In our latest webinar, we explored how retailers can meet customers wherever they shop, whether in-store, online, on social media or marketplaces. Experts shared how AI can transform the shopping journey by improving inventory management, creating seamless experiences and building customer loyalty through personalization. Attendees learned simple ways to give customers more control and use data to enhance every customer touchpoint.
What we learned:
- Turning data into AI-driven retail power
- Revolutionizing retail with fabric’s AI-Powered order orchestration suite
- How industry leaders leverage AI data-driven approaches
Speakers:
- Ekta Chopra, Chief Digital Officer at e.l.f. Beauty
- Derek Yarbrough, frmr CMO at J.Crew
- Vivian Chang, Vice President, Ecommerce at GNC
- Amy Silino, frmr Vice President of Growth & Performance Marketing at Lands’ End
- Christelle Flahaux, CMO at fabric
- Moderated by: Veronika Sonsev, CoFounder at CommerceNext
Watch the replay here or read the recap below.
Turning Data into AI-Driven Retail Power
AI has the potential to revolutionize every part of the retail value chain, from product design and inventory planning to order management and personalized customer experiences. In the short term, businesses are focusing on efficiency, using AI to automate tasks like forecasting, fulfillment and marketing operations. However, the foundation of any successful AI strategy starts with data. Many companies struggle with data stored separately across systems like POS, customer and marketing platforms, making it difficult to use AI effectively.
To overcome this, businesses need a clear data strategy, whether that involves creating a unified data platform or adopting a data mesh approach. A unified platform centralizes all data, while a data mesh allows separate data repositories to connect and share insights. Both approaches ensure AI can access the right data to drive automation and create differentiated experiences like personalized customer journeys. By building a strong data foundation, businesses can unlock AI’s full potential to streamline operations and deliver innovative customer solutions.
Revolutionizing Retail with fabric’s AI-Powered Order Orchestration Suite
Retailers today face the challenge of managing demand and fulfillment across multiple channels, stores and fulfillment centers while keeping everything connected and visible. To solve this, fabric has developed an AI-powered Order Orchestration Suite to link demand and fulfillment in real-time, providing a clear, streamlined process for handling orders.
This solution offers four key benefits:
- It increases sales by making real-time inventory visible, ensuring customers get what they want, when and where they need it.
- It optimizes order fulfillment by using AI to select the most efficient locations for shipping, reducing split shipments and improving customer satisfaction.
- It allows businesses to make quick adjustments through a user-friendly interface powered by natural language tools.
- It helps companies differentiate themselves by delivering faster, smarter and more reliable customer experiences.
This innovation makes managing the complexities of modern retail more efficient and effective than ever.
How Industry Leaders Leverage AI Data-driven Approaches
Derek Yarbrough shared his experience from J.Crew in analyzing ecommerce data, especially for customers who visit the site but don’t make a purchase. Many people browse, compare products like coats or shoes and gather inspiration without committing to a sale. By using AI to examine this behavior, retailers can better understand what these potential customers are doing on the site. AI can then help create personalized experiences that encourage shoppers to continue down the buying process, increasing the chances of conversion. With so much data available, AI can uncover insights that help move customers from casual browsing to completed purchasers.
Amy Silino suggests using innovative AI-driven strategies to improve digital marketing and boost sales. One strategy involves creating dynamic landing pages or product listing pages optimized for long-tail SEO queries. This tactic helps attract organic traffic, reducing the reliance on paid search ads. Another exciting development comes from her time at Cerberus, where AI technology was used to predict the ROI of influencer marketing campaigns by analyzing data from platforms like YouTube and Facebook. This is a more targeted and data-driven method compared to traditional, guesswork approaches. Lastly, she shared ways to personalize offers based on customers’ behavior on the site, such as their probability of buying. By using AI to analyze click patterns, they can create more tailored promotions, saving margin and improving conversion rates. These strategies reflect a smarter, data-driven approach to driving sales and optimizing marketing efforts.
e.l.f. Beauty sees a great opportunity to leverage AI in their creative processes, particularly by focusing on personalization. Once they have structured their data and gained a clear understanding of the consumer journey, the next challenge is optimizing the creative supply chain. AI can have a significant impact by generating fresh creative ideas and efficiently producing and adapting content for different platforms. This allows e.l.f. Beauty to quickly creates multiple versions of content tailored to specific channels, improving the relevance of their messaging and making it easier to engage customers in a personalized way across all touchpoints.
GNC is exploring the potential of digital shelf optimization to improve product content creation, especially when dealing with thousands of SKUs. Traditionally, decisions around product packaging and imagery have been made by the R&D or marketing teams. However, GNC is excited about using AI tools to simulate target demographics and create a virtual panel for product design. This approach allows the company to evaluate product imagery and packaging before it even goes into production. Additionally, AI can help refine metadata and product descriptions to better cater to the audience, improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of digital shelf management. This treamlines the process and ensures the content resonates more with customers, driving better performance across digital retail platforms.
For more tips like these, sign up for the 2025 CommerceNext Growth Show, taking place in NYC on June 24-26, 2025. Sign up here.
