Australian fashion and lifestyle platform, THE ICONIC is now using Google Cloud’s generative AI capabilities to offer customers more intuitive and inspiring ways to put together their next look.
The online retailer’s new multimodal search options, powered by Gemini and open-source AI models on Google Cloud’s AI platform, Vertex AI, helps customers find the most relevant products for their specific needs.
Features include:
- Natural-language search, enabling customers to find items based on how they would normally express intent (like “beach-themed party”) rather than more traditional, limiting search terms (like “shirt”);
- Snap-to-Shop (coming soon), where customers can upload a photo and seamlessly find and shop each product featured in the image; and
- Complete the Look, which aims to inspire customers’ choices by recommending items to create a full look.
THE ICONIC Chief Technology Officer Adam Cox said: “These new advancements in search and discovery make it faster and simpler for people to not only find the items they’re looking for but also to find inspiration whilst they shop.
“We have over 20 million monthly visits to our website and app. These AI capabilities mark a major step forward in how we connect every single one of these customers to the products and styles that best suit them from our ever-expanding assortment, ultimately improving customer satisfaction and bottom-line results.”
Streamlining the e-tail search experience at scale
THE ICONIC has also made its assortment easier to search by using Gemini models on Vertex AI to automatically scan and tag product photos with in-depth metadata – the information used by search engines to identify different attributes of an item.
Previously, staff would be required to tag product imagery by hand, a time-consuming process that proved increasingly challenging to scale across the more than 200,000 different products – with 300 new arrivals every day – that THE ICONIC stocks each year.
Apart from significantly easing the burden on its employees, THE ICONIC’s use of Gemini models on Vertex AI for image-tagging is expected to help customers discover relevant items with much greater accuracy and speed.
It will also give THE ICONIC valuable insight into emerging trends across its product range and feed into more personalised features like “Next Best Category” – which aims to deliver category-based recommendations to customers’ inboxes based on individual search patterns and purchase histories.
“Overall, Google Cloud’s seamless integration of data and AI has made testing and pursuing opportunities to enhance our online retail experience faster and more straightforward.”
Google Cloud Australia & New Zealand Vice President, Paul Migliorini said: “Our work with THE ICONIC equips its teams with the technology and skills to turn their ideas for a personally-tailored online fashion experience into a reality.
“We’re now seeing this work come to fruition in its use of Google Cloud’s generative AI and data capabilities to leap from e-tailer to digital fashion adviser – directly speaking to the needs of each individual customer in a way that gives THE ICONIC a significant point of differentiation in an increasingly competitive market.”