an economic research advisory that combines the rigour of academic research with the polish and speed of consulting to deliver practical economic policy insights and regulatory analysis. We work at the cross-section of data, economics, policy, and strategy to produce reports that enable governments and companies to make better decisions.
We have over 50 people at Mandala in ten cities (five Australian cities, plus London, New York, Singapore, Tokyo, and Stockholm). Our team includes PhDs in economics and econometrics, as well as professional qualifications as economists, data scientists, actuaries, lawyers, and engineers, from diverse industry experiences and both sides of politics. We have deep cross-sectoral experience across retail, technology, finance, resources, infrastructure, and health care, delivering 100+ studies in 25 countries.
MTA Energy was founded in 2017 to challenge the way Australian businesses buy and manage electricity. Built by a team with deep experience across wholesale energy markets, data science, and large-scale retail operations, we exist to give commercial customers the same market access, transparency, and control traditionally reserved for Australia’s largest energy users.
Rather than selling fixed, opaque contracts, MTA connects businesses directly to the wholesale electricity market and actively manages their exposure in real time. By combining price forecasting, smart-meter analytics, and automated control of flexible assets such as HVAC systems and on-site batteries, coordinated across portfolios as Virtual Power Plants (VPPs), we help customers reduce costs, manage risk, and improve operational performance.
For the retailers, property groups, and multi-site organisations attending this event, MTA Energy offers a practical pathway to lower energy costs today, while building resilience for a future defined by volatility, electrification, and increasing sustainability expectations.
Publicis Sapient is a technology company that provides enterprise AI platforms and services. With over 30 years of digital business transformation experience, we enable enterprise retail clients to transform how they operate and serve their customers, unlocking new value and enabling them to thrive in an AI-driven world. Our platforms use AI built off this deep enterprise context to help them modernise, build agentic solutions, and sustain their competitive advantage. The combination of our AI platforms and the expertise of our people enables us to deliver faster and more effective outcomes through solutions that are specific to the unique needs of our clients’ businesses, their industries and their customers. Publicis Sapient is the technology hub of Publicis Groupe, uniting 20,000 people worldwide.
Established in 1988, Rest is one of Australia’s largest profit-to-member superannuation funds, with more than 2 million members and around $100 billion in funds under management *.
We use our size and expertise to deliver competitive long-term investment performance to our members. We’re driven by our purpose to create super our members love and our mission to make the super experience simple.
Rest has worked alongside businesses for more than 40 years – providing tools, insights and support to create better member and workplace super experiences. Today, more than 300,000* employers choose to work with us to make super simpler for their team members.
*As at June 30 2025″
Roy Morgan was founded in 1941 and has never shied away from asking the questions that matter and providing precise and insightful research into ever-changing social trends, attitudes, and consumer habits. Roy Morgan is the longest established and best-known market research company in Australia and has remained proudly independent throughout over eight decades.
While Roy Morgan started life specialising in public opinion and media measurement, we’ve expanded to cover all aspects of market research with information gathering via personal interviews, telephone, online and self-administered questionnaires.
This data includes rich insights into the retail industry and we work with many well-known retail clients to bring the latest data to market, including forecasts of Retail Sales produced in conjunction with the Australian Retail Council, and deep research into special retail events such as Christmas, Black Friday & Cyber Monday, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Halloween and others.
Snowflake is the platform for the AI era, making it easy for enterprises to innovate faster and get more value from data. More than 12,600 customers around the globe, including hundreds of the world’s largest companies, use Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to build, use and share data, applications and AI. With Snowflake, data and AI are transformative for everyone.
ACTIVATION PARTNERS
American Express (NYSE: AXP) is a global payments and premium lifestyle brand powered by technology. Our colleagues around the world back our customers with differentiated products, services and experiences that enrich lives and build business success.
Founded in 1850 and headquartered in New York, American Express’ brand is built on trust, security, and service, and a rich history of delivering innovation and Membership value for our customers. With over a hundred million merchant locations across our global network, we seek to provide the world’s best customer experience every day to a broad range of consumers, small and medium-sized businesses, and large corporations.
We’re Australia’s oldest continually operating organisation. We contribute to Australia’s economic growth and prosperity and reinvest in the community to advance our enterprise purpose: Helping our people, customers and communities deliver a better future. Everyone, Everywhere, Every day.
Commercial Radio & Audio (CRA) is the peak industry body for Australia’s commercial radio broadcasters. It promotes the effectiveness of radio and audio to advertisers, delivers industry research and audience measurement, publishes the Australian Podcast Ranker and revenue reports, and leads innovation, standards and regulatory advocacy.
Publicis Sapient is a technology company that provides enterprise AI platforms and services. With over 30 years of digital business transformation experience, we enable enterprise retail clients to transform how they operate and serve their customers, unlocking new value and enabling them to thrive in an AI-driven world. Our platforms use AI built off this deep enterprise context to help them modernise, build agentic solutions, and sustain their competitive advantage. The combination of our AI platforms and the expertise of our people enables us to deliver faster and more effective outcomes through solutions that are specific to the unique needs of our clients’ businesses, their industries and their customers. Publicis Sapient is the technology hub of Publicis Groupe, uniting 20,000 people worldwide.
SUPPORTING SPONSOR
VCLA Media is a creative marketing agency that brings brands to life through strategy and content. We tell stories that turn attention into connection.
SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE
If you’d like to showcase your brand at the forefront of the retail industry and connect directly with senior decision-makers, sponsoring the ARC Leaders Forum 26 is the perfect opportunity. Sponsorship offers you maximum visibility across the two days, alignment with the most influential voices in retail, and the chance to demonstrate your leadership on issues shaping the industry. Connect with us today to explore this opportunity.
Acknowledgement of Country
ARC acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we live, learn and work. We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and recognise Australia’s First Nations’ peoples as Australia’s first traders with a sophisticated network of trading paths that have facilitated the exchange of goods, knowledge and culture for millennia.
