Paul Smith boosts online sales with AI-powered product discovery

British luxury brand Paul Smith has partnered with AI platform Klevu and digital agency Limesharp in an effort to enhance its online shopping experience through AI-powered product discovery.

The luxury retailer said the partnership has already has seen revenue conversions from search go up by over 70% and e-commerce conversion up by a third over a eight week period.

The designer fashion brand used Klevu AI’s search and category merchandising software to improve product discovery and offer faster and more accurate results for shoppers.

According to Paul Smith, Klevu’s API runs primarily in the background but it also uses the technology to pin key products that it feels need to be highlighted, or easily switch product ordering to favour high-stock items when it’s in sale mode.

The retailer says that this category merchandising solution has seen per session value boosted by 20% for men’s category pages and conversion rates up 50%, with per session value increasing 15% on women’s category pages.

Alongside Klevu, Limesharp was chosen to rebuild the brand’s e-commerce platform and better develop product search.

Ed Bull, founder of Limesharp explained: “Through our discovery process with Paul Smith we found brand content that was tucked away in the blog containing incredible product information.”

“This was particularly prevalent with the many collaborations that took place over the 50 years of Paul Smith,” he added. “This formed part of our objectives… how can we bring that rich content to shoppers focussed on product discovery?”

The answer, Bull added, was by using Limesharp and Klevu’s solutions, so that when a customer searches for a collaboration on the site, such as ‘Manchester United’ or ‘Cycling’, the stories are now showcased with the product.

Nilay Oza, CEO and co-founder at Klevu, noted that this balance of AI automation and strategic control through the easy-to-use admin panel has enabled Paul Smith’s e-commerce team to be efficient and high-performing “resulting in higher conversion rates, greater sales figures, and improved customer satisfaction.”

AI-powered product discovery appears to be trending among fashion retailers, as online retailer Very announced a partnership earlier this year with tech platform Constructor to implement a similar solution.

However, a recent study found that retail IT teams are feeling pressured to keep up with transformation in the in the sector, particularly around tailored shopping experiences.